Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Burger King Lucky Charms Shake

Which Lucky Charms marshmallow is your favorite? Is it the mashed-up blue chunk? The pureéd orange bit? Ooh, or is it the pulverized pink smithereen? I love that one.

Well no matter which iconic Lucky Charms marbit you fancy, you’ll totally be able to recognize it in Burger King’s brand new Lucky Charms Shake. This cereal milkshake is an iridescent cylinder of rainbow-specked vanilla soft serve that’s blended with real Lucky Charms shrapnel and a secretive marshmallowy cereal syrup so rich with Lucky Charms flavor that whichever cow the ice cream came from is now shouting “It’s moo-gically delicious!” via an unseen telepathic stimulus.

Or at least, that’s my poetic interpretation of how Burger King describes its Lucky Charms Shake. It’ll take a serious taste test to see if the shake lives up to its namesake cereal’s legacy, and as someone who sucks at just about everything, I feel qualified to suck this breakfast–dessert hybrid down in the name of journalism. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, general mills, lucky charms, marshmallow, non cereal. 1 Comment

Jun. ’17

Review: Cascadian Farm Organic Vanilla Chia Crunch Cereal

Apparently Cascadian Farm is a real farm, but I refuse to learn anything about it. Instead, I want to preserve my fantastical mental image of Cascadian Farm as a quaint rural community where busier General Mills cereals like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams go to escape the city’s sugar-addled hustle and bustle, settle down, and become tamer versions of themselves, with no-nonsense names like Cinnamon Crunch and Graham Crunch.

Yes, the Cascadian Farm of my imagination is pretty much a breakfast parody of Harvest Moon, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Now the newest citizen in Cascadian Farm’s Wholesome Good-Time Barnyard Bayou (my mental name, not theirs) isn’t a direct derivation of another General Mills product. But it does remind me of Kashi’s recent Plant Power Vanilla Pepita Clusters, which is why I took note and lovingly planted Vanilla Chia Crunch into my grocery store cart like a transplanted chia plant. I just wrote the word plant in that sentence more times than I have cumulatively since 2008.

Kashi’s take on vanilla ‘n’ seeds tasted like cupcake-frosted popcorn. Let’s see if the Animal Crossing of cereal brands can be just as memorable. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, cascadian farm, general mills, vanilla. 5 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Honey Maid S’mores Cereal

Okay, I love all things s’more, and I support the junk food craze of s’morifying just about everything. But if society’s going to continue its wonderful quest to inject graham-chocolate-marshmallow flavor into every cake, cookie, and cake-stuffed cookie crumble Frappuccino, we have to amke one thing clear: are we supposed to capitalize the “M” or not?

For so long, I treated the term “S’More” as an inflexible proper noun. Like any number of deities, to misprint its name as “s’more” was blasphemy worthy of campfires and brimstone. But now we do it all the time, as evidenced by Post’s new Honey Maid S’mores Cereal. Are we just supposed to accept this normalization of “s’more?” Is an artificially flavored s’more not subject to the same capitalized deification of the one true, fire-toasted S’More? Should I just stuff my mouth with this cereal so you don’t have to hear me babble about s’more theology?

I know at least one of those answers is a yes. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, post, s'mores. 16 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Canadian Maple Cheerios Cereal

“Put maple in everything. Do it.”

Picture me saying that in my best Sheev Palpatine voice, because I really am serious about syrup. Maple is tied with gingerbread and second only to PB&J on my list of favorite sweet flavors, so while the news about General Mills’s new Maple Cheerios, released in Canada to celebrate the country’s 150th birthday, excited me, the syrup-sucking greedy child in me wanted more.

Maple Cookie Crisp. Waffles & Syrup Oreo O’s. Pancake-flavored Waffle Crisp—I don’t care how redundant that sounds, just prop my mouth open with a french toast stick and keep piling it in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself—and sweating what I believe to be a mix of perspiration and whipped butter just thinking about it. I should enjoy Maple Cheerios while I can, because you know what they say: you only turn 150 once! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, canada, cheerios, general mills, maple. 5 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Canadian Birthday Cake Froot Loops

Oh, hey there Canada. No, no, I totally didn’t forget your 150th birthday. See, I made you this cake!

