28

Mar. ’19

News: Cap’n Crunch’s Cotton Candy Crunch Cereal is Coming Soon!

Cap'n Crunch's Cotton Candy Crunch Cereal Box

(Photo via My County Market)

That’s what I love about Cap’n Crunch: he really knows how to C’ze the day.

Yes, reading the near-perfect alliteration of this blog post’s title allowed can give you an idea of just how fast my c-c-cardiovascular system is working to keep up with news this exciting. For after a couple doubled-down strawberry duds, Quaker’s quintessential cereal character is back with a wispy whirlwind of creativity, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

And speaking of never-before-seen innovation, Cap’n Crunch’s Cotton Candy Crunch is poised to (somehow) be the first cereal to knit everyone’s favorite sugary skeins into spherical cereal form. This is a surprise to me at least, since the cult appeal of cotton candy foodstuffs like Bubble Yum and, uh, grapes? make the state fair classic a more logical pick for a carnival-themed cereal than…”berry.” Plus—and this one is definitely just me—the ridiculous charm of cotton candy personifications like The Monster and Rollercoaster Tycoon’s Candyfloss Stalls are just begging for a crossover commercial with someone like Cap’n Crunch.

And heck, why not throw in Scooby-Doo while they’re at it?

Though my thanks go to The Junk Food Aisle for first tipping me off to Cotton Candy Crunch’s product listing, additional gratitude goes to the kind folks at My County Market, who generously supplied the above photo that reveals the stuff’s cool two-toned Crunch Berries that I’d happily string onto fishing line to create a sticky-sweet necklace—the perfect accessory for getting scammed out of $12 at the ring toss.

We can likely expect Cotton Candy Crunch to hit most shelves through late spring, into early summer. Until then, let’s just hope it doesn’t debut with a cringe-worthy .gif of Cap’n Crunch doing “The CandyFloss Dance” from his favorite game “FortBite.”

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24

Mar. ’19

News: Lucky Charms is Giving Away 15,000 Boxes of All Rainbow & Unicorn Marshmallows!

Lucky Charms All Marshmallows Giveaway Rainbows & Unicorns Box

What’s more emotionally resonant than 5,000 candles in the wind? 15,000 cardboard vessels bearing thousands more sugar-smithed unicorn heads riding a manifold wave of cresting rainbows.

And that’s before you add milk.

This ferociously (and fangoriously) devoured fantasy is more likely than you think: once again, Lucky Charms is giving away specially designed boxes of All Marshmallows—but this time, each 270g iridescent treasure chest is full of only rainbows and unicorns.

Continue reading →

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22

Mar. ’19

Review: Annie’s Organic Friends Bunnies Cereal

Annie's Organic Friends Bunnies Chocolate Vanilla Honey Cereal Review Box

Let’s talk turkey. Or bunnies, to be seasonally appropriate.

When you’re reviewing breakfast fare, a scale is necessary. I won’t feign presumptions on how those who write about lesser foodstuffs manage to assign numerical ratings. What constitutes a perfect 10 in, say, pizza? Are there dual systems for thin crust and deep dish? Such are the fodder phantasms that haunt my countertop in the night.

Comparatively, then, I’m grateful for pantry paragons that act as polestars. We know that no cereal on the market today can, however mighty, topple Cracklin’ Oat Bran from its lofty position—even if matched by other exceptional staples. But it’s hard to compare everything against the crème de la crunch. Once in a while, we need to be reminded that superb bowls (heyoo!) exist only in light of normal, unremarkable cereal. We grade Gaussian around these parts, folks, no matter how much one may love log.

So Annie’s released a new cereal. Sort of. Remember Annie’s Homegrown? They make feel-good versions of classic favorites, like organic boxed mac and cheese, organic graham crackers, and organic fruit gummies, all in the shape of their lagomorph mascot. It’s a cute concept, often with a nightmare-conjuring price tag. This one, for instance, runs over $4 USD at my local Walmart for a relatively dinky box.

Naturally, one assumes that quality costs more. And although that hasn’t been the case historically, hare hops spring eternal. Continue reading →

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20

Mar. ’19

Spooned & Spotted (Mexico): Tropical Froot Loops

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvM_eyEFMEf/

For a guy who’s spent his entire 56-year career preaching the Gospel of Froot, Toucan Sam has rarely explored the complex taste spectrum the broad pantheon of seed-dispersal vessels (aka fruit) has to offer.

And he still hasn’t canonized the late Carmen Miranda yet either, so I refuse to acknowledge his scripture’s legitimacy over the Dead Trix Scrolls.

Sure, we’ve gotten smoothie-fied Froot Loops, Wild Berry Froot Loops, and my favorite fruit, Birthday Cake, but the Froot Loops family of flavors still largely sticks to a single, extremely ambiguous and in no way authentic fake fruit cocktail instead of charting new latitudes of crunchy cartography—the closest thing we’ve gotten is vacation-shaped marshmallows.

That is, until now: according to Mexican Candy Lady and renowned cereal documentarian Gabe Fonseca, Mexico now has exclusive Tropical Froot Loops. This variety sees the Loops dressed in the more modest hues of a Jamba Juice sampler, with promises of banana and pineapple flavoring.

Ha, what do you know: they turned my favorite fruit, pineapple upside-down cake, into a weird spiky thing!

Unfortunately, the Mexican Candy Lady’s shop still lists Tropical Froot Loops as out of stock, so I won’t be able to review them—at least until I dream about a Cancún getaway tonight…though you’ll have to meet me at the cerebral bungalow if you want to hear about it.

Froot Loops Pops Cereal

Luckily she does still have new Froot Loops Pops in stock, which appear to be another name (that references Canada’s spherical Corn Pops, perhaps) for the joyous Froot Loops Bloopers that have been out intermittently here in the states.

