Review: Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts (2018)

Snack to the future!

Unless you’ve been living under a Fraggle Rock, you’ve probably noticed that food and beverage companies are capitalizing on America’s recent wave of nostalgia—a yearning for the ’80s, ’90s, and in the case of Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts, even the early 2000s—brought on by the cruel world we live in now that’s so nonsensical it would nominate Boss Baby for an Oscar.

Yes, from Crystal Pepsi and Oreo O’s to Ecto-Cooler and Chicken Fries, Big Foodstuff has been throwbacking so hard the chiropractic industry has been thriving. The only thing missing now is Planters PB Crisps, the last two pieces of which have been spotted dangling from the back of Mr. Peanut’s Silverado.

And while all those wacky retro fonts and radical blurbs of pandering marketing copy are starting to get old, I support this snack-studded nostalgia trip if it means I keep getting to taste revived old Pop-Tarts like Vanilla Milkshake. Originally released in 2008, Vanilla Milkshake recently re-debuted alongside Strawberry Milkshake, and thanks to my region’s award-winningly slow-to-stock-new-things Walmarts (where Vanilla Milkshake is an exclusive flavor), I only finally found them this week.

So while a budding lactose intolerance keeps me from enjoying real vanilla milkshakes (almond milk, ftw), now I can live vicariously through these frosted ravioli. And yes, that’s the last time I’ll ever make a “Pop-Tarts are ravioli” joke. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, kelloggs, pop-tarts, vanilla. 2 Comments

Mar. ’18

News: Ready Player One Retro Pops & Five Nights at Freddy’s Nightmare Puffs

https://www.instagram.com/p/BgZMuaYDsDL/?hl=en&taken-by=cerealkillercafe

I no longer identify with the gamer ethos of Ready, Player One. Despite my formative days as a Nintendo fiend, my meeker modern day video game exploits toggle between “remembering how great Kirby is” and “casually trying to bring back Words With Friends to try reliving the emotional high of once playing JUICED on a quadruple word score.”

Yet I support the geek-bending film because it has its own cereal—albeit a very exclusive one. Limited to 200 boxes at the U.K.’s Cereal Killer Cafe, Retro Pops are bound to be harder to find than an SNES Mini.

Since I’m an ocean apart from these colorful Pops, I’ll stick to complaining in America until a movie wants to make a cereal with me. The Shape of Watermelon Oat Flakes? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: news. 1 Comment

Mar. ’18

Review: Kellogg’s Unicorn Cereal with Magic Cupcake Flavor!

Happy Mythological Creatures Day!

What? It’s not fair that the leprechaun gets all the attention on St. Patrick’s Day. People are turning rivers green, eating their weight in pickled cabbage, and drinking enough specialty beverages to leave them dazed (I’m talking post-Shamrock Shake sugar crashes, of course). For a day so absurd by definition, I don’t want to constrain my cryptid celebration to a mischievous little green gnome.

I want Mothman fly-overs with the Blue Angels. I want Chupacabra parades so large the price of goat will skyrocket. I want statues erected to honor Uncle O’Grimacey. And I want to scarf down Kellogg’s new Unicorn Cereal, which has finally hit American shelves after gracing international ones as Unicorn Froot Loops for nearly a year now.

Why Kellogg’s decided to drop “Froot Loops” from the title, I don’t know—maybe Toucan Sam won the copyright battle, claiming the unicorn’s horn is too similar to his beak—but if it means seeing a fresh equine face in the cereal aisle, I’m all for it.

Because where else could people eat unicorns and rainbows for breakfast? No-*cough*literallyrighthere*cough*-where! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, kelloggs. 6 Comments

Mar. ’18

Review: Peach Cheerios Cereal

You have to feel bad for the humble peach.

It’s spent countless millennia and evolutionary paths to become perfectly shaped and juicily flavored for consumption. Yet we buffoonish humans just laugh at it. Because it kind of looks like a fuzzy booty.

Well I’m here to be your champion, my peachy friend. I’m very proud of you for becoming the star of General Mills’ latest limited edition Cheerios variety—a feat I imagine requires multiple levels of American Idol-style performances that would leave lesser fruit crying into their crisper drawers.

Suck it, durian: no one wants prickly, smelly Cheerios.

So now that you’re joining the proud lineage of fruit pyramid-friendly flavors like Strawberry and Pumpkin Spice, no one will be able to mock you any more, or to make you the butt of many jokes. I won’t allow it.

No ifs, ands, or butts. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Uncategorized. Tags: 7 rating, cheerios, general mills, peach. 9 Comments

Mar. ’18

Review: Lucky Charms with Magical Unicorn Marshmallows

The year is 2022: the last known record of humankind.

