Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal

IHOP, matey!

Whoops, that was weird. I meant to write, “Ahoy, matey!” Sorry about that. Anyway, come on and IHOP aboard my cereal review ship, and we’ll…darn, I did it again! I really must have pancakes on my mind today.

IHOPe it doesn’t happen again.

But really, how can anyone not have pancakes stuck to their brains like syrupy griddlecakes to a plate when Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch cereal is finally here? Sold in boxes taller than Paul Bunyan’s flapjack stacks, Blueberry Pancake Crunch combines fruity aquamarine and maple-flavored creme puffs (no, not that kind of cream puffs, sorry) to re-create a fascinatingly obscure breakfast in cereal form.

Personally, I would have preferred Buckwheat Pancake Crunch, but my pancake house menu choices are decidedly more octogenarian than most.

So while all you kids turn on Matlock for me and get off my darn lawn, I’ll pour a fresh bowl of spherical Johnnycakes. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, cap'n crunch, maple, quaker. 23 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (DC Comics Villains Edition)

I think I can imagine how the supervillainous plot to release Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts originated:

The Joker paces back-and-forth madly in the abandoned Pop-Tart factory he and Lex Luthor are using as a haphazard base of operations. With a cackle, he has a sudden idea.

“I’ve got it, Lex,” the Joker cries. “We’ll kidnap all the world’s Pop-Tarts and smush them together into otherwise nonsensical taste combinations! Just picture it: Watermelon S’Mores Pop-Tarts. Blueberry Root Beer Pop-Tarts. Cookies & Creme PB&J Pop-Tarts. We’ll flood the streets with a hasty pastry army, causing mass confusion and hysteria!”

“But why?” Lex replies.

The Joker chuckles maniacally: “Some men just want to watch the world yearn…for obscurely flavored, impulsively purchased breakfast treats!”

And thus, Chocolate Sugar Cookies Pop-Tarts were born. This flavor combo isn’t really that strange, but when’s the last time you had an actual chocolate sugar cookie? Maybe my cheeks are too stuffed with gingerbread men during December to notice, but compared to snickerdoodles or fruitcake, chocolate sugar cookies seem more like the shiny Pokémon of holiday dessert platters. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, kelloggs, non cereal, pop-tarts. 4 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: General Mills Girl Scouts Thin Mints Cereal

I’ve always wanted to be a Girl Scout.

No, not because of the cool turquoise sash or the fact that people would call me a “Brownie.” People already called me that growing up, although it was probably because of my fudgy dessert-based diet.

I wanted to be a Girl Scout because I think I would’ve been a darn good cookie salesman. Imagine a young me—cute as a button instead of pudgy and brownie-stuffed—rolling up to your house and telling you in great detail about “the tempting allure of a decadent, dark chocolate moon, so packed with refreshing swirls of cocoa and mint that when you taste it, you won’t know whether you bit the cookie or whether the cookie bit you back with a coy, romantic nibble.” No one would be able to resist that pitch.

But alas, this whole “Y chromosome” thing has kept me out of the baked good-hawking game, while my fear of dirt and complex knots has kept me out of the Boy Scouts. Now I just order tons of Tagalongs and tell the Girl Scouts helpful adjectives they can use to win over the next sap.

Now we’ve come full circle, as my cereal blog full of outlandish flavor descriptions now gets the chance to review General Mills’s new Girl Scouts Thin Mints cereal. As a partnership with the Girl Scouts, General Mills released this cereal alongside the Samoa-flavored Caramel Crunch, choosing to breakfast-ify the Scouts’s two most popular cookies instead of the tragically neglected Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos.

And yes, I’m sure there’s probably one guy out there who’s really, really upset there’s no Trefoil Cereal. One guy.
Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, general mills, girl scouts. 17 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Malt-O-Meal Cookies & Cream Cereal

Oreo O’s are (kind of) back in America! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Wait, you mean that was almost three weeks ago?

Okay: it’s a New Year’s miracle!

Oh, it’s already January 11th?

Uh, fine: it’s a…German Apples Day miracle?

Let’s go with that. Whether it’s trees bearing deutschen apfels or the good people at Malt-O-Meal, someone deserves praise for bringing cream-speckled chocolate rings back to American breakfast aisles. Cookies & Cream obviously isn’t Oreo O’s—it doesn’t even have a jazzy blob mascot with sunglasses and a creamy quiff hairdo—but it should definitely be considered a spiritual successor.

See, Post Foods lost the right to produce Oreo O’s in a confusing business acquisition snafu between Kraft, General Foods, and Dongsuh Foods, leading to the beloved cookie cereal’s 2005 discontinuation in the U.S. But Post also bought Malt-O-Meal last year. And they must’ve still had their old cream-filling infusion machine laying around somewhere gathering dust, because those recognizable, glittering white and brown cocoa rings we all spent large sums of money importing from Korea are now back on native soil.

Okay, I might have been the only one sinking significant funds into trans-Pacific breakfast shipments, but that’s beside the point. What matters is that, after all they’ve been through, Oreo O’s are (pretty much) home free again under a different name. I like to think they’re just in the witness protection program for witnessing whatever top-secret process turns Oreo cookies into pure cereal magic.

I imagine it involves divine intervention and no fewer than a dozen wizards. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, malt-o-meal, oreo o's. 24 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cinnamon Squares Cereal

Is 2017 poised to be the Year of Cinnamon?