If you’ve tried Tropical Froot Loops (or want to launch me a box via intercontinental trebuchet), let me know what you think below. And if you have a hemisphere-spanning cereal spotting of your own, you can follow your nose to our Submissions page.

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18

Mar. ’19

News: Kellogg’s Australia Debuts Mermaid Froot Loops

Kellogg's Mermaid Froot Loops Cereal

Is Toucan Sam starting a breakfast bestiary? And if so, why?

Of all the cereal brands out there, I wouldn’t have expected Froot Loops to start a weird off-shoot series of pseudo-spiritual successors that draw from the world of myths and mutants. Despite its history with otherworldly creatures, Froot Loops seems a little too innocently avian to flirt with Unicorns and now Mermaids—that’s the kind of crunchy cryptozoology I’d expect from the likes of Kellogg’s own grinning Ra who represents their -isin Bran.

Exclusive to Costco, these Australia-exclusive Mermaid Froot Loops seems like a parallel universe version of Caticorn Cereal, a quasi-Froot Loops pet project that has a temporary Sam’s Club exclusivity here in the states. But while Caticorn Cereal was littered with ghosts of faint fruitiness, Mermaid Froot Loops appear to just be Mardi Grad-colored Loops—though their lack of artificial colors and flavors raise the question of just how genuine the expected Froot Loops fakeness will taste.

Regardless, Australian Froot Loops deserve my respect, not just for putting a female mascot on a cereal box—an apparently unheard of phenomenon in the U.S. outside of, uh, Dora the Explorer Cereal?—but also for preserving the two-dimensional purity of Toucan Sam, whose American counterpart has become an anthropomorphized terror who would just love to show you how double-jointed his slender, feathered fingers are.

If you’ve tried Mermaid Froot Loops, let me know how they are in the comments. And if you’ve managed to catch another new cereal cryptid on camera, you can share them on our Submissions page—our thanks to Hedvig for the Mermaidian tip.

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17

Mar. ’19

News: St. Patrick’s Day Lucky Charms are Back!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If by chance you need something to float in your green beer—or at least something hearty and oaty enough to absorb out of your green-gilled gut later—you can catch a box of Lucky Charms’ storied St. Paddy’s Day stuff in both plain ol’ oat and sweet chocolate corn varieties.

Once filled only with two-toned green shamrock marshmallows, Lucky’s bowl o’ merriment has added twinkling pots of gold, as well—a good colorful addition, though I’d love to see the exiled hourglass marshmallow make a yearly prodigal return instead.

All that said, this year’s Leprechaun Trap concept, which has been appearing on every Lucky Charms variety, doesn’t really target my age demographic. Let’s hope we can see gradual innovation year by year on this concept, so in about a decade’s time we can have Mint Lucky Charms Shamrocks that turn your milk into Bailey’s.

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14

Mar. ’19

Spooned & Spotted: Reese’s Puffs Bunnies (2019)

Reese's Puffs Bunnies 2019

Foiled again by these un-foiled Easter animals!

Yes, Reese’s Puffs’ go-to spring seasonal shapes, Bunnies, have returned once more. And while I love the things for their increased surface area and the cocoa-catching crevasses of their angular anatomy, I was hoping we’d finally get the PB-stuffed Reese’s Puffs Eggs I’ve been dreaming of ever since I first dunked a real oblong Easter Reese’s into a tall glass of Peeps nectar.

(Okay, I didn’t actually use the Peeps juice. You ever try milking one of those things?)

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While the actual bite-sized Bunnies appear to be the same, this year’s boxes strip away the old pastel pastiche that mimicked Reese’s other Easter wrappers in favor of a classical brand styling that’s more in line with the cereal’s other limited edition holiday Puff sculpts. Being a washed-up warrior of washed-out colors, I’m a little disappointed by this decision, but I suppose cheerful yellow doesn’t have much place in a cereal known for being an impulsively grabbed orange eye-catcher—it’s the veritable Krispy Kreme Hot Light of the breakfast aisle.

That is of course, unless you add Peeps Coffee Creamer.

Thanks to Dominic C. for the real-life proof. If you have a new cereal find of your own, feel free to hop over to our Submissions page.

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12

Mar. ’19

News: Breaking Bad Cap’n Cook’s Cereal Marshmallows are Hitting FYE!

FYE Breaking Bad Cereal - Blue Sky Marshmallows

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at FYE HQ when they dreamt up this one…

Having watched all of Breaking Bad during its original TV run, drawn my own Heisenberg shirt, and laughed at Breaking Bad Comics ’til they mineral-ed my socks off, I’m fascinated to see that the show’s legacy is still going so strong nearly six years after its fateful series finale. FYE, who have already released cereals based on Rugrats, anime, and modern American “children’s” horror games, have now set their sights on Albuquerque. Not unlike Walter White himself, this time around they’ve cut out the middleman between mouth and marshmallow, ridding their (admittedly expensive) cereals of any oat-y imperfections to make boxes of 100% pure “Blue Sky Crunchy Marshmallows.”

Dubious drug references aside, these mildly profane (put the kids to bed) marb*tches are apparently both naturally and artificially flavored. I still haven’t decided whether I’ll go in on a box—I promised Walt I’d stay out of his territory, after all, if he stayed out of the cereal blogging game—but I am curious to see what these might taste like. Bubblegum? Cotton Candy? Rice ‘n Beans?

If you’ve tried these, let me know in the comments below. In the meantime, I’ll just pray that the conceptual sequel to these Oops! All Lucky Charms Moons is a shingle-specked box full of Crunchy Roof Pizzas.

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