Author Archives: dan g.

Review: Count Chocula Monster Cereal (2017)

I feel like I’m starring in a movie trailer for an unnecessary 2017 reboot of a classic ’80s film. You know, the kind of trailer that inevitably starts with all the wizened and crow-footed stars of the first movie reuniting in their old haunt to topically argue about how things just aren’t as good as they used to be and crack jokes about iPads?

Yeah, that’s how I feel about buying my 2017 box of Count Chocula, because those trailers always open with someone muttering the same line: “Well, here we are again.” Or maybe, “Hello, old friend.” Or even, “Y’all haven’t aged a day.”

Even though a year has passed since I’ve tasted the Count’s sweet cocoa spoils (not counting the expired box I found in my pantry and begrudgingly—though not regretfully—ate on the 4th of July), I feel like this caped chocolate cruncher has never left my side. Like a warm memory or a Tamagotchi that just won’t die, the nostalgic spookiness of Count Chocula—who’s been on shelves for 46 years now, despite being an ageless vampire—is resonant enough to keep me thinking about old elementary school Halloween parties and goofy candy corn cupcakes all year long.

So while I’m sure I won’t find much new to say about Count Chocula’s taste that I haven’t said in previous reviews, I owe this trusty Hershey’s syrup-blooded bloodsucker his annual tribute. Let’s sharpen our canines and start munchin’! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, count chocula, general mills, halloween, marshmallow, monster cereals. 6 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts

Halloween is about the little things.

Ask any full-blooded (or at least fake-blood-slathered) Halloween lover, and I’m sure most will agree. While haunted houses, parties, and handing out candy on The Big XXXI Day itself are the holiday’s main events, savoring little spooky moments is the key to feeling merrily macabre from the start of back-to-school season ’til the end of back-to-the-cardboard-box-ghouls-in my basement season.

These bite-sized boos can be anything—or anywhere. Glimpsing a well-loved plastic goblin in a thrift store. Marathoning all the Halloween movies and spending the next week fearing any mention of William Shatner. Camping out in a Spirit Halloween with an industrial carton of Whoppers and flipping through old Goosebumps books until the staff gets scared of you.

Or maybe it’s just eating one (or thirty one) of Kellogg’s “new” Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts. It’s long been a Pop-Tartian tradition to adorn their Chocolate Fudge flavor with full Hallo-regalia (why Chocolate Fudge, I don’t know—maybe because it’s pretty much a king-sized candy bar that’s socially acceptable to eat for breakfast?), but previous years have only seen this ghost-er pastry wearing orange frosting and crunchy sprinkle shapes.

But now Kellogg’s has beautifully spurned their sprinkled tradition in favor of something somehow even better: printed scary shapes on every neon orange-blasted, baked fudge rectangle! Drink that box art in for a minute while I grab the plates, glasses of milk, and altars to worship that top cartoon ghost at.

He looks like a spectral Pikachu tail. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, halloween, kelloggs, non cereal, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Sep. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: New Looks for Old Cereals

Aside from hunting new cereals, Pop-Tarts and Hostess snack cakes (my secret passion—Chocodiles used to be my fudge-slathered white whales), one of my oldest grocery store past times is looking for box art variations of breakfast mainstays.

Sometimes the differences are nuanced and small, like earlier this year when French Toast Crunch’s plain red box adopted a drop shadow, but sometimes classic cereal boxes we’ve come to love dramatically evolve overnight, like metamorphosed sugar-encrusted butterflies emerging from their cardboard chrysalises. As we’ll soon see, French Toast Crunch just did that, too—and so did another long-beloved morning mainstay.

But before we judge those, let’s appraise Snap, Crackle, and Pop’s recent Rice Krispies plastic surgery, which I noticed while trying (and failing) to find those elusive new Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispies Treats. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: honey, kelloggs, post, rice krispies, spooned & spotted, toast crunch. 22 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Quaker Corn Crunch Cereal

There are some cereals you’d never expect to have a cult following. Honeycomb and Alpha-Bits are good examples. They’re classics sure, but unlike Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s sect of cinnamon sugar swirlers or Cap’n Crunch’s church of masochistic roof-of-mouth manglers, you never really hear people say Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits are their favorite cereals.

That is, until Post changes those cereals’ formulas, and I get gobsmacked by hundreds of torched and pitchforked comments from angry breakfast lovers blaming me for ruining their childhood memories.

Sorry, Bertha from North Dakota. I swear I just make dumb cereal jokes, not actual cereal.

Honeycomb rants aside, another cereal with a shockingly devoted fandom is Quaker’s Corn Bran Crunch. As one of those closet Corn Bran Crunch geeks, I wrote up a glowing tribute review to the stuff a while back, and the article’s popularity revealed that many share my niche passion for fibrous corn cuboids.

As comments kept rolling in, my fellow quirky Quaker-ers kept me posted on a developing narrative for our beloved Corn Bran Crunch. Tragically, the stuff disappeared for a while, and inquiring fans were told that a production error had put Corn Bran Crunch had put the cereal on hiatus.

But then it returned, and after the initial glorious hysteria wore off, something was very clearly different. The Bran had ran away somewhere down the line, leaving behind Corn Crunch, which, despite its alliterative name, allegedly tasted far different.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, quaker. 9 Comments

Aug. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats

Let’s just get this out of the way, since you knew I was going to say it anyway:

TRICK OR RICE KRISPIES TREAT!

