Author Archives: dan g.

Review: Despicable Me Cereal with Minion Marshmallows

Kellogg's Despicable Me Cereal with Minion Marshmallows Box Review

With my right hand raised, I, Dan G. of Cerealously, vow to complete this review of Kellogg’s new Despicable Me Cereal without voicing any of my personal opinions about Minions, the Minion phenomenon, or the fact that Minions somehow still overpopulate my Facebook feed with sassy memes in the year 2017.

There, now that the hard part’s over, I can evaluate this cereal objectively. At first glance—once you get past those moon-sized, staring eyes—Despicable Me Cereal appears to be the latest square-shaped, marshmallow-stuffed entry in Kellogg’s cinematic cereal franchise, an anthology that includes Finding Dory Cereal, Captain America Civil War Cereal, and several others with identical flavors but laughably different source materials.

But look, look closer with your special, telescopic Minion eyes, and you’ll see that Despicable Me Cereal is actually Brown Sugar Vanilla-flavored! I feel like we need to celebrate this trend-bucking mix-up of Kellogg’s repetitive movie cereal formula.

Anyone down for a Return of the Jedi-style party with Ewoks, bonfires, and the grinning blue ghosts of several force-sensitive mentors? Continue reading

Spooned & Spotted (UK): Crunchy Nut Peanut Butter Clusters Cereal

Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Peanut Butter Clusters Cereal Box

Oof. This one hurts.

It’s National Peanut Butter Day (January 24th), and European cereal lovers are getting a delightful new salted nut butter cereal. Meanwhile, we here in the States are left to go nuts with salty envy.

What’s worse is that it’s a new Crunchy Nut cereal! Crunchy Nut Peanut Butter Clusters is the latest iteration of Kellogg’s peanut shard-speckled, honey-glazed breakfast brand. You know, the one that delighted Americans for decades—it was first known as “Honey & Nut Corn Flakes” in the ’80s—until its untimely demise discontinuation just a couple years ago.

Aside from Crunchy Nut and the nearly mythical Triple Snack, few cereals have contained real peanut hunks, so I look back on Crunchy Nut with the fond remembrance of a native New Yorker who watched a laundromat replace his favorite pizza parlor—the only pizza parlor that topped every slice with freshly diced peanuts.

Unlike their flaky predecessors, Crunchy Nut Peanut Butter Clusters are made of oats and wheat crisps, all gummed up together with real peanut butter to form chunky clusters. Our friend Amy at Amy Seeks New Treats, who generously supplied the above box photo, has a great review. Check it out for the less-salty take of someone who actually gets to try this magnificent-looking cereal.

No, I’m not crying, I’m just, *sniff* so happy for every cereal lover across the pond. I guess I’ll just spoon some Skippy into my Peanut Butter Crunch to try and fill the void.

Big thanks go to Amy for sharing her picture. According to Crunchy Nut, this cereal can be found at Tesco stores, and will be at Asda, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose soon. But no matter what country you’re in, if you have a cool cereal scoop, we want to see it. Click yourself right on over to our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com. There’s a good chance your picture could be featured on the site.

Review: Apple Strawberry Raisin Bran Crunch Cereal

Kellogg's Apple Strawberry Raisin Bran Crunch Cereal Box

Leave it to Raisin Bran Crunch to bring two of America’s most contentious summer pie flavors together.

Seriously: apple pie and strawberry pie’s rivalry is the warm weather equivalent of pumpkin vs. pecan, and I bet this bitter—yet so sweet—feud is the reason we don’t see apple and strawberry flavors mix very often. I don’t know what apple did to strawberry to evoke decades of estrangement, but I can only assume it involved a pie to the face. And maybe a few clowns.

But now, thanks to the unifying power of Raisin Bran’s radiant sun, we can finally experience apple and strawberry in tandem without having to sandwich together two slices of Grandma’s Independence Day desserts. Because while it may be delicious, that’s how you end up with a Fourth New Belt Notch of July. Continue reading

Saying Goodbye to “Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca”

Oh, uh, I’m not crying—I just have Cinnamon Toast Crunch endmilk in my eyes, I swear!

You may have noticed that we haven’t heard from cereal futurist Gabe Fonseca in a while. For most of the 1.5 years Cerealously has existed, we’ve been doing periodic watch alongs of Gabe’s “Cereal Time” YouTube series, which involves weekly throwbacks and spotlights on cereals past and present. The episodes are stuffed with nostalgia, and each contains enough fun to make a Barrel of Monkeys shamefully throw in the towel.

If you’re a long-time Cereal Time fan, you probably know by now that the above episode is the series’ last. You also probably saw that I “guest star” in the video’s description, so if you’re a cereal lover who migrated over from Gabe’s YouTube channel I welcome you here with open arms and pantries. Hopefully I can provide the hard-hitting cereal journalism you seek.

But if you’ve never watched Cereal Time, the good news is that you have a large library of re-runs to check out in “syndication.” Gabe’s final episode includes stunning special effects, nail-biting drama, and a look at milk-flavoring Crazy Cow cereal from the ’70s—pretty much all you could ever ask for—but I thought I’d count down my top 5 favorite episodes from over the years.

