Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Wild Harvest Blueberry Walnut Cereal

The breakfast aisle is guerrilla warfare. We have Malt-o-Meal cranking out hit after hit while Aldi’s in-house brand drops the surprise bomb of the holiday season. What the Cuphead is going on here?! I’m having ancestor-flashbacks to when an imitator started dressing like Hydrox and soon became America’s Favorite Cookie. So please, stick with me for a moment while I argue that the future very likely rests on the shoulders of companies we don’t even recognize.

Sometimes, I take a trip to the local hippie grocery chain to see what’s up in the world of avant granola. It was during one such venture that I spotted this perplexing bit of cerealia perched high up on a shelf in the ill-defined “healthy cereal” section. It stood out amid Barbara’s Puffins and Kashi GoLean because, more so than any other probiotic, low-sugar, organic, gluten-free, paleo, vegan option with 1000% of your daily fiber, the minimalist art shouts “wholesome.” Screams it. Through a megaphone. While standing in front of a celery poster. This is box art that could make Teddy Ruxpin burst into apologetic tears for not giving enough warm hugs to orphans.

Meet Wild Harvest, a brand with barely any discernible history or footprint in the marketplace. The enlarged image on their milquetoastly-named Blueberry Walnut Cereal looks a lot like one of the many pretenders to the Honey Bunches of Oats lineage. An investigation of the copyright reveals that Wild Harvest is an imprint of SuperValu, Inc. Inspired by Dan’s recent tumble down the rabbit bowl, I checked more into it. Here’s hoping I don’t need a secret handshake to get in. Continue reading →

Posted by jared m.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, blueberry. 2 Comments

Dec. ’18

Review: Kellogg’s Honey Nut Frosted Flakes

As a wise little green friend once said:

“Always two there are; no more, no less.”

And while he may have been talking about an arcane order of insidiously apprenticed malevolence, I think the moral of that particular space opera applies to honey nut cereals, as well. See, Honey Nut Cheerios didn’t become America’s favorite cereal off alleged heart-healthiness alone.

No, Buzz’s magnum O-pus is far and away the most famous honey-nutted nectar on cereal shelves because it understands balance and simplicity like no other. The neutral-by-nature Cheerios base is basted with a simply satisfying glaze of golden, cozy honey and authentically ambrosial almond earthiness.

And that’s it: always two enriching and bewitching flavors. No more, no less.

This minimalist breakfast mantra was on my mind when cracking open Kellogg’s new Honey Nut Frosted Flakes. Tony’s take on a honey nut cereal, set to debut everywhere in early 2019, is clearly tiger-eyeing Cheerios’ lion share of the niche.

But can a cereal already so sweet really add a veneer of honey and nut without sugar-watering it down? It’s time to bee thorough. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, frosted flakes, honey, kellogg's. 11 Comments

Dec. ’18

Review: Pop-Tarts Bites (Strawberry & Brown Sugar Cinnamon!)

Understanding the pervasive appeal of Pop-Tarts Bites is easy:

Would you rather have a bite of pie, or a bite of entire pie?
A red Skittle or a concentrated rainbow pill?
The east wall of a gingerbread house, or the entire 20-acre gingerbread farm?

My point is that while any individual bite of a Pop-Tart—which maxes out at around a quarter-Tart in extreme cases, or at least in my own—cannot possibly contain the same measured deliciousness as the entirety of a Pop-Tart, as in all of the crust and everything inside, in one bite. It’s like having a party-sized pizza, which typically have contentiously hand-soiling Cheese Only slices, vs. a whole-crust-and-kaboodle Pizza Roll.

Yes, Pop-Tarts Bites are tasty enough to surpass my typically quasi-topical recipe for review introductions. These spiritual successors to Pop-Tarts Mini Crisps (née Popsters) naturally come in the toaster pastry brand’s two unshakeable pillars of flavor: Strawberry & Brown Sugar Cinnamon. The de facto Pop-Tarts royal family will begin appearing in all their shrunken glory come January, but for now, I was postally blessed via Kellogg’s with enough pouches to last me ’til Christmas (edit: Christmas Eve) (edit 2: Christmas Eve Eve).

