News: Sour Patch Kids Cereal is Weirdly Real!

(Update: We reviewed it!)

I always love seeing a wacky cereal rumor come true, but at what cost? Seriously, you could tell me a Brain-Eating Bacteria Bran cereal was coming out, and I’d probably still excitedly debate about what flavor it would be.

(My money’s on the muted savoriness of a cooked noodle.)

While we may still be a few degrees of silly separation from total cereal annihilation, Post’s now-confirmed Sour Patch Kids Cereal definitely pushes the cereal aisle’s typically sturdy border between sweet flavors and anything else flavors. E

Compared to the imagined bite of a cerealized Sour Patch Kid, even mainstream raspberry cereals are about as “tangy” as lemonade Kool-Aid.

But I won’t let my mind’s tender taste buds stop me from trying Sour Patch Kids Cereal. Leaked but unconfirmed by Candy Hunting, the cereal now has photographic identification via a Facebook cereao fan community’s detective-ry. And despite early public outcry, I haven’t given up on it since trying Apple Raspberry Otees. If that cereal can pull off a convincingly potent sour–sweet flavor, Sour Patch Kids’ iconic gummy blend of various blue raspberries, watermelons, and loose gobs of sour powder could have a better shot than we think.

So until it pops up on shelves around me, I guess I’ll just have to train my palate: with some controlled experiments involving a fishing pole, sour gummy worms, and a farm-fresh milk bucket.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. 3 Comments

Nov. ’18

Cereal Throwbox – Part 1!

Ahh, Saturday: essentially the sacred day of cereal, its mornings are culturally cemented as temporal offerings to both cereal and cartoons, while its late nights are perfect for some midnight snacking.

So what better day than cereal’s soulbound Saturday to kick off another attempt at extracurricular site content?

Long backstory short, my friend, cereal box collector, and frequent Cerealously ally Gabe Fonseca sent me some old boxes he had doubles of. This was some two years ago, but after misplacing and rediscovering the boxes in storage (sorry Gabe!), I finally feel ready to give these long expired gems a fresh look.

So welcome to Cereal Throwbox, a period flashback to more colorful, and oftentimes more creative, cereal eras gone by. At least for now, these are chosen with no rhyme or reason other than “I like/remember/want to imagine growing up and watching anime with this one.”

Let’s dive into some mind’s-eyed munchies!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: throwbox. 12 Comments

Oct. ’18

Review: 5 Otees Cereal Flavors (from South Africa!)

Box photos courtesy of Gabe Fonseca

Like it or not, sometimes American breakfast aisles can be an echo chamber of crunches. For every truly novel new cereal flavor we get, there are probably half a dozen or more slight refractions of tried and true favorite flavors: chocolate, peanut butter, strawberry, a perennial genealogy of seasonal variants, and so forth. I get it, it’s low risk, reliable reward business, but sometimes I just want to meet the type of fascinating cereal that will blow my mind and taste buds right out of my head, before picking up my essential organs from the floor, returning them, and politely apologizing like a true cereal gentleman.

And often to do this, we have to look beyond our typical pantry borders.

I was first tipped off about Otees by some cereal fan FB group chatter, and two of the South African cereal brand’s flavors stuck out to me: Bubblegum and Creme Soda. I’d never think to see those flavors on U.S. shelves for like 10 years, given the creeping rate of current innovation, yet Bokomo, a company neither Cereal Time‘s Gabe Fonseca nor I could find much about outside of an old commercial, despite it being South Africa’s biggest cereal producer, has released both. I’m glad Gabe is as interested in these unique flavors as I, because after being sent all 5 Otees boxes for his collection by a kind cereal fan, Gabe generously donated some surplus cereal so we could both give our thoughts on the taste.

So without further exposé or delay, let’s get to chewing for an indefinite length of time (I’m looking at you, Bubblegum).

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: international. 3 Comments

Oct. ’18

News: Honey Bunches of Oats Apple Caramel Crunch Cereal

I consider Honey Bunches of Oats to be the quiet zen master of the major cereal names. With just about no press and just as little fanfare, the brand releases new variations of its perfected-over-decades, eaten-religiously-by-my-mother-for-even-longer honey flakes ‘n’ oat clusters recipe.

Seriously, while products like Oreo O’s and Neopets Islandberry Crunch shaped my cheerily hedonistic love of sweetly nostalgic, character-fronted cereals, kid me really cut his teeth (though mostly his mouth-roofing) on Honey Roasted and Cinnamon Honey Bunches of Oats.

This unlikely origin story is what makes me continually excited for new Honey Bunches products, but it’s the continued quality of those flavors that’s made me a card-carrying advocate.

Seriously, ask for my Registered HBOat-ers License if you ever run into me. I’ll either show it to you or mumble something incoherent about a wallet until I can find the nearest storm drain to tuck and roll into. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Oct. ’18

Coming Soon: Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Cocoa Puffs Bars from Pillsbury

Pillsbury Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars

Image via General Mills

What’s with General Mills and thermal activation? First we got the infamously inscrutable Toaster Strudel, essentially a high-maintenance Posh-Tart, and now a pair of Soft Filled Cereal Bars. Is the whole company a puppet operation run by a shadow council of Pillsbury Doughclerics, hellbent on igniting the world and ascending to the breaded plane?

