Banana Caramel Cheerios? More like, Caramel Banana Cheerios!
That’s it.
That’s the whole review.
Go on, you’ve got like, Neopets to feed, right?
…
Okay fine, I’ll elaborate. Continue reading
Review: Strawberry Milkshake Frosted Flakes & Cinnamon French Toast Frosted Flakes
Note: though Chocolate is included in this lineup of new boxes, I won’t be reviewing it here, since it’s unchanged. You can find my original review here.
Tony, my man. Can I call you Tony Baloney?
No?
How about Riga-Tony? Tonyboy? Tony Island Mile-High Chili Dogs?
Alright, fine, let’s just get down to business…Anthony. Fact of the matter is, I’m impressed. You’re really embracing your right brain lately. I know it can be tempting to trust your business sense and realize that you could probably finance the entire Frosted Flakes brand interminably just by cheaply chucking in new marbits and mixing together existing cereals. But as much of a smart tiger as you are, I can tell you’re truly an artist at heart. And an athlete, too—geez, no wonder the Twitter furries thirsted you off the platform: you’ve got it all!
You’re so creatively inclined that you decided to bless us with not one, but two twinkling new cereal flavors—and neither have chintzy, redundant marshmallows! Sure, my bar for being impressed by new cereals has limboed lower and lower over the past purgatorial half year of lazy cereal-smithing, but hey, I’m going to stay positive and tackle the Strawberry Milkshaked and Cinnamon French Toasted fruits of your labor with gusto. Continue reading
Review: General Mills Filled Bites (Prototypes?)
Allow me to preface this review with the disclaimer that I honestly have no idea if these Filled Bites will ever hit mainstream shelves. I first heard about these two cereals via the insider tip of a Hy-Vee worker at a Minneapolis location often used as a General Mills new product test store. Then I got these two boxes (with different artwork) from reader Ryan (thank you kindly!), but they also seem like samples. The artwork feels more finalized, but it’s just art on both sides, plus the box is a thinner cardboard than regular cereal boxes.
Plus plus, there’s a landing page out there for a possible Cinnamon Toast Crunch Filled Bites—which, while still apparently in its prototype stage would likely replace Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll here—as CTC no doubt has bigger brand clout with the kids today than portly/chortly ol’ Poppin’ Fresh. That guy lost the youth the minute the similarly glossy Hamburger Helper rhymed him outta relevancy.
Which is all to say that, ultimate widespread legitimacy of these Filled Bites aside, I feel a need to review them, if only to uphold the ephemeral legacy of Fillows—a decidedly dank and decadently dense cereal line that deserved way better. Continue reading
Another Cereal News Round-Up!
Hi there, it’s your favorite terminally inconsistent cereal blogger here with a quick look at all the latest and crunchiest cereal headlines from the past week or so.
First up we have limited-edition Star Wars Frosted Flakes, releasing this July to commemorate the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series releasing later this month. The actual constituent concept behind these Frosted Flakes isn’t particularly groundbreaking—mixing Chocolate Frosted Flakes with like, yogurt or honey-coated ones would be more exciting than this, which will inevitably just taste like diluted Chocolate Frosted Flakes—but I gotta give props to whoever did the box art: imagining Darth Tony slaughtering younglings is one heckuva visceral mental image. Continue reading
Cereal News Round-Up!
We have a favorite saying over at The Empty Bowl podcast—when it grains, it pours. Which is just a cheeky way of saying that after long bouts of little new cereal news, the milky floodgates tend to open all at once, and my ever-slowing bloggin’ fingers have especially struggled to keep up lately. So instead of fumbling my way through filler-some 200-word posts for every topical breakfast blurb, I figured I’d just wrangle ’em all into this post and blaze through each headline—so you can spend less time reading and more time zooming to whichever grocery store, doughnuttery, or Foot Locker has the line item you’re most interested in. Continue reading
News: Tropicana Crunch Cereal
Look, I know I’m a little behind on posting all the latest cereal news to come out of the last week—and I’ll get to it, don’t worry—but I think you’ll forgive me for jumping the queue here: because this is a code orange, folks.
Long squeeze short, on May 4th, Tropicana is releasing Tropicana Crunch—the first cereal designed to be eaten with orange juice instead of milk—exclusively at TropicanaCrunch.com. Apollonianly blasphemous, I know.
There are a lot of problems here, foremost of them being, who asked for this? Tropicana’s justification is a survey they held, boasting that 15 million people out there have tried OJ and cereal before, and “Half of the adults who poured OJ over their cereal did so because they thought it looked like it would taste good,” while “more than one in three who tried it did so because they love OJ and thought it would be a good combination.” The key operating word in both data points, of course, being thought, with conspicuously little evidence that any of these people actually enjoyed it.
But yeah, taste, texture, and possible pulp problems aside, I’m also just curious what makes this a cereal designed to be eaten with OJ. You want me to believe that the folks at Tropicana, who really only make juice, have the industrial machinery and gastro-engineers to develop a high-tech juice-complementing cereal? No, I think it’s far more likely that Tropicana Crunch, billed as a honey almond clusters cereal, just pulled a Timbits and had Post send them a butt-ton of leftover Almond Honey Bunches of Oats to reskin.
Assuming I can get my hands on a box, I’m prepared to be disproven, if not pleasantly surprised, though—a lot of people in my Twitter replies attested to having tried and enjoyed OJ in cereal after all, plus Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch was one of my all-time favorite cereals, so anything’s possible.
What do you think? Will this be a juicy breakfast revolution, or a Sunny D-saster?
Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Creamy Cinnamon Spread
There are some things it feels like you just can’t do on supermarket shelves, even if there’s no explicit rule against it.
You can’t put a cute mascot shaped like a carton of milk on a box of bleach. Or at least I imagine you probably can’t.
You can’t say your plastic bottle is made from “100% Ocean-Bound Plastic” because that’s worded so confusingly and sounds like it’s made 100% from plastic that’s bound for the ocean, rather than just adding a word and saying “100% Previously Ocean-Bound Plastic.” But Windex does this anyway.
And you can’t market cinnamon bun pancake batter as a versatile creamy spread. It just feels criminal! Continue reading
News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls Cereal
Alright, I think we’ve heard about enough from the Cinnamon Toast Crunch folks. They’ve clearly stopped trying.
Granted, it’s probably our collective fault for still buying these “new” cereals, but am I the only one who’s getting a little sick of seeing the same Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor basted onto some newfangled breakfast geometry? Cinnamon Toast Churros was one thing, Cinnamoji Toast Crunch was merely a cosmetic re-dusting, and CTC & Lucky Charms Mix was….Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms mixed. If all those sound like lazy releases to you, then I doubt these Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will be any better.
Not to be confused with actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnamon Rolls, of course, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls Cereal just seems like General Mills’ take on Kellogg”s Cinnabon Cereal. I expect nothing more than classic CTC flavor glazed atop a crunchier, airier, and ultimately less satisfying cereal shell.
Is it really too much to ask for another Apple Pie Toast Crunch, or dare I say, the return of the Tiny Toast model of cute lil powdered bread slices? I don’t know, y’all—as cereal innovation continues to flatline, it’s getting harder and harder for me to care. Anyway, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will arrive on shelves this May. Otherwise, defibrillate me if you hear from my ol’ pal Peanut Butter Toast Crunch.