(edit 3: I need to stop eating these)

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, brown sugar, cinnamon, kellogg's, pop-tarts, strawberry. 8 Comments

Dec. ’18

Review: Trader Joe’s Gingerbread Spice Granola

Ginger is the Michael Ironside of spices. That is to say, you may not recognize the flavor on its own, but that spicy rhizome appears in just about every baked worth its sodium bicarbonate. Like the iconically forgotten character actor, ginger is more versatile than a cyborg tardigrade. We’re talking about a guy who has shown up in everything from The A-Team to some project called Lucky’s Treasure, which seems relevant to our interests*.

And like that masterful performer, the absence of ginger is more notable than its presence. It’s no secret that a real gingerbread cereal has been at the top of our wish list for years (no, I refuse to recognize that failed prototype). Like Dan, I’m heavy on anything made of, containing, smelling like, or crafted in the same kitchen as gingerbread. Cookies? Absolutely. Cake? I believe that would be an empty plate you’re holding. Post-Thanksgiving, we’ve officially entered Hansel and Gretel territory until well into February. Trader Joe’s, ever on their seasonal jam, recently dropped this spicy bomb on us: Gingerbread Spice Granola.

As a cereal journalist-slash-critic, I have carefully tempered expectations most of the time. Not here, though. The package art alone is enough to breathe life into my Grinchy sense of objectivity (can we have Michael Ironside in that movie, too? Don’t tell me Col. Dugan harassing some Whovillians wouldn’t be a masterwork). It’s no Gingerbread Toast Crunch, but gingerbread in any form is cause for high hopes. To the bowl! Continue reading →

Posted by jared m.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, gingerbread, granola, holiday, trader joe's. Leave a comment

Nov. ’18

Review: Millville Snickerdoodle Kookies Cereal

Is it time for a Cinnamon Toast Coup yet?

Loose crunchologic records suggest the crazy squared cereal’s cinnamon dynasty dates back to roughly the Byzantine era, while recent calcium dating suggests its dominance began way back in the Earth’s primordial soup, wherein the CTC clan of sugar-specked protozoa were the only ones of their kind that didn’t sog into earlier extinction.

Regardless of its origin, there’s little doubt that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the most popular cinnamon cereal out there. And while I love CTC and its rich pedigree of powdered and breaded breakfast-stuff, I’ve long hoped for a challenger to the throne.

Because if the cinnamon spice must flow, so too must some fresh milk.

Despite Kellogg’s best efforts, they haven’t come close, while Post and Quaker’s strongest cinna-sieges are comfort classics at best. I guess it’s up to Millville, Aldi store-brand underdog and possible puppet organization, to come out of left field with a cinnamon-seasoned seasonal cereal and hopefully blow me away…from my Cinnamon Toast addiction for at least a few merry mouthfuls.

So come, Snickerdoodle Kookies, first of the S. Doodle cereal lineage: show me what you’re really made of, and don’t hold back. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, cinnamon, holiday. 8 Comments

Nov. ’18

Review: Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms

You know that unfortunate person in your life whose birthday tragically falls within a week on either side of Christmas? The one whose cake and ice cream inevitably end up getting rebranded as pumpkin pie and sugar cookies so their family can make a joke about “2-for-1 discounts?”

I have a theory that Lucky the Leprechaun is that person. Why? Because he seems to be thoughtlessly regifting his Chocolate Lucky Charms like someone who’s lived through a spirit-numbing lifetime spent receiving “festive birthday socks.”

Yes, while the Toast Crunch family’s holiday party went off with nationwide fanfare—and probably more than a few interstellar parades, assuming the aliens got my celebratory transmission—Lucky and his band of merry Charms certainly didn’t try to steal Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch’s thunder.