Or am I just really lazy and hate waiting for the toaster when I could be eagerly and beaverly carving into a Pop-Tart?

Image via General Mills

Despite my aversion to exertion, I’m excited to try Pillsbury’s latest “ovenable” cereal-pastry crossover. According to General Mills, both are a “Frozen soft bar filled with cinnamon [or chocolatey] Neufchatel cheese.” The prospect of turning my oven (or countertop, as they can be thawed to eat, though who would want to risk the inevitable accidental face-plant into it) into a fudgy or cinnamon bunny cheesecake factory has me cheesequaking in my desk chair.

It makes me wonder what other cheeses may have cereal crossover potential. Cream Cheese Bagel Toast Crunch? Cottage Cheese Pebbles? Come on, Big Cereal, you have to claim this untapped potential before Doritos does!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cocoa puffs, general mills, toast crunch. 5 Comments

Oct. ’18

Review: Trader Joe’s Caramel Apple Flavored Granola

2018 has been weird. Here at the C.R.U.N.C.H. Tactical Headquarters (Cerealously Research Unified Network for Communications and Hijinks), there’s an eerie calm this Halloween season. As the big Monster Cereals anniversary coincides with Kellogg’s spoony decision to again throw down the gauntlet-shaped marbit, I at least expected to see some excitement. And yet most major news has centered on either the Festivus season or Pop-Tarts’ yeasty second rise to prominence.

So without much in the way of fresh Halloween bowls to plunder, my autumn-obsessed gaze turns to secondary flavors. Just like how Charlie Brown’s Christmas and Great Pumpkin escapades eclipse the rest of his oeuvre (I’ll always remember you, It’s Dental Flossophy, Charlie Brown), certain taste profiles are overshadowed by pumpkin spice’s ubiquity. But what’s a hayride at the pumpkin patch without cider and caramel apples? A new challenger approaches, and it has seriously rosy cheeks.

Trader Joe’s Caramel Apple Flavored Granola makes a bold promise. Cinnamon apple is one thing, but caramel? Joe may have gotten himself into a sticky situation. Reviews like this can result in quite a pun-undrum.

Yep, that just happened. Continue reading →

Posted by jared m.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, apple, caramel, granola, trader joe's. 1 Comment

Oct. ’18

Review: Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch (2018)

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a breakfast star.

Our dearly departed Cinnamon Star Crunch, who will remain in our hearts, minds, and stomach memories forever, lived a short life. Only on shelves for the 2016 holiday season, the tragically young crunchy cinnamon stars have now died a second death.

To paraphrase Banksy, who, like the palate-tearing stars, enjoys shredding things, “They say you’re discontinued twice. Once when you stop crunching and the second, a bit later on, when somebody mentions your limited edition existence for the last time.”

You see, now that Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, the ivory-sugared golden boy of holiday seasons 2015 & 2016, has returned to the delight of many, its deliciously

raw (yet processed) yuletide impact will likely wipe Cinnamon Star Crunch from our collective cultural memory. It’s up to we few remaining cereal historians to preserve the cereal’s name, and its sort of, well, uniquely, umm…it tasted like cinnamon, right?

Wait, what am I doing in this black suit and tie? I’ve got Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch to eat! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, holiday, toast crunch. 3 Comments

Oct. ’18

Spooned & Spotted: Cap’n Crunch’s Christmas Crunch (2018)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpTCEAzgwlk/?taken-by=dadbodsnacks

I know Christmas-colored Cap’n Crunch cereal looks so tasty you could swallow a box in a single spoonful, but come on: cough it up.

No, not the cereal. And not you, dear reader, either. I’m talking to Quaker, Post, and the rest of the Elder Quartet of Cereal Corps.

They need to cough up a couple Xboxes, or at least some good tube socks (silky ones!), because if Big Cereal wants to keep bringing holiday season cereals into prime ‘stumin’ season—that’s costumin’ for the un-apostrophed time spenders out there—they better give me gifts all October long.

Seriously, is it that tough for Kellogg’s to fill my burlap autumn stockings with a gallon of grade-A E.L. Fudge filling?

Especially since Quaker seems to be continuing its streak of repeating the same Christmas Crunch art for multiple year cycles, as evidenced by this early box found by Dad Bod Snacks on Instagram.

Definitely more naughty than nice, this is the third year Cap’n Crunch’s iconic yuletide Crunch Berries variant—which really doesn’t taste any different—will be using the once amazing, but now slightly stale Christmas Vacation-style box art.

You’d think futzing with those lights for long enough would light a creative spark in the ol’ Cap’n.

So while I’ll have to hold out another year for the Elf and A Christmas Story Crunchological parodies I keep imagining—with Crunch Berries shaped like legs and syruped spaghetti—it’s good to know that if the early November blahs get to me, I can plunker down with the Cap’n and some eggnog and have a merry time.

Though it’d be merrier if the nog was spiked with elven sandwich cookie innards.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cap'n crunch, holiday. 3 Comments