Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Lucky Charms Marshmallow Blondies – Soft Baked Treats

Lucky Charms Marshmallow Blondies Soft Baked Treats Review Box

Forty is a large number. There’s a reason it’s a common Biblical increment of days, as well as the highest number ever counted to on Sesame Street: achieving forty of something is a Big feat—whether it’s Bird or Man in the Sky.

Which is why it’s both a blessing and curse that Lucky Charms’ newest sort-of-cereal-bar is only currently available in boxes (would crates be a better word? caches? sarcophagi?) of forty. As a hardline cereal journalist, of course I had a cinderblock’s worth of these redressed Fiber One brownies shipped to my house, and now it sits as a fixed centerpiece on my coffee table (for at least the next forty days and forty nights), patiently awaiting hungry houseguests—or at least mischievous house cats who love tipping over boxes.

These Marshmallow Blondies are simple beige squares, with a splattered smattering of half-baked marshmallows and an abstract cascade of icing. Certainly much different than the ‘pressed cereal log’ approach of most cereal bars, but is it worth the XL investment? As a natural blondie, I feel qualified to tell you. Continue reading

Review (x2): Confetti Cupcake & Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts

Kellogg's Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts Review Box

Look, I have a whipped cream firehose right here, and the safety’s off.
So I’m gonna ask you one more time: where’s Captain Cupcake?

It’s really the only explanation: the squiggle-stached mascot behind Hostess Cupcakes, known for his hulking naval circumference and nautical nonsense, hasn’t been seen in action for years. Many theorized that he, along with the other obscure sideshow snack cakes, were disappeared out of existence by the powerful Fruit Pie the Magician, whose grand illusion managed to rewrite our dark timeline and save Hostess from bankruptcy.

But with the release of these new conveniently frosted Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts, the truth is clear. Captain Cupcake, bitter about his fudgy offspring not getting their own Hostess Cereal (this was C. Cupcake’s one chance to return fire against Cap’n Crunch!), defected and sold trade secrets to Kellogg’s. Now we can only assume that he’s hiding out in the molded wreckage of an abandoned Hostess Bakery Thrift Outlet.

If he happens to reappear under a new diet alias—with a slimmer shape due to months spent lifting stale Wonderbread pallets—I hope the feds book this “Admiral Aspartame” instantly.  Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s HI! Happy Inside – Simply Strawberry

Kellogg's HI! Happy Inside Review Simply Strawberry Cereal Pouch

Oh, you thought cereal was for you and your taste buds? Nope, sorry buster: this cereal is specifically for your stomach. Your gut. Your food wallet. Whatever you call it, it better be ready for a healthy migration of gut flora, because Kellogg’s new HI! Happy Inside cereal line is here to culture abdomens everywhere.

We’ve been aware of HI! Happy Inside for a while now, but it was largely only available in location- or cost-prohibitive value packs. My local chains have finally begun to stock the stuff in smaller pouches, so I’m taking a cautious first spelunk into this protozoan belly of the beast with Simply Strawberry—ostensibly the fruity front-liner of this howdy-happy cereal trilogy that also includes Bold Blueberry and Cocoa Crunch.

I was hesitant to try this stuff to begin with, since, generally any healthy cereal that brands itself from head to intestine as an anatomical expedient ends up abandoning my appetite somewhere near the gall bladder. But as I wait for other new cereals that are less stomach-friendly and more gut-punchy, I figure it couldn’t hurt to brace my body for impact. Each HI! Happy Inside cereal boasts a three-in-one benefit of prebiotics, probiotics, and fiber, so even if I hate this stuff, maybe this review can still be cited for some kid’s science fair project. Continue reading

Review: Magic Spoon Cereal

Magic Spoon Cereal Review Boxes

What happens when cereal grows up?

The Trix Rabbit starts moonlighting, doing Easter photoshoots at Michaels.
Sonny directs an autobiopic, starring Jack Nicholson, about his frequent, Cocoa Puff-inspired escapes from various insane asylums.
And Cap’n Crunch, of course, continues his storied 3000-year legacy as an immortal cereal centurion, subsisting solely on the blood of rejected unicorns harvested from the dumpster behind a Kellogg’s factory.

Yes, aging doesn’t pair with cereal quite as well as milk—my stomach is no longer lined with Nintendium, and The Weather Channel’s Saturday morning lineup isn’t quite as compelling. But Magic Spoon Cereal is out to change that: with flashy packaging and four flavors inspired by classic sweet stuff, this new cereal startup prides itself on having more protein and fewer carbs than mainstream cereals, with keto friendliness and no grains or gluten.

Now all who have seen what I’m capable of on this blog know that my only dietary restriction is my imagination (and, uh, lactose), so it wasn’t the healthy promises that drew me to these cereals. It was the eye-popping box colors that pretty accurately reflect my day-to-day wardrobe’s palette, plus the fact that people are apparently getting served ads for this stuff after visiting my site.

I’m honored to be a worthy track-factor for global cereal lovers, and I’m thankful to the folks behind Magic Spoon Cereal for sending me a full variety pack for review. So stuff your face with buckwheat and calzones while you can, because where we’re going, we won’t need grains.

Continue reading

Review: Blueberry Cheerios

General Mills New Blueberry Cheerios Review Cereal Box

With Violet Beauregarde, one of the Blue Man Group guys (the quiet, sensitive one), and Paul Giamatti’s character Marty Wolf in the seminal 2002 classic film Big Fat Liar as my witnesses, I will never stop preaching the good word of Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks—specifically the blueberry ones.

