Rumor: What We Know About Splatoon 2 Cereal

What’s the cereal equivalent of a Bigfoot hunter? A crisp-tozoologist?

Whatever it is, I want a job doing it for the Smithsonian. Empty Bowl listeners should already be familiar with my love of cereal myths—talking about the same cereal legends all day has me craving a tasty enigma—and much like last year’s Freedom Crunch fiasco, I’m proud to report on another cold cereal case, developing in real time.

It’s about a certain Kellogg’s Splatoon 2 Cereal, and I’ve labelled it a loose rumor, despite having no evidence beyond the photographed screen above. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this possible Nintend-elicious successor to Super Mario Cereal, but other facts that help this story hold milk. Let’s run through the facts:

• This first and only photo came to light just a few days ago, shared by Reddit user /u/carloscd44. They claim to have stumbled upon it on Walmart’s website while looking for other new cereals, but after returning to the page the day after, it was gone, leaving the OP and viewers alike uncertain about its legitimacy.

• To clear up initial fears of fake leaks—a problem that has notoriously plagued the Nintendo Super Smash Bros. community—I confirmed that the URL the OP presented is (or at least was) a real part of Walmart’s site. Now, the link redirects visitors to a page for Super Mario Cereal.

This suggests to me that the cereal was either posted ahead of its planned release, and the URL will remain until it’s time, or Kellogg’s scrapped the cereal concept entirely, and this was a leftover and hitherto undiscovered page.

• While I’d love to believe the former is the case, the clearly unfinished box art presented leaves more questions than answers. Splatoon 2 the video game was first released almost two years ago now, and while the game still releases new content, this time gap is far larger than Super Mario Cereal, which debuted the same month as Super Mario Odyssey.

Back to the box art itself, we can see lots of awkward empty space, seemingly incomplete Inkling models, cereal that cannot be clearly seen, and a logo that bizarrely uses a paint splatter to cover up part of the word CEREAL—which, in itself, appears to use the same font as Super Mario Cereal.

Adding all this up, plus the fact that I can’t dig up any other info about it online, makes me very hesitant to make any confident conclusion on Splatoon 2 Cereal’s legitimacy. In my eyes, the most convincing clue is the timing: the fact that the page went down the same day /u/carloscd44 found it seems like quite the convenient coincidence, but whether I’ll be wrapping my tentacles around a bowl of it or just crossing it off my rumors list with red ink remains to be seen.

If you have any information about Splatoon 2 Cereal, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll even play you on Final Destination for it—no items, of course.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: kellogg's, rumor. 1 Comment

Feb. ’19

Review: Honey Bunches of Oats Apple Caramel Crunch

You’ve heard of snack attacks, but what about sneack attacks?

No, that’s not a typo: I firmly believe that Honey Bunches of Oats has perfected the art of the 800-pound guerrilla breakfast bombardment. Not even counting the recent, off-brand and Internet-splintering news of Honey Brunches of Oats Chicken & Waffles Cereal, the now 30-year old cereal brand has a history of dropping sneakily scrumptious new flavors at the start of the year, without the preemptive fanfare we see from most crunch-slingers.

In 2016, the masters of crispy (fried poultry or otherwise) flakes and granola bunches brought back Chocolate Honey Bunches of Oats, and in 2018 we got the criminally underrated Pecan & Maple Brown Sugar HBoOats. Pulling another break-fast one on us, 2019 has now been blessed with Apple Caramel Crunch Honey Bunches of Oats.

More than just an exciting concept, this is only the second major caramel apple cereal after 2011’s bone-mealed Caramel Apple Boulders. Where caramel apple’s sister flavor, apple cinnamon, gets a lot of cereal aisle representation—including an apparently discontinued(?) Honey Bunches variety—I’m glad to see its stickier sibling finally getting exposure.

Even if it is half a year before caramel apple’s typical seasonal setting of booing and bobbing. Guess I’ll just have to cut some eyeholes in my winter-grade weighted blanket before eating.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, apple, caramel, honey bunches of oats, post. 3 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Peeps Cereal

(Had to show off the lovely ‘Easter Weather’)

Peeps are cute.

There, I said it. Happy now?

I don’t care if loving their pastel colors, minimalistic anatomy, and chibi countenance makes me any less of a gritty, macho cereal blogger—sorry, Mr. Universe: I’m declining the invitation—Peeps will always be welcome on my couch and in my Easter basket, even if I end up forgetting a few half-eaten packages of them under my bed.

My dad will never let me live down that now-mummified mistake.

Aesthetic enchantment aside, I will concede that the flavor and texture of Peeps is a polarizing and tinglingly molarizing issue. While I appreciate topiary marshmallow art when it’s seasonally appropriate, I can empathize with those who avoid the chicks and bunnies like glittered styrofoam.

Because even for me, the initial thought of a Peeps Cereal seemed foreboding. Along with Sour Patch Kids Cereal and upcoming Chicken & Waffles Cereal, it felt as if three of the four cereal horsemen of the apocalypse were leading their steeds away from milky troughs and into battle. And seeing that it’s a “marshmallow-flavored cereal with marshmallows” only made me welcome whatever cereal Death’s white mare will rear (Scynnamon Scythes?).

But then I saw the box, and my worries melted into a childish frenzy of “gotta try it” tunnel vision. I mean, just look at those loop colors: I want a beaded curtain of ’em! So whether you’re a Peeps fan or protestor, join me in my trip down the double-‘mallowed rabbit hole. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, kelloggs, marshmallow, spring. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Rice Krispies Treats Snap Crackle Poppers (3 Flavors!)

What makes a balanced breakfast?