Rather, we’ve been gifted Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms, a cereal that takes the Chocolate Lucky Charm flavor General Mills has refined for decades, with the, erm, questionable geometry of holiday marshmallows first seen in last year’s Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms.

Despite sounding unique, the Cinnamon Vanilla variety wasn’t terribly compelling. So maybe it’s for the best GM went the safer route: especially since, astoundingly, I haven’t yet reviewed Chocolate Lucky Charms on this blog.

That means I can consider Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms a gift of opportunity, if not originality. Much like how coal gives a chance for some (very) early summer grilling. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, chocolate, general mills, lucky charms, marshmallow. Leave a comment

Nov. ’18

Guest Review: Trader Joe’s Crispy Quinoa Stars Cereal

break·fes·sion
/ˈbrekˈfeSHən/

noun

Noun: breakfession; plural noun: breakfessions
a formal admission of guilt for violating cereal orthodoxy

“He signed a breakfession to mixing orange juice with Cocoa Puffs. He shall be milkboarded until sunrise as penance.”

Deep breath, Jared. You can do this.

Fellow cereal heads, I have to own up to something. This goes against every sacred principle our people hold. I won’t blame you for pelting me with marbits and extruded grains of various magical configurations. But I can’t go on hiding in the pantry like this. (Literally, because it’s very small and there are, like, fifteen boxes of cereal in there. Plus potential spiders.)

Friends. I don’t like Lucky Charms.

I know. I get it! Just hear me out. The substance of Lucky’s original treasure is about as bland as it gets. Even Corn Flakes at least taste like their eponymous source material, so you can throw a mushy hoedown while contemplating the familial history of Cornelius the Rooster and the NBC peacock. What, you’ve never noticed the obvious resemblance? Something tells me Miss Prissy wasn’t the only fryer in Foghorn’s coop.

The cardboard bits turn to mush and distract from the marshmallows which, while fun, have no taste other than straight fructose. There’s no complexity going on here. Sorry, Lucky, but your two-note song just doesn’t groove me.

So when Dan drew my Trader Joe’s-loving attention to Crispy Quinoa Stars, I was less-than-enthused. The box image immediately trips my ingrained Charms avoidance. These crispy crucibles of the known periodic table look just like the dry kibble that makes LCs such a chore to eat. But, hey, a cereal journalist has obligations, and the people need to know. So let’s fly through the cerealsphere to TJ’s in my (used, beat-up, Honda) rocket ship! Continue reading →

Posted by jared m.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, quinoa, trader joe's. 1 Comment

Oct. ’18

Review: 5 Otees Cereal Flavors (from South Africa!)

Box photos courtesy of Gabe Fonseca

Like it or not, sometimes American breakfast aisles can be an echo chamber of crunches. For every truly novel new cereal flavor we get, there are probably half a dozen or more slight refractions of tried and true favorite flavors: chocolate, peanut butter, strawberry, a perennial genealogy of seasonal variants, and so forth. I get it, it’s low risk, reliable reward business, but sometimes I just want to meet the type of fascinating cereal that will blow my mind and taste buds right out of my head, before picking up my essential organs from the floor, returning them, and politely apologizing like a true cereal gentleman.

And often to do this, we have to look beyond our typical pantry borders.

I was first tipped off about Otees by some cereal fan FB group chatter, and two of the South African cereal brand’s flavors stuck out to me: Bubblegum and Creme Soda. I’d never think to see those flavors on U.S. shelves for like 10 years, given the creeping rate of current innovation, yet Bokomo, a company neither Cereal Time‘s Gabe Fonseca nor I could find much about outside of an old commercial, despite it being South Africa’s biggest cereal producer, has released both. I’m glad Gabe is as interested in these unique flavors as I, because after being sent all 5 Otees boxes for his collection by a kind cereal fan, Gabe generously donated some surplus cereal so we could both give our thoughts on the taste.

So without further exposé or delay, let’s get to chewing for an indefinite length of time (I’m looking at you, Bubblegum).

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: international. 3 Comments