Today, July 5th, 2025, marks the 10th anniversary of Cerealously dot net.

It’s been a long, strange journey from the high school bathroom stall where I, while scrolling The Impulsive Buy, first had the idea to create my own food blog — albeit one with a hyper-specific niche I felt I could truly own.

And while this site has been (and will continue to be) on quasi-hiatus for years now, rest assured that the cereal world still influences the gravity of my own every single day. I have made lifelong friends, advanced my career, and enjoyed unforgettable experiences, all because of these bits of sweetened whole grain we call breakfast cereal, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Whether this is your first time reading Cerealously, or whether you’ve been here since July of 2015, I thank you for helping shape the trajectory of my life like a demiurgic spoon writing scripture using Alpha-Bits.

The world of cereal has changed a lot in that time, too, and I think many would agree it hasn’t been for the better. The Big 4 cereal giants continue to crank out cheap, corn-based, and birthday cake-basted non-starters, while the classics, too, constantly get inferior re-formulations so their corporate creators can save pennies on the dollar. Sure, they may say they need to do so, since cereal sales are down, but maybe sales are down because a lot of cereal sucks now?

On the bright side, there are still fun new innovations to be found, and a lot of your old favorites still taste like you remember, so I figured I’d celebrate Cerealously entering the double digits by digging back into one of the first cereals I ever reviewed on this site — with a 10/10 score, no less.

Yes, it’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran, a cereal I admittedly haven’t eaten in years. But I was grocery shopping, and a box of it caught my eye. And you know what they say: when the Crackle calls, you answer.

Well, bad news first: Cracklin’ Oat Bran changed, too. And I’m not even talking about the fact that someone removed the all-mighty Cracklin’ Oat Bran Pyramid — one of my favorite photos of all time — from the cereal’s Wikipedia page.

Granted, it would appear that this change happened like 7 years ago (but then possibly again 3 years ago, following a supply chain issue).

Either way, compare the way it looks now to how it looked in my decade-old review. It was more jaggedly corrugated before, whereas now, the ovoid squares are a lot smoother and more uniform. And according to Kellogg’s, the recipe overhaul included:

“The source of the toasted bran was changed, as a result the texture is harder and grittier and the bran is lighter in color than before. Fortification was changed to reflect new fortification targets for the brand. Artificial flavors and colors were removed.”

As for direct taste comparisons? Well, I can’t say my taste buds have a photographic memory, so I can really only judge 2025 Cracklin’ Oat Bran on its own merit. So let’s do just that!

Okay, here’s the good news: I still like Cracklin’ Oat Bran. Quite a lot, actually! First and foremost, this is a cereal unlike any other, because it holistically embraces its decadence. Whereas most cereals are super sweet, as well as nutritionally null and void, they also try to dilute or disguise that fact by keeping everything light and airy, therefore allowing for decently sizable portions that game the calorie and sugar count.

Cracklin’ Oat Bran deploys no such delusions nor deceptions. 230 calories per each 3/4 cup of miniature oat cookies dense enough to generate a black hole singularity in every spoonful. Take it or leave it.

And I’ll just emphasize the whole “cookie-like” aspect of C’OB, because I think that’s its primary appeal. In a world of scratchy, blandly aerated corn puffs that will tear up your mouth, Cracklin’ Oat Bran packs unique depth of flavor into each piece.

Said flavor is complex and nuanced, too. Naturally oat-forward, with that savory–sweet, earthy–toasted–roasted goodness that evokes no-bake cookies. On top of that tasty terra firma is layered a flavorful firmament of spiced subtleties both overt (cinnamon) and tough to discern (nutmeg and coconut).

Some might argue that these taste notes are too faint, and that Cracklin’ Oat Bran could stand to be a bit more maximalistic with its over-flavors, like its Cinnamon Toasted cohorts, but I think the beauty of Cracklin’ Oat Bran lies in the trust it places in its base grain to run the show. I appreciate grain-forward cereals like Cheerios and Corn Pops that aren’t trying to obfuscate their foundation under heaped-on flavors that don’t even complement it (I’m looking at you, cornball Monster Cereals). Cracklin’ Oat Bran is proud to be made with OATs, and thus it is a G.O.A.T.

Let’s not beat around the soon-to-be mush: since one of this cereal’s biggest weaknesses when eaten dry is just how, well, dry it is, Cracklin’ Oat Bran really shines in milk. After a brief dairy’d dip, the hitherto dense and hefty pieces — which clunk around your mouth like DVD logos crossed with Lincoln Logs — become half-sopping cinderblocks that serve as perfect complementary vessels for milk’s creaminess. And just like cookies dunked in milk, they’re champing at the bit to release said goodness as soon as you chomp and/or bite them.

In short: you’ve got to water soil to grow anything, and you’ve got to milk your earthy oaten cereal to let true beauty blossom.

Is Cracklin’ Oat Bran perfect in 2025? Not quite — I can’t prove it, but I feel like what was once a cereal with an arc of evolving flavors that tasted freshly made (as if from a tub of oats) has had its appeal compressed and standardized in the same way that so many new cereals bear the same patina of uncaring indistinctness: of cut corners, generic artificial flavors, and checked boxes over heartful ideas born from unique human insight.

Or maybe I’m just getting older and more miserably nostalgic for days and breakfasts gone by…because, at the end/start of the day, Cracklin’ Oat Bran is still among the best of ’em, and any cereal that can remind me why I started this site in the first place is worth keeping in my pantry.

And with that, I’m calling it a wrap on Cerealously’s first ten years. Despite everything, I look forward to seeing what the future holds for cereal — and for me, a seeming vessel in my own right for its vitamin-enriched whims and wiles. Has cereal altered your life in any strange and unpredictable ways? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Thanks again for your, support, too. It’s truly the people I’ve gotten to know through this site (slash more active podcast) that have made it all so, y’know, sweet.

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The Bowl: Cracklin’ Oat Bran

The Breakdown: A literal cereal-aisle heavy hitter that has no true contemporaries, this sweet, milk-friendly, and oat-laden legend has resisted the cereal world’s mercurial decay better than most big names. And for that, I bow to it (mostly because my belly’s so gravitously full of it).

The Bottom Line: 8.5 pieces of Cracklin’ Oat Bran bouncing perfectly into the corner of my mouth out of 10