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

Dec. ’19

News: Kellogg’s Shopkins Cutie O’s Cereal

Ha, get it? Red & green. Christmas? Ever heard of it?

What’s wrong?

You don’t like it? It’s from your Aunt and I.

Aw, gee, well I’m sorry. I might not be with the times when it comes to Tik Tok (heh, get it, time?), but I figured since ya love those Mario & Louis characters so much you’d dig this cool new team of…err…Cuties! Teens love ’em.

…

Damn. This happens every time I try to gift away a Kellogg’s licensed cereal.

Yes, Kellogg’s latest shameless partnership is with Shopkins, tiny little squishy kawaii kitchen fixtures that are cute and apparently apple strawberry flavored. If the real toys are anywhere near as charmingly chewy as Polly Pocket accessories, I might invest higher hopes into the cereal version. Sure, Apple Strawberry is a largely unexplored avenue for cereal, and though I dream of one day pouring some of my favorite Capri-Sun flavor into a bowl of strawberry–kiwi-flavored cereal (suck it, Pacific Cooler), choosing apples in kiwis’ stead is nonetheless tasty.

That is, if Cutie O’s can pull it off. Most of Kellogg’s lazily looped licensed cereals have been disappointingly bland, so while I see promise in every cereal, Cutie O’s has its work cut out for it if it wants to break the curse of its thoughtlessly franchised forefathers.

Oh, and merry Christmas to everyone who follows, reads, or even just passively remembers that this blog exists. It’s been a year of great growth for the site and a time of constant change in my own life. I’ll be able to find more poignant words for the past year of cereal in an upcoming recap of the year’s best releases. But until then, consider this the start of a 24-hour purge of cereal crimes. Feel free to eat it with or without orange juice, in or from the bathtub—if that’s what floats your Cutie O’s.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Leave a comment