Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca: Cracklin’ Oat Bran and New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereals

Quick: does the word “bran” fill you with a sense of fear, loathing, and disgust? If you answered “yes,” then you might be one of the many anti-branners out there who spurns cereals like Bran Flakes and Raisin Bran for being bland and boring.

As seen in the cereal’s first advertising campaign, Cracklin’ Oat Bran was made for such bran banners back in 1977. This is just one of the interesting historical factoids you can expect from cereal ninja Gabe Fonseca, who has two new episodes in his fun and informational Cereal Time YouTube series that we’d like to share with you.

There’s only one thing more addicting than watching Cereal Time, and that’s popping squares of Cracklin’ Oat Bran into your mouth like Macklemore pops tags (that’s the most modern reference I’ll make on this site, so enjoy it). That’s why it’s so appropriate that Cereal Time finally has an episode dedicated to these uniquely shaped and textured oat squares.

Often found squirreled away on top or bottom cereal aisle shelves, Cracklin’ Oat Bran rarely gets the star treatment of Cocoa Puffs or Frosted Mini-Wheats. This is disappointing, because this cereal deserves it: with a cinnamon coconut sweetness and a pleasant cookie crumble, Cracklin’ Oat Bran is so much more than “that weird adult cereal.”

Of course, no treatise on Cracklin’ Oat Bran would be complete without a mention of its estranged little brother: Nature Valley’s recently released Baked Oat Bites cereal. Describing B.O.B.’s flavor in a sentence is like condensing War and Peace into a fortune cookie, but know that though some might call it a cheap knockoff, Baked Oat Bites’ biscuits have a softer texture and a doughnut-esque glaze that somehow improves on their older sibling altogether.

Gabe’s second mondo cool video tackles General Mills’ new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cereal. As we mentioned in our review, this cereal came out of nowhere, almost as if it popped out of the sewer itself.

But as Gabe acknowledges, it sure doesn’t taste like sewer cereal; even though it can’t match the proud, flavorful legacy of the TMNT Ninja Nets and Canadian Green Turtle Faces cereals before it, TMNT cereal 2016 is a pleasantly fruity treat that makes the most of its natural vegetable colors.

Whether or not you decide to bake these vegetable-colored pieces into a fruit pizza crust is a different story (send pictures!).

If you think Gabe’s videos are totally tubular, every Cereal Time episode can be found here, and you can check out Gabe’s Twitter, as well.

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