There, now that we have the formalities out of the way, we can talk about Kellogg’s awesome new Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats, which have, apparently, quietly snuck onto Walmart shelves without saying boo. Seriously, this is a small miracle: so many products leak online before we actually see them physically, so Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats must’ve embraced the spirit of Halloween and costumed themselves on the way to the warehouse.

I bet they were hiding in a box of ironing board covers.

No word yet on whether these fun-sized (*In my Jerry Seinfeld voice:* What’s fun about less food?), limited edition Rice Krispies Treats actually have pumpkin and spice-flavored Krispies, or if it’s just a flavored icing bearing the brunt of the flavor, but I’m excited to get my hungry fingers—7 of which are already wearing thos cheap plastic dollar store bat rings—on a box to try ’em.

The best part is that Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats come forty to a box. So while they’re clearly meant to be given out to trick-or-treaters, I could totally inhale all of them and turn XL from a Roman numeral into my sweatpants size.

‘Tis the season of elastic waistbands!

Massive thanks to Marcus and Matthew S. for sharing this photo. If you have a cool cereal photo of your own to share, whether it’s seasonal or just really freakin’ sweet, send it in over to our Submissions page—you might just see it on the site!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: halloween, kelloggs, pumpkin, rice krispies, spooned & spotted. Leave a comment

Aug. ’17

Review: International Delight Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Creamer

If you’re like me, coffee is as much a cornerstone of every balanced breakfast as a bowl of cereal—and the two pair perfectly like yin and yang. Seriously: just picture a yin yang, with one half being coffee with a dab of cream and the other being milk with a single Cocoa Puff.

My love affair with bitter coffee and sweet cereal is pervasive, so much so that I couldn’t resist reviewing a buzz-worthy new coffee product that brings all the whimsical childhood spirit of a breakfast cereal into the comparatively adult territory of caffeinated beverage flavor-enhancing agents: International Delight’s new Reese’s Cup Coffee Creamer.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not reviewing an overtly cereal-related product on this blog—though I promise this post will end in me pouring the stuff on cereal—but I’ve been meaning to branch my content topics into other breakfast staples, too. If you hate this idea, let me know in the comments. Or if you love this idea and want me to tackle Eggo waffles, scrambled eggs, or scrambled egg-stuffed Eggo waffles next, let me know that, too.

But while you gather your spoons and pitchforks, let’s revel in some socially acceptable liquid candy! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, non cereal, peanut butter. 7 Comments

Aug. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Pumpkin Spice Cereals Are Back for 2017!

After a summer no-doubt filled with complex hollandaise recipes and brunch casseroles with more strata than a riverbed, do you want to go back to basics for your autumn breakfasts?

Well it doesn’t get much more basic than these pumpkin spice cereals. *ba-dum-tss*

Yes, despite the lingering stockpile of leftover hot dogs and Bomb Pops in my fridge, fall has officially creeped its way into August, as the Four Cereal Horsemen of the A-pumpk-alypse have already hit shelves. All four of the pumpkin spice cereals you see above are returning from years past, and there’s no word yet whether whether we’ll see a new *cough* Pumpkin Spice Toast Crunch *cough* autumnal cereal for 2017.

Personally, I hope that all’s quiet on the pumpkin front to make more room for a caramel apple or candy corn cereal. Heck, even Cap’n Crunch’s Circus Peanuts would break the pumpkin spiced fatigue.

Based on how busy the next few months get, I may give a quick re-review to each of these cereals, but for now, here are some trading card bios to refresh your taste buds’ memory: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: halloween, pumpkin, spooned & spotted. 5 Comments

Aug. ’17

News: Steak ‘n Shake is Debuting Cereal-Flavored Breakfast Shakes!

If you believe the clickbait headlines, “millennials are killing breakfast cereal,” whether it’s because they’re too lazy to wash bowls or because they prefer the portable taste of Electrolyte-Fortified Kale Rectangles to sugary cinnamon squares in the morning.

But even if millennials are killing breakfast cereal, then it seems like more of a noble sacrifice for a greater good than a murder, because we seem to have entered a golden age of cereal milkshakes.

First, Burger King gave us two delectable cereal shakes infused with chunks of Froot Loops and Lucky Charms, respectively.

And now Steak & Shake, an honorable eatery that knows milkshakes well enough to build 33.33% of its business on them (though I prefer their flame-grilled ampersands), is adding 5* specialty breakfast shakes to their portfolio of plasmatic lactose beverages.

*I qualify this 5, because though coffee is an essential part of any balanced breakfast, Steak ‘n Shake’s Caramel Frappé seems laughably out of place here. They might as well have added a Scrambled Egg Shake at this point

We get three recognizable Kellogg’s in shake form: Frosted Flakes, Honey Smacks, and Cocoa Krispies, as well as an über generic Cinnamon Crunch Shake. This makes sense, since Kellogg’s seems to have exclusive milkshake rights here, and they don’t have a pure cinnamon cereal to bring the table—at least not without making Tony do double duty, negotiating a complicated Cinnabon cross-promo, or making a hilariously ironic Special K Shake.

I don’t know which flavor I’m most excited to try first—probably the sheer uniqueness of a Honey Smacks Shake that I can Dig ‘Em into—but I do know one thing: I hope they’re served all day long. Because if I’m going to be forced to eat 1200 some calories before 9am, I’d rather eat a couple peanut butter & strawberry Pop-Tart sandwiches.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: frosted flakes, kelloggs, news, rice krispies. 6 Comments