Cinnamon Pebbles hit shelves just as the new year did. Cinnamon Frosted Flakes will be making its full, nationwide debut this month. And now, with the release of these Crunchy Cinnamon Squares, Trader Joe is eyeing the cereal aisle’s “Sugar-Swirled Cinnamon” throne. His cookie butter-colored irises watch deviously as Cinnamon Toast Crunch sits squarely on that very same seat.

“Soon,” he whispers.

But will Trader Joe’s newest cereal be tasty enough to overthrow a 22-year old cinnamon dynasty? The side of its box claims that, “after one bite you may want to eat these Crunchy Cinnamon Squares for every meal,” but the front doesn’t even feature any grandfatherly bakers or cannibalistic quadrilaterals: just the same calm blue color scheme of Andy’s wallpaper in Toy Story. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cinnamon, trader joe's. 12 Comments

Jan. ’17

News: Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal is Here!

Cap'n Crunch's Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal Box

(Image via Quaker)

(Update: We reviewed Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch cereal!)

SOS: get me to an IHOP, ASAP!

Why am in such an urgent pancake panic, you ask? Well our Instagram friends money0351 and Oreo Hunters tipped us off about Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch, and just looking at it above makes my blood syrup levels plummet. I’m gonna need a buttermilk IV to keep my system from going into griddlecake gridlock.

Move aside banana #pancakes…Crunch Cakes are where it's at. #CapnCrunch pic.twitter.com/E00ile0LSW

— Cap'n Crunch (@RealCapnCrunch) December 28, 2016

Though Cap’n Crunch’s recent, drool-inducing tweet might’ve been a hint, I did not see this one coming. Just like with last summer’s Orange Creampop Crunch, it’s nearly impossible to predict what the good Cap’n’s next obscure dessert-flavored cereal will be these days. Blueberry Pancake Crunch could’ve just as easily been Maple Bacon Crunch, Syrup-Glazed Sweet Potato Crunch, or Chicken & Waffles Crunch.

Sorry, I still have maple leaves stuck in my mind—stuck with syrup, that is.

Apparently the cereal has already been spotted at Walmart and Albertsons, and it will have a nationwide release soon. Once my French toast frenzy has calmed down into a manageable flapjack fantod, you’d better believe I’m going to drive off looking for it. No rain, sleet, snow, or cloudy with a chance of meatball is going to stop me. Hey, there’s my prediction for Cap’n Crunch’s next cereal: “Spaghetti & Meatball Crunch.”

Endless thanks (even more endless than IHOP’s all-you-can-eat pancakes) go to money0351 and Oreo Hunters for the tip. If you’d like to share a fresh cereal scoop, click yourself right on over to our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com. There’s a good chance your picture could be featured on the site.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cap'n crunch, maple, quaker. 10 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies

Confession time: when I was a kid, I loved the Keebler Elves.

Ernie. Ma Keebler. Buckets. Fast Eddie. Even that mischievous miscreant Elwood. I treated my E.L. Fudge cookies like edible action figures, using them to reenact the Hollow Tree’s treat assembly line and play games of “synchronized milk diving.” Later in my adolescence, the cookies even became diplomats in tense scenes of imagined inter-arboreal geopolitics.

Let’s just say I had more snacks than friends for a while there.

Since my history with Keebler is long and sentimental, it was a Coconut Dream come true to hear that Kellogg’s was releasing a new Keebler Cereal, even after 2008’s Keebler Cookie Crunch Cereal was discontinued. And I’m Double Stuffed with joy to see that we got the real, two-dimensional Ernie on the packaging, instead of the computer-inept, ironically meme-ing CGI Ernie from Twitter:

Can someone put me in the picture with the Pumpkin Spice Fudge Stripes? I haven't been to the Photo Shop. pic.twitter.com/3slP6LFKxo

— Keebler (@KeeblerUS) September 12, 2016

With promises of real chocolate chip cookies inside, this cereal is singing my name like an Elf at work. I’m expecting big, doughy things from Keebler Cereal, but if all else fails, I’m sure I can still use the cookie pieces as projectiles for an E.L. Fudge-manned trebuchet. Let’s fire away! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, kelloggs. 13 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Pecan & Maple Brown Sugar Honey Bunches of Oats

Has Honey Bunches of Oats been taking lessons from Nintendo?

Because Nintendo is the master of releasing “upgrades” that are actually wholly new, entirely better products. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance. The Wii and the Wii U. Luigi and Waluigi. The list goes on.

Post must be studying in Mario’s dojo, because even though Pecan & Maple Brown Sugar Honey Bunches of Oats are billed as an “improved” version of their old Pecan Honey Bunches of Oats, I can already tell this new cereal’s going to render its predecessor totally obsolete.

Which is a good thing, because you can’t even buy Pecan Honey Bunches of Oats any more. How do I know? Because one look at Honey Bunches of Oats’s Facebook page reveals a dedicated legion of Pecan Honey Bunch lovers who continually mourn the loss of their dearly beloved, roasted nut-flavored breakfast product.

Well, let’s just hope this cult following approves of Pecan & Maple Brown Sugar Honey Bunches of Oats. Otherwise there might be a nutty Internet meltdown, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 2016’s infamous Hostess Suzy Q fiasco. Continue reading →

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