What’s that? There’s a price tag on the container? Okay, you got me, I just bought a plain grocery store cake and frosted the words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA” on it myself.

Hmm? You say the cake says “HAVE A BROADWAY CAN OF DUFF”? Dang it, I can’t trust those old ladies at the bakery to hear anything right.

Well at least I didn’t do what Kellogg’s did. They just cobbled together a hodge-podge of Canada-colored flavors into a new Limited Edition Froot Loops flavor and called it “Birthday Cake.” What do I mean by that? Well allow me to tell you more, Canada—all 35.85 million of you. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, canada, froot loops, kelloggs. 5 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Blueberry Chex Cereal

Ready your best Oprah impression and say it with me: “You get a blueberry flavor! And you get a blueberry flavor! Everybody gets a blueberry flavor!

With the introduction of Very Berry Cheerios earlier this year, the recent rebranding of Blueberry Tiny Toast into Blueberry Toast Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch, the unexpected appearance of Kellogg’s Blueberry Lemon Special K, the inevitable return of Boo Berry in October, and now the dawn of gluten-free Blueberry Chex, it seems like 2017 is poised to be the year of the blue-but-mostly-indigo-but-pretty-much-purple-inside-berry.

That or General Mills just had a surplus harvest of pulverized blueberry flavor dust. In that case, I expect to see Chocolate Fondue Berry Cocoa Puffs and Reese’s Peanut Butter & Blueberry Jelly Puffs any day now.

But until such a gastronomical triumph is achieved, let’s content ourselves with these Smurf-kissed corn squares. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, blueberry, chex, fruit, general mills. 14 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk Powdered Drink Mixxer

I wholeheartedly support the powderization of all cereals and milks. One day, humanity will inevitably go too far and causes its own extinction by putting too much x-treme nacho cheese flavor into a single corn chip or attempting an Oreo flavor that tastes like God’s leftovers. When our food science hubris causes our downfall, I still want post-human lifeforms to enjoy Earthen snack culture by reconstituting old powdered foodstuffs with long shelf lives.

Hence why this line of new powdered Cereal Milk drink “Mixxers” is a step in the right direction. When the self-aware Doritos turn on us, I’ll still be able to savor a tall glass of Reese’s Puff-flavored milk while watching the atomic orange sun set on mankind.

And Peanut Butter Cup isn’t the only flavor, either. These innovative products, which seek to re-create the flavor of cereal endmilk without that daunting “eating cereal” part, also come in Frosted Flake and Cinnamon Crunch. And while I’d love to raise a GRRR-EAT Cinnamon Toast to all three varieties, these things cost as much as a family-sized cereal box. So I embraced my soul-deep Reese’s Cup love and took the choco-nutty plunge.

Now let’s mix this stuff into everything I have in my pantry. Look out, Chef Boyardee. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, non cereal, peanut butter, reese's puffs. 2 Comments

May. ’17

Review: Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal

I, for one, welcome our loaf overlords.

With French Toast Crunch’s continued triumph of nostalgia, Tiny Toast’s recent rebrand into Strawberry Toast Crunch and Blueberry Toast Crunch, and now Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s debut, one thing has become clear: bread-shaped cereal is here to stay. Though I’m slightly conflicted about what this means for the Toast Crunch family of cereals. On one hand, I worry that we’ll never get another variety with flavor-swirled squares, but the other hand is too busy scooping up fistfuls of Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal because all these small slices are so darn cute that I’d rather formally adopt them as children than eat them.

I’ve already got names picked out: Crusty, Carbo, Butt Slice—the list goes on.

But any way you slice it (or square it), I’m just happy we’re getting new Toast Crunch varieties, because that brings us ever closer to getting my childhood white whale: PB&J Toast Crunch. Now enough nuttiness: let’s slice open these wee slices and hope they taste like apple pie slices. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, apple, cinnamon, general mills, toast crunch. 9 Comments