News: St. Patrick’s Day Lucky Charms Return for 2020

While I’m slightly disappointed in General Mills for retreading the same emerald-dyed waters for the upteenth time in Lucky Charms’ history, the cereal maker’s latest trip ’round the rainbow poses a curious question surrounding the deeper lore of the Charmiverse:

Is Lucky’s fear of children stealing his Charms just a false flag so no one goes after his moolah?

Sure, the in-world Charms are perhaps more valuable than loot or minted Loops—as they possess the same reality-warping power as Chaos Emeralds—but when it comes to cold hard cash? Lucky’s gotta be loaded if he was able to travel the cosmos and harvest each arcane artifact for his own kid-averse shenanigans.

So even though the brand-proclaimed star of 2020’s St. Paddy’s Day Lucky Charms is the “new” gold coin marshmallow (which in reality isn’t new), the buried lede in my opinion is this claim: “To celebrate Lucky the Leprechaun’s birthday (St. Patrick’s Day, of course!), fans have the chance to find Lucky’s Gold on select boxes of cereal!”

Hold up now, full stop. If we’re to believe that Lucky was born on St. Patrick’s Day, why isn’t it mentioned in this commercial? In fact, why would Lucky even think there’s reason to forget his birthday? I don’t mean to be the wolf who cried plot hole, but c’mon. Talk about crocodile tears.

Oh, right. The gold thing. Despite this implication of a chance at big prizes inside every box, I can’t garner any of the details from this box art alone. Coupled with General Mills’ promise that Leprechaun Traps will return to the back of the boxes, I remain uncertain of whether there are actually riches worth seeking—let alone the rich microwavable birthday cake seen in the above spot.

Whatever the mythos of this mythical fellow, Lucky’s St. Patrick’s Day Charms will be hitting shelves soon (two months early, of course) in both regular and chocolate varieties. Should you be fortunate enough to find a doubloon or just some Yukon Golds in your box, I simply ask that you mail me a Chaos Emerald as a token of gratitude. Dragon Balls will work too.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: holidays, lucky charms. 3 Comments

Jan. ’20

Review: Trolls World Tour Trix with Marshmallows

Is it just me, or does “marbit” sound an awful lot like “varmint?”

I’m not saying I don’t like what is perhaps cereal’s single most iconic component, but the mythical munchability of freeze-dried marshmallows, at least to me, has been their scarcity. The Biblical parable of the child who carefully picked all the marshmallows out of his Lucky Charms, only for his father to make him eat the soggy oats alongside the family donkey still rings true: “he who hems and haws makes himself an ass.”

Uh, I think that’s the…unreleased fifth letter to the Corinthians. You wouldn’t know it: Paul wrote it at a different school.

So much did I enjoy the rare treat of breakfast marshmallows as a child that I feel spoiled now—or at least my appetite is. Every cereal from Apple Jacks to Frosted Flakes is chucking marshmallows into classic cereals with no respect for tradition, boundaries, or mouthfeel. And now they’ve gotten to Trix, too. A cereal that has never been paired with marshmallows before this year of Twenty-Silly-Bunny.

It’d be a low-hanging comedic fruit to say it feels like the cereal industry is Trolling us with all these clumsily composed marshmallow cereals, but I will say that, thanks to the Trolls 2: World Tour branding on these Trix, I’m marginally more optimistic about the concept. Because while I deeply, even spiritually prefer the Trix fruit shapes to spheres, I will admit that swirled spheres are aesthetically pleasing enough to thread onto a friendship bracelet.

If I made two, how fast do you think UPS could get one to the Corinthians? Or at least, The Corinthian? I’ve had eyes for him for a while. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, movie cereals, trix. 5 Comments

Jan. ’20

The Empty Bowl Episode Twenty-Four: Lip Gloss & Jungle Juice

Did the first week of 2020 feel a little…empty to anyone else? There’s just so much stress happening globally that it’s easy to feel hollowed-out by daily responsibility.

But worry no more, for beyond any newspaper or starving Neopet, there exists an ethereal plane where there’s nothing to be upset about—and there’s everything your breakfast-loving self could hope for. Well, unless you like traditional English breakfasts or avocado toast, you may be disappointed. For there’s only one thing on our bed & breakfast’s menu.

Welcome to The Empty Bowl Episode Twenty-Four, the first post-holiday-hiatus episode of my and Justin‘s meditative cereal podcast. To make up for lost time, this is our longest episode yet, as we barrel through many new cereals coming in early 2020, and just as many late-2019 releases that made me the sugar-addled dancing plum of my own Christmas.

Not quite full yet? You can go back for seconds, thirds, or twenty-thirds at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but for each one, I’ll make a contribution to Neopets in need.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: empty bowl. Leave a comment

Jan. ’20

Review: Frosted Honey Bunches of Oats

In 2020 we’re staying honest with those we love, so I’m gonna come right out and say it:

Honey Bunches of Oats, how in your infinite wisdom have you made the most tearable cereal bags in the breakfast aisle?

There are already enough things in this world that I have trouble pulling apart without blunder nor bother: perforated notebook paper, most pieces of mail, command strips off a wall. My delicious cereal shouldn’t fissure and fizzle out cereal spillage at a moment’s notice.