Ever since Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, another object of my analogical fixation, changed their packaging and recipe for the worse, Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks are undoubtedly the best bite-sized bits of gelatin you can find in the Snacks, Etc. aisle. In fact, I’d say they’re third in my personal gummy candy fandom, surpassed only by blue sharks (essentially blueberry Fruity Snacks that’ve evolved predatory instinct) and Venus de Milo herself.

Yes, the potently juicy flavor of each Kellogg’s Fruity Snack, be it straw-, rasp-, or blueberry, is both refined and instantly recognizable. But it’s that last cerulean snack—which I also love for looking like a video game mana potion—that I’ve most wanted to see translated into a cereal again. Too often in mixed berry cereals, the flavor scientists paint the whole flavortown red, giving little leeway for the subtlety of blueberry to shine through. Yet every time there’s been an exception, the result is wonderful—even if it inevitably results in discontinuation, too. Whether they’re Tiny Toasts (turned Toast Crunches) or Muffin Tops that inspire sponsored meals, blueberry cereal is a refreshing, yet underrated experience—much like the first swing set underdog during a brisk late-fall recess.

The moment I heard about Blueberry Cheerios, I hoped this was my chance to taste blueberry gummy jam spread across toasted grain once more. So no pressure, General Mills: but if you get this one wrong, you’ll have to sculpt me a gummy Dionysus as penance.

Continue reading

Review: Baked AF Cereal Box Bundt Cakes

Baked AF Cereal Bundt Cakes Review

7, 13, 42, 69: different cultures have deemed just about every number as “lucky” over the ages, but for my Honey Bunches of Money, no numeral quite brings peace like a dozen: I mean, it’s got zen right in the name! And when I gaze upon twelve doughnuts, mini bundt cakes, or fluid ounces of coffee mixed with Snickers* creamer**, I can’t help but feel my anxieties abdicate my abdomen to free up precious real estate for doughy delight.

That’s why, when the aptly named DJ Baby Bundt Cake on Twitter offered to mail me a dozen of his bakery Baked AF‘s new cereal-inspired confections, I couldn’t help but start raking my front yard into a zen garden whilst camped out catching koi in Animal Crossing, all in anticipation of the coming mail carrier, who would bestow a satchel of divine delicacy upon me like an unknowing bodhisattva.

*I don’t mess around when it coming to doughnut dunking.
*I also colloquially call this dense nectar “Thickers Coffee Creamer.” Continue reading

Review: Tropical Froot Loops from Mexico!

Kellogg's Mexico Tropical Froot Loops Review Box

(Note: the box got a just a little dinged during its journey North. Must’ve been hungry carrier pigeons.)

Look, are we all just going to ignore the fact that, before Tropical Froot Loops, Toucan Sam clearly had no idea what fruit is?

And I’m not talking the layperson’s misclassification of pumpkins and tomatoes as vegetables—follow your nose deep into your noggin and try to remember the last time you heard Froot Loops’ lifelong spokesbird actually reference a real fruit by name. Lemonberries, starberries, wildberries: all ambiguous amalgamations of nature’s genuine bounty invented to hide the fact that “Froot” is much less of a natural flavor than it is a state of mind kids can tastefully chase outside the bounds of reality and into whichever adjacent universe where the grass is limeberry green and the fruit salads are crunchy.

[Though to Sam’s credit, his original iteration did wear a fruit-flocked Carmen Miranda hat. My two-pronged rebuttal to this is a) toucans can’t pass the mirror test, so he’s likely never recognized his own headgear, and b) the first Toucan Sam was undoubtedly throttled by the current Toucan Sam’s slenderly feathered man fingers.]

Thankfully, Froot Loops in Mexico largely preserve the two-dimensional Toucan Sam design of yore, though the worryingly articulate prehensility with which he’s gripping the Tropical Froot Loop on this box still leaves me concerned he’ll snap—or at least snap half the universe away. Continue reading

Review: Trader Joe’s Cocoa Crunch Cereal

Trader Joe's Cocoa Crunch Cereal Review Box

My advertising headcanon:

The Trader Joe’s chief executive sits down to his moderately-priced (though sustainably sourced and crafted by local upper-class private school artisans) desk, attired in a three-piece Hawaiian print suit, and lays into his most recent scheme to take over weirdly specific niche markets. Sort of like J. Jonah Jameson, but with flip-flops.

“Darn it, Leonard!” His assistant’s name is Leonard, I’ve decided. “Bring me identical versions of classic sugary cereals, but without gluten! No more gluten! If it glutes, it goes!”

At this point, poor Leonard readjusts his glasses between harrowingly scribbled notes, too cowed to make eye contact with Mr. Joe. “Y-yes, T.J. Got it. And what should we do about the box art?”

A flash of wrath crosses Trader Joe’s face for an instant, before he reconsiders. “Class. That’s what the cereal aisle is missing. Come up with the most elegant possible image and slap it on both sides. Think minimal. We’ll save on advertising and appeal to kids at the same time.”

“Yes, T.J. But… how will tasteful stock photography draw in children?”

The ire returns. “Darn it, Leonard!” He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a small paperback book, slapping it on the desk as everyone in the building collectively winces. “This is what today’s youth want! Get me this author! She’s going to change everything!”

And that’s how Trader Joe’s recent box art came to be designed by Marie Kondo.

In another recent salvo toward more gluten-freedom, the company has paired its prior spheroid offering with a sister release—this one a bit more along traditional cereal lines. In both shape and constitution, Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Cocoa Crunch Cereal is unmistakably meant for comparison with Cocoa Puffs. It’s a puzzling move, then, to adorn the box with a deftly arranged photo of someone’s zakka-inspired place setting with the audacious phrase “serving suggestion.” But you know what? Fine. If that’s how we’re going to play it, then this review needs to go all-in.

Time to one-up this understated high-brow aesthetic. Continue reading