Following the success of their Magical Unicorn, Jazzy Yeti, and Iridescent Riddle-Telling Sphinx marshmallows, Lucky Charms has decided to keep the cryptozoological marbit trend rolling with a sugar nugget more mythical than ever before: a Technicolor Cthulhu marshmallow!

Predictably, this marshmallow becomes too ornately psychoactive—too destructively beautiful—instantly vaporizing any who see it with its multi-folded, granulated power. The end of civilization naturally follows.

Grim, I know, but that deadly premonition is years away. We should rejoice while we can, because Lucky Charms’ newest Magical Unicorn is a gorgeous harbinger of breakfast doom. It also marks a very strange shift in Lucky Charms’ ethos: just a year or two ago, General Mills was so committed to removing artificial colors that they turned the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—veritable icons of neon ’80s excess—into pallid reptile droppings (that still tasted good, mind you).

There were even reports that Lucky Charms would lose its artificial colors too, by the end of 2017 or so, leading tinfoil-hat conspiracists like me to predict last year’s Mixed-Up Marshmallow Cereal were conditioning cereal lovers to accept color changes. But after the milk-splashing cannonball of a flop that was all natural Trix, GM seems to have abandoned this ideal, bringing back Trix and introducing this very very artificially colored unicorn marshmallow, finally acquiescing to the ravenous demands of inner children everywhere.

Because the best news is that the Magical Unicorn is a permanent addition to the Lucky Charms family, replacing the youngest of the brood: the hourglass. I’d like to see how the Unicorn explains the ‘glass’ absence to the rest of the sugary fam, but I’m sure it can just say he’s “having the time of his life at a farm upstate.” Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, lucky charms. 1 Comment

Feb. ’18

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Classic Taste Honeycomb Cereal

Picture the end of Return of the Jedi, but instead of Ewoks and bonfires on Endor, it’s Ewoks and bonfires in the middle of a cereal aisle. And the grinning Force ghosts of Andre the Giant and your inner child are watching with approval.

Yes, friends: classic Honeycomb is back, and the Honeycomb Hideout belongs to the consumer once more.

Allow me to explain: last year, Post changed the ingredients of 50-year classic cereal Honeycomb to be all natural, branding it as having “BIGGER HONEY TASTE.” Seems pretty innocuous, right? I mean, Honey Nut Cheerios became gluten free without jeopardizing taste, right?

Cue the 300 comments and counting tell me I’m wrong. While I thought the new stuff wasn’t that bad, every person who grew up clutching a bowl of Honeycomb in Anytown, USA chimed in to bemoan the loss of, if you believe their stories, the very essence of their childhood, which was forcefully exorcised from them by faceless penny-pinching marketers. Perhaps my favorite elegy for the lost Honeycombs was this poetic take:

I won’t downplay their sorrow. I know it means a lot to have something that has long meant a lot to you taken away, so I tried my best to encourage commenters to take action and tell Post, instead of me. And in an optimistic case study of the value of voting with your dollar, they listened.

As seen in this photo shared by Junk Food Jeff, Canadian stores are already stocking two Honeycomb options: the new, “Bigger Taste,” and an even newer, but also older, “Classic Taste” Honeycomb. And fear not, Harold Comb, age 58 from Tuscaloosa: Post has stated that Classic Honeycomb will be coming the the U.S. soon, too!

I’m so happy I could French kiss a bumblebee.

Thanks again to Junk Food Jeff for the pic. If you have some exciting cereal news of your own to share, check out our Submissions page!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. 32 Comments

Feb. ’18

News: Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp Cereal is Coming Soon!

Image via General Mills

Happy birthday to, uh…

*frantically Googles “February 22nd”*
Dakota Fanning…?

No matter who’s blowing out (or pouring milk on) the candles, I think we can all agree that the surprise appearance of Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp, hitting stores as soon as a week from now, is a cause for celebration.

Now who brought Fudgy the Whale? And the fancy Club Crackers with salami and olives on top? Don’t look at me: I signed up to bring cups.

All cocoa blubber aside, Chip the Wolf (who looks positively PhotoShopped with glee)’s new sugar disks sure look an awful lot like 2009’s Sprinkles Cookie Crisp, but since the box claims they have the “GREAT TASTE OF BIRTHDAY CAKE COOKIES,” I’m willing to give this possible re-release a pass.

Because if a balloon-clutching man yelled that frighteningly nonsensical phrase at me in all caps, I’m not asking any questions.

Who needs milk when you have tears?

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. 5 Comments