This is difficult to cope with, especially since Honey Bunches of Oats is a) built on a near spiritual trinity of corn flakes, frosted corn flakes and granola bunches, but this triple blessing is also b) very consistent at producing flavorful varietals.

(We don’t talk about the less savory ‘Zilla ’98s of the franchise.)

Yet HBoO’s latest release—whose bag was torn asunder by inescapable fate—seems, to me, to be its ostensibly least original idea in recent memory (with one notably irrelevant example). Simply culling one third of the cereal, coating it with sticky sauce, and shoving it back in the mix? As someone who values a good novelty cereal, from the start I’m skeptical. Will this be the equivalent of a bubbly Disney remake that’s so saccharine it crashes lifelessly?

At least give us some crudely handsome CGI bunches at that point! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: honey bunches, post. 5 Comments

Jan. ’20

News: Peeps Cereal is Getting Bunny & Chick Marshmallows!

It only took a year, but one of 2019’s biggest missed opportunities is being repaired.

In my review of last Easter’s Peeps Cereal (which I still unseasonably blogged about in January), I noted—as any potential Peeper would—that a brand known for its cute animal shapes probably deserves better than lazy round & white marbits. Thankfully, those sugary eggs are hatching in 2020, as we can see in the above box art uncovered by Candy Hunting. I’d like to think it’s my complaints that got Kellogg’s to introduce these “Bunny & Chick Marshmallows,” but considering how I was equally scathing in my critique of this cereal’s taste, I doubt Kellogg’s would ever credit me.

After all, the frankly boring base cereal itself looks unchanged. I’ll admit that the bunnies are some of the better fashioned cereal marshmallows in recent memory—the chicks seem like they could be runny yolks—but unless those rascally rabbits breed while the cereal’s in your pantry, I might have to pass on buying a box again this spring.

But congratulations, Kellogg’s: you finally made an authentic Peeps Cereal. Now you just need to find an audience for the sugary stuff’s one-note opus.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: easter, kellogg's, marshmallows. 3 Comments

Dec. ’19

Cerealously’s Top 5 New Cereal Releases of 2019!

2019: cereal’s sophomore year of college.

I say that because, though the 1.5 century-old stuff made some great friends and memories this year, cereal also pulled some dumb shenanigans—as if it were trying to get hazed into a fraternity of goofy flavoring that it was really never cut out for.

Yes, decades from now, when cereal is telling its grandkids (named canned oatmeal & freeze-dried apocalypse biscuits) about these hectic post-halcyon days, we have to imagine it’ll grimace at the times it wore a meat dress and got sticky for no good reason.

In fact, just looking at the first three reviews I wrote this year pretty much gives you the full breadth of 2019’s cereal unorthodoxy. Pop-Tarts Cereal heralded the return of many other cult favorites. Sour Patch Kids Cereal puckered us up for freak incidents of cereal sensory overload. And Hostess’ inaugural pair of crunchable snack cakes showed us that Post means business.

But did any of those make my year-end cut of the tastiest, most creative and charming products of the past 365 days? Let’s count down like it’s Donkey…uh…Clown? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cerealously. 4 Comments

Dec. ’19

Review: Hershey’s Kisses Cereal

Smooches. Pecks. Snogs. Canoodles.

I’m not saying Hershey picked one of the lamest, most ironically vanilla word for the union of impassioned lips, but plain ol’ Hershey’s Kisses? Even the white chocolate Hugs light a hotter fire under my stomach. But perhaps it’s just my own deep-seated disinterest in purely unadorned and lower-mid quality milk chocolate—especially when sculpted into a dainty form that a) always has its fragile tips break, and b) leaves behind a wholly unnecessary second wrapper component in the form of an annoying miniature fortune cookie fortune. One that never changes.

Despite all this, I’ll try my best to set aside these misgivings (that likely stem from the unendingly obnoxious death knell of the Kisses Christmas commercial) to impartially review Hershey’s Kisses Cereal, a creation that somehow dances around every other erotically nougated candy at the party to Kiss the chocolate frog in the corner, who ends up transforming into a cereal that looks something like, uh, this: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, general mills. 7 Comments

Dec. ’19

Review: New Pretzel Pop-Tarts (Chocolate & Cinnamon Sugar!)

The crustular revolution will not be televised.

Probably because crustular isn’t a real word, let alone an FDA-approved one. Though one could consider it an antonym of ‘cromulent.’

Pop-Tarts varieties have gotten wilder than a berry in recent years, with a number of crazy flavors and gimmicks that weren’t necessarily crazy good by extension. But through it all, Kellogg’s wasn’t able to open up their third eye to see the true opportunity for creativity that lies in a Pop-Tart’s largely unmodified third component—arguably the most fundamentally important component. The crust.

I struggle to think of many Pop-Tarts with crust that tastes like anything more than “classic puff pastry” and “chocolate puff pastry.” There’s Red Velvet, but that’s really just clown chocolate. Perhaps the only worthy ancestral analogue I can think of for these crust-bending Pretzel Pop-Tarts would be Kellogg’s line of weirdly wonderful Peanut Butter Pop-Tarts. With a more crumbly and baked-cookie-esque crust, that trilogy of PB, Choco PB & PB&J cemented themselves as an unforgettable, holy trinity of revelatory revolutions in Pop-Tarchitecture.

So why did it take Kellogg’s so long to break the expensive factory mold again?
And was it worth it?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, cinnamon, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 3 Comments