Milk? Never heard of her. Is that some fermented barnyard beverage, like a cow-bucha?
I mean, it’s 2020: we’ve got more viscous things to pour over our cereal. While many make a New Year’s resolution to get thinner, there’s a skim-to-none chance that I don’t spend the year progressively thickening my breakfast additives.
Case in point: new Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies, two chuggable recontextualizations of popular cereals that are likely not meant to join their namesake noshes in bowl-y matrimony—though I am hellbent on doing so anyway. These bottles come four to a clumsily constructed cardboard pack (seriously, put these in a separate bag or you’ll end up bungling a liter of chilled Trix sauce down your front steps), and conveniently contain exactly enough smoothie to douse a bowl of cereal.
But of course, I must slug ’em back raw before any experimentation. So forgive me as I make whatever wretched noises accompany the process of “opening up one’s throat.” Continue reading →
Or at least I do. I love all bits, whether it’s exponentially sugar-fortified cereal dust, forgotten salt-stewed French fry-lets, or the last messy bite of a restaurant meal that you saved as a parting gift for yourself after boxing up the rest of the leftovers—the very same last bite you had to awkwardly tell the waiter you were saving as he’s midway through lifting the plate from your desperate mitts. Or maybe that’s just me.
No matter how you spin it, I’ll always love bits more than pieces. Well, unless it’s those honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my strange bit-diction stems from a long childhood relationship with Timbits: those lovable lil totally-not-doughnut-holes from Tim Hortons that just about any teacher who had a hope of winning their class’ trust would bring in by the party pack-ful on syllabus day.
Though Tim Hortons and his namesake ‘bits were a source of warm nostalgia for my fellow Michiganders, the coffee chain is a more deeply in-granulated cultural epicenter in its country of origin, Canada. So it makes sense that the first ever Timbits Cereal would be released exclusively north of the states—even if I firmly believe my mitten of origin should be considered an annexed state of the Hortonian Empire. Thanks to Cereal Time’s Gabe Fonseca, I was able to secure boxes of both Timbits Cereal flavors, Birthday Cake and Chocolate Glazed.
So let’s all grab a coffee, PBR coffee, or perhaps some strange soup of poutine and Labatt Blue and see if these itty bitty Timbits are a slam dunk. Continue reading →
You’ve been getting in the Grape-Nuts again, haven’t you?
Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense, but it will after you remedy my accusatory intro with The Empty Bowl’s latest half-hourish audio antidote. Hint: we’re asking about your secret cereal.
Welcome back into the sky’s balming bowl for a twenty-fifth time. My and Justin‘s meditative cereal podcast, The Empty Bowl, is back to discuss everything from Cheerios Oat Crunch (again) to Toops, and every idea from Raisin Bran 2 to the best Cookie Crisp never made.
If you need a longer soundtrack to your secret cereal scarfing, you can find more episodes at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, I treasure each one like it’s a Cap’n Crunch chest.
Some cereal mix-’em-ups make sense: after all, the likes of Muddy Buddies and Rice Krispies Treats have largely superseded the reputation of their constituent cereals and become dessert icons in their own right. Though I’d still eat literal puppy chow if it meant getting a Muddy Buddies Cereal.
Then there are others that feel fresh off the boat from some Procedurally Generated Ideas Summit, held annually in international waters where all laws of common sense don’t apply—and Cap’n Crunch has had his fare share of nauticallynonsensical tie-ins.
Now I’m not saying that a Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn Mix doesn’t sound downright delectable—after all, it wouldn’t be the Cap’n’s first foray out of the cereal bowl and into an oddly shaped crystal dinner party bowl. But where those earlier mixes presented unique flavors unseen in cereal-form Cap’n Crunch—and with greater depth of candied add-ons—Smartfood’s new Crunch Berries Popcorn Mix feels comparatively uninspired.
I mean, Crunch Berries already have a corn ‘n’ oat base, while Cap’n’s golden chest pieces are known for their buttery goodness. Therefore I have to imagine that we won’t gain much beyond a little salt and some textural contrast by subbing kernels for chests. From what little we can see of this popcorn mix—this first photo was generously provided by Dijana J. on Instagram—the Crunch Berries stand alone in the realm of mix-ins. As if getting hulls stuck in your teeth wasn’t bad enough, what’s a little salt for your roof-of-mouth wounds too?
Here’s hoping the nether region of this bag reveals some sweet surprises, otherwise we have no choice but to wait for Smartfood to roll out DLC M&M’s.
And now, the real thing? I demand to know the astrological significance of experiencing so many cinnamon-spiced chilly bois in constellation. Will someone I’m close to become hot and cold toward me? Will I be dead by June after a defrosted Crazy Square eats me from the inside like an Antarctic alien?
Whether I’m able to shape-shift into a fleshy spoon in time to eat Edy’s & Dreyer’s new Cinnamon Toast Crunch (Light) Ice Cream, I’m confident it will be a product whose quality is best measured in increments of time: 10 minutes to snarf it down out of 10 hours of lactose-induced remorse.
Thanks to Candy Hunting and The Junk Food Aisle who broke this story (it has since been spotted in stores), we also know there is a Lucky Charms Light Ice Cream debuting in tandem with CTC’s. Though there isn’t a photo yet, I have to imagine it will be an oatmeal ice cream swirled with (hopefully rainbow) marshmallow fluff. The kind of thing that sounds better as a trendy latte.
Because while marshmallow in ice cream is like adding whipped cream to a glass of oat milk, I can at least get excited about melting a Cinnamon Toast Crunch pint over a sieve and refining the cinnamon sugar dust into a handsome necklace.