Cereal commercials will have you believe it calls for toast, fruit, milked cereal, another glass of milk, maybe like a sausage?, and some OJ for good measure. Despite such a figurative feast’s skewed carbo-hydrating to protein ratio, it’s still probably a better balanced breakfast than what I had in mind: a bowl of Rice Krispies in one hand and Cocoa Krispies in the other—each precariously perched on a card-tower of respective Confetti Cupcake and Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts.

Perfectly balanced, as all impending stomachaches should be.

That said, I’m really excited to work Kellogg’s new Rice Krispies Treats Snap Crackle Poppers into my balanced breakfast. Why, you ask? Because they’d make quite the square meal.

Nothing quite like 100 words of buildup to a two-word punchline. Anyway, for those still with me after that egregious comedy sin, it’s time to do some sweet penance: a three-part munchline of creamily coated and cubed Rice Krispies! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, 8 rating, chocolate, cookies and cream, kellogg's, rice krispies, vanilla. 2 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Strawberry Shortcake Crunch

“Let them eat cake.” — Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch

Well, probably. The origin of that quote is disputed by historians, biographers, and cereal box scribes, so it may very well have been everyone’s favorite breakfast boatman. After all, the never-aging Cap’n appears to be forever sailing in some timeless sea or milky non-place, so an 1843 quotation would feel like yesterday to such a mustachioed morning mainstay.

I’ve been analyzing Crunchian flavor trends already, but Cap’n “Deliciousness of the Endless” Crunch seems to have a growing fixation on cakes. After all, doughnuts are pretty much fried cakes—as are pancakes—so his latest variety may suggest more crunchy cakes in the future.

It’s called Strawberry Shortcake Crunch, and whatever mild conceptual surprise it brings is compounded by its genuinely interesting choice to pair Crunch Berry pieces with loops instead of classic Cap’n chests. Was this done to simply mimic a round, puffed pastry? To make it easier to squelch whipped cream into every piece? Or perhaps to nefariously lure Sonic the Hedgehog into his watery grave?

Because I don’t know about you, but I can’t rule out that Cap’n Crunch is just Dr. Eggman in disguise.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, quaker, strawberry. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Frosted Crisp Apple Pop-Tarts

Wait, what the heck are these big flat things?

Steamrolled Pop-Tarts Bites? Stretch Armstrong-ed Pop-Tarts Crisps? The assimilated sentience of several dozen Pop-Tarts Cereal pieces?

Oh, right: I remember those retro rectangles now. Original Pop-Tarts—or OG PTs, as the kids may very well say—were what Kellogg’s used to make way back in 2018, before they seemingly decided to infuse essential Pop-Tart oils into every other snack product imaginable.

But after three spin-offs (that are really re-educated old school products), Pop-Tarts has finally released a new full-sized pastry, too (even if it’s really the latest in a long, long line of its kind). It’s called Crisp Apple, and it foregoes much of the flamboyant detailing of its apple’d ancestors in favor of a simplistic sauce blanche, almost exactly like that seen on Apple Blast Pop-Tarts—a flavor available in the U.K. since 2014.

But will this version be as American as apple handpies, or will its apple fall a few furlongs too far from its frosted family tree? Let me untwist my tongue and put it to work.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, apple, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal Peanut Butter Cookie Bites

Look, I don’t know much about sacred geometry, but I’m still going to thank it. Whatever Euclidian miracle is allowing my long-lost (or so it feels) Waffle Crisp to live on in spirit post-discontinuation deserves my praise. And Waffle Crisp’s memory isn’t being preserved in just one cereal analogue, either: Chicken & Waffles Cereal, which I’m ashamed to have just casually typed, is be bringing back the real, bite-sized Belgian thing; but Honey Bun Cereal presented an interesting, if not geometrically adjacent, twist on the concept.

The most important similarity is their source: Waffle Crisp and its latest subspecies are all made by Post. Post just happens to own Malt-O-Meal, making the economically bagged and bulging cereal company’s new Peanut Butter Cookie Bites a technical tangential relative of Waffle crisp, too. Though these PB pieces are round, I simply can’t disown them from my mental retcon of Waffle Crisp genealogy, as they have their father’s tic-tac-toed belly.

But will Malt-O-Meal’s Peanut Butter Cookie Bites live up to its nostalgically syruped parentage, or am I simply using this long-winded introduction to cope with Waffle Crisp’s disappearance? Better try coping calorically to compare. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, malt-o-meal, peanut butter. 6 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch

To paraphrase a notable shrimp entrepreneur, “Valentine’s Day is like a box of Crunch Berries: you always know what you’re gonna get.”

And this made-up quote from a made-up character is right: February 14th inevitably means the same parade of uneaten Conversation Hearts, shamefully scarfed Reese’s Hearts, and tentatively nibbled (but ultimately abandoned) coconut chocolate-box rejects. For a Hallmark holiday, it seems to lack inspiration.

The company ought to call Yami Yugi, as it appears to have ignored the Heart of the Cards. Or maybe just shoot a text to Cap’n Crunch.

See, like Valentine’s Day, Cap’n Crunch’s infinitely iterated Crunch Berries cereals seasonally remix the geometry and color psychology of each, without touching the tried-and-true flavor formula. That is, until now, as H.M. Crunch’s Valentine-adjacent Chocolatey Berry Crunch brings chocolate to the Cap’n’s well-oiled chests and strawberry to his lovingly processed Crunch Berries.

Which is all to say that if Cap’n Crunch is breaking tradition just to make us his Valentine, he better buy us dinner too, before we accept his invitation to this dessert of a breakfast. But will this fresh face make him look like a snack, or will his cereal’s fresh duds be just that?

There’s just one way to find out, and I hope it doesn’t involve kissing a sea-brined mustache.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, chocolate, quaker. 4 Comments