So without further a do, let’s celebrate the greatest hits 0f Cereal Time’s action-packed life, instead of mourning: Continue reading

Review: Girl Scouts Caramel Crunch Cereal

General Mills Girl Scouts Caramel Crunch Cereal – CAramel deLite & Samoa Cereal Box

Confession: I used to cut out and collect the Girl Scout cookie mascots that came on the cardboard cookie boxes. You know, these rad dudettes? I just loved imagining my treats with personalities, backstories, and intricate lore, and I won’t deny that a corrugated Do-Si-Do cutout once did battle with my Darth Vader action figure.

The Girl Scout cookie Caramel Crunch Cereal is based on goes by many names, but its purple-boxed, New Year’s Resolution-busting flavor trio of coconut, caramel, and chocolate is instantly recognizable. Samoas, a.k.a. Carmel deLites, a.k.a. “The Ones I’m Glad Have Holes Because I Eat Them So Fast They Could Be a Choking Hazard” are the Girl Scouts’s 2nd most popular cookie after Thin Mints, beating out my dearest Tagalongs by about 6% of annual sales.

Oh, poor Tagalong: never the bride, never the bridesmaid, always the head usher.

I already reviewed Thin Mints Cereal, General Mills’s other new Girl Scout cookie cereal, and it got a crisp B+ for its impressive depiction of Thin Mint cookies’ crispy inner wafer. Will Caramel Crunch live up to these lofty standards, or will it be a case of Where in the World is Caramel San Diego?

Let’s deliver a box straight to my taste buds and find out. Continue reading

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal

Quaker Cap'n Crunch's Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal Box Review

IHOP, matey!

Whoops, that was weird. I meant to write, “Ahoy, matey!” Sorry about that. Anyway, come on and IHOP aboard my cereal review ship, and we’ll…darn, I did it again! I really must have pancakes on my mind today.

IHOPe it doesn’t happen again.

But really, how can anyone not have pancakes stuck to their brains like syrupy griddlecakes to a plate when Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch cereal is finally here? Sold in boxes taller than Paul Bunyan’s flapjack stacks, Blueberry Pancake Crunch combines fruity aquamarine and maple-flavored creme puffs (no, not that kind of cream puffs, sorry) to re-create a fascinatingly obscure breakfast in cereal form.

Personally, I would have preferred Buckwheat Pancake Crunch, but my pancake house menu choices are decidedly more octogenarian than most.

So while all you kids turn on Matlock for me and get off my darn lawn, I’ll pour a fresh bowl of spherical Johnnycakes.  Continue reading

Review: Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (DC Comics Villains Edition)

Kellogg's Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (Printed Fun Villains Edition) Box

I think I can imagine how the supervillainous plot to release Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts originated:

The Joker paces back-and-forth madly in the abandoned Pop-Tart factory he and Lex Luthor are using as a haphazard base of operations. With a cackle, he has a sudden idea.

“I’ve got it, Lex,” the Joker cries. “We’ll kidnap all the world’s Pop-Tarts and smush them together into otherwise nonsensical taste combinations! Just picture it: Watermelon S’Mores Pop-Tarts. Blueberry Root Beer Pop-Tarts. Cookies & Creme PB&J Pop-Tarts. We’ll flood the streets with a hasty pastry army, causing mass confusion and hysteria!”

“But why?” Lex replies.

The Joker chuckles maniacally: “Some men just want to watch the world yearn…for obscurely flavored, impulsively purchased breakfast treats!”

And thus, Chocolate Sugar Cookies Pop-Tarts were born. This flavor combo isn’t really that strange, but when’s the last time you had an actual chocolate sugar cookie? Maybe my cheeks are too stuffed with gingerbread men during December to notice, but compared to snickerdoodles or fruitcake, chocolate sugar cookies seem more like the shiny Pokémon of holiday dessert platters. Continue reading

Review: General Mills Girl Scouts Thin Mints Cereal

General Mills Girl Scouts Thin Mints Cereal Box Review

I’ve always wanted to be a Girl Scout.

No, not because of the cool turquoise sash or the fact that people would call me a “Brownie.” People already called me that growing up, although it was probably because of my fudgy dessert-based diet.

I wanted to be a Girl Scout because I think I would’ve been a darn good cookie salesman. Imagine a young me—cute as a button instead of pudgy and brownie-stuffed—rolling up to your house and telling you in great detail about “the tempting allure of a decadent, dark chocolate moon, so packed with refreshing swirls of cocoa and mint that when you taste it, you won’t know whether you bit the cookie or whether the cookie bit you back with a coy, romantic nibble.” No one would be able to resist that pitch.

But alas, this whole “Y chromosome” thing has kept me out of the baked good-hawking game, while my fear of dirt and complex knots has kept me out of the Boy Scouts. Now I just order tons of Tagalongs and tell the Girl Scouts helpful adjectives they can use to win over the next sap.

Now we’ve come full circle, as my cereal blog full of outlandish flavor descriptions now gets the chance to review General Mills’s new Girl Scouts Thin Mints cereal. As a partnership with the Girl Scouts, General Mills released this cereal alongside the Samoa-flavored Caramel Crunch, choosing to breakfast-ify the Scouts’s two most popular cookies instead of the tragically neglected Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos.

And yes, I’m sure there’s probably one guy out there who’s really, really upset there’s no Trefoil Cereal. One guy.
Continue reading