Look, I know I’ve always said it’s my dream to one day be credited on Wikipedia for a distinguished contribution to cereal-kind—I’m picturing a front-page New York Times piece on my exhumation of the Lost Tomb of Yummy Mummy. But now I’m starting to think finding a place in Pop-Tarts’ extended mythos might be easier. I can see it now:
“Noted breakfast influencer and Fillows fill-anthropist Bran Goubert [of course I’d change my name for the clout] was the 21st century’s strongest advocate for the freezing of Pop-Tarts, a technique now so commonplace that Kellogg’s has relocated their entire retail pastry inventory between the shredded hash browns and single-serving pot pies.”
Now I know, I know: freezing Pop-Tarts has been a thing for a long time, but I certainly got a lot more flak from toaster troubadours in my early blogging years for explicitly condoning the practice. Maybe I just need to be bolder about my advocacy. Choreograph a Gurdjieffian dance around a giant cooling coil or something.
While I wait for my sluggish notoriety to thaw, I can nevertheless celebrate Pop-Tarts’ latest validation of frozen Pop-Tarts as a concept, ideal and life philosophy. Kellogg’s pastry-smiths have teamed up with the agreeable folks at Good Humor to launch Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream Technically ‘Dairy Dessert’ Bars. To say I’m excited for this is an understatement, and to say my lactose intolerance disagrees with this excitement would certainly be an easy-to-ignore statement. Given how famous Good Humor’s Strawberry Shortcake Bars already are, it makes sense for them to tackle the brand’s other biggest spokes-Tart. We’re treated here to two layers of (presumably vanilla) and brown sugar cinnamon-infused cow product, but what’s really got me ready to put sole to pavement for these bars is that beautiful gravelly coating.
Looking like the inside of my bag after a brief sojourn to the beach, these crispety-crunchities are almost sure to be what makes these Good Humor Pop-Tarts Bars so good you can taste them in your humerus. As they’re already on Good Humor’s website, these bars should be popping up in stores any time now. Guess it’s time to start parceling out my Lactaid pills until the next ice age—if I tragically can’t go down in Pop-Tartian history, I at least want my tear-diluted dairy delicacies to go down easy.
For those without this very specific genetic disposition to oddly specific early Internet web cartoon references, Cheat Commandos…O’s are a cheap cash-in on an already merchandized-by-design franchise. And to this day, I can’t figure out which cereal they used to model it—perhaps it’s actually dried macaroni and cheese, or perhaps the petrified remains of a shredded Bronco Trolley.
Much like Cheat Commandos, Shopkins is a line of toys, apparel, and by this point (probably) orthodox faiths. In short: it consists largely of blind bag toys shaped like sentient grocery items. In long: yo dog we heard you like shopping so we put consumer goods in your consumer good so you can spend food money on fake food that implicitly costs fake money, too.
Granted, I’m not judging the ouroboric commercialism that Shopkins embodies—heck, I think the adjacently themed ’80s Food Fighters are some of the best-looking action figures in history. Though it is a shame they never made a grizzled bowl of cereal armed with a tactical bootspork.
Shopkins is just something I’m far too old for, admittedly, but I’m nevertheless hesitant any time a beloved brand of non-cereal ends up emblazoned on the front of a dubiously flavored hot pink rectangular prism. Licensed cereals are usually hit or miss or impermissibly lame. Even those remembered fondly, like Pokémon Cereal, are almost always retrospectively delicious because they’re acceptably executed bootleg Lucky Charms—with prettier marbits than the heretical excuses for freeze-dried sugar they put in such licensed cereals nowadays.
At least Shopkins’ new Cutie O’s Cereal has a relatively original flavor. Outside of one juicy box of Raisin Bran, apple and strawberry make for a rare pairing—though we are starting off on the wrong plastic footlong, as my lifelong penchant for strawberry kiwi has me Pavlovianly drooling venomous vitriol at the sight of a green-fruited competitor to my mental “Best Capri-Sun” throne. But alright, Kawaii Granny Smith: I’ll sheathe my ceremonial paring knife while you state your case. Continue reading →
Anybody else got weird, yet oh-so-satisfying ways to eat food? And I don’t mean any particular combination of foods—though I will proudly die on the Pringles with Ketchup Hill, as it’s where my family plot will be.
No, I’m talking unconventional approaches to the physical act of eating something. Sure, there are classics, like unscrewing and licking an Oreo clean or consuming Snickers with a fork & knife. And there are more disturbing ones, like those who eat kiwis with the fuzzy flesh on, or the worryingly confident breed of Fun Dip consumer who eats the sticks totally unadorned.
Personally, I like to eat completely around the cookie part of a Twix to save it for last, consume a handful of popcorn like an apple, and more-than-occasionally swallow pasta noodles whole for the unique tracheal imprint left by each respective shape. Oh, and I used to unknowingly eat Reese’s Cups with the paper still on until an embarrassingly mature age.
Pop-Tarts are far from immune from this sort of nuanced noshing. While my formerly frowned-upon habit of freezing toaster pastries has now been largely normalized (you’re welcome), I still know many who will nibble around the crust before handling the sweet meat of the matter. This may be less barbaric (albeit less creative) than eating the insides before the crust, but either way these folks are depriving themselves of the blessed balance struck at the baked-in slip fault between frosting and crisped crust.
No, now that I’ve eaten Chocolatey Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites, I believe there is a better way: one that may be difficult to scale up to a regular Pop-Tart, but which ought to nevertheless cleave your breakfast time traditions in twain. Continue reading →
