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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Jan. ’19

News: Honey Brunches of Oats Chicken & Waffles Cereal is Coming for National Cereal Day!

*Frantically checks calendar*

Oh no, this is all wrong: April 1st is still months (of snow and slush) away. I’m afraid we must accept an uncomfortable truth—food science’s rate of cereal experimentation has mutated far faster and more disturbingly than any human could possibly orchestrate.

Breakfast must be growing self aware. And it wants a taste of intelligent life.

First we saw cereal take on the shape and emotional imbalance of young humans. Soon it will use malleable marshmallow to mimic our planet’s cutest animals. But with this latest news? It’s trying to transmute itself into flesh.

Just a week ago, I got a cryptic tip in the comments section about a possible pseudo-Waffle Crisp revival. It wasn’t hard to picture what flavor was being hinted at, but I ultimately had no visual reference to go off of.

That is, until today, when Instagram users Dan J. and Canadian Candy Hunters shared this very real, very ~~mouthwatering~~ pore-watering box of Post & Honey Bunches of Oats’ Chicken & Waffles Cereal in Toronto. But while it may make sense that this sticky-skinned Southern comfort flavor has flown to land of maple syrup, U.S. thrill and grill-seekers need not fret: this Canadian-made cereal is hitting America.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: honey bunches of oats, maple, post, waffle crisp. 2 Comments