I Turned [REDACTED] And All I Got For My Birthday Was This Lousy Cake Cereal
Well of course, this isn’t entirely true—I also got a heck of a champagne headache and a long arm scratch from a cat who wasn’t as playful as I was. But nevertheless, the highest peaks of yesterday’s celebrations had nothing to do with the trough-full of sugary spheres that happened to make an incidental appearance.
Maybe I’m spoiling this review by leaking my distaste for Funfetti Cereal, but hey: it’s my post-party and I can post what I want to. Plus, I have yet to be impressed by a cereal marketed as vanilla or birthday cake, so my only scant hope for Funfetti Cereal was that—since no one really knows who’s manufacturing the cereal—it could crumb out of left field with, oh, I don’t know, actual freeze-dried frosting piped into every puff or something. As I mentioned in my news post on this cereal, the Funfetti and Pillsbury branding is a bit confusing. You’d expect General Mills to be behind this, but they only own the rights to Pillsbury cookies, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, etc., not Funfetti or other dry baking mixes.
So who’s actually behind this confetti-caked crunch fest? And is it even worth finding out?
Imagine this to the cadence of “Happy Birthday”:
No no-no no no no,
No no-no no no no,
No no no-no no no no,
No no-no no no noooo!
From the start, I expected Funfetti Cereal to be an exact replica of Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal. That was a Tim Hortons product produced by Post, so I figured they were probably ghost-writing this Funfetti phantom of a thing, too. And since Timbits Cereal was a Canada-exclusive cereal, this could just be a cost-effective way to import that recipe onto U.S. shelves using a co-brand more familiar to most Americans. When you open the bag, both caked-up cereals even emit the same nose-walloping scent cloud of waxy vanilla!
Yet the closer I examine Funfetti Cereal, the more I can see that its sprinkle palette is broader than Timbits Cereal’s—maybe due to Canada using fewer artificial colors in cereal—with the latter also having more irregularly rounded pieces.
Aesthetic inconsistencies aside, Funfetti Cereal still tastes like Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal. And every other boring cornhusk of a vanilla angel food cake-flavored breakfast product. Once again I’ve given this tried & tired cereal formula too many words and too much of my time, but once again I must sum up this taste: it’s very one note, like eating confectioners’ sugar-dusted popcorn that has a thin, yet sticky vanilla sheen. Honestly, the blame for this cereal’s mediocrity is split 50:50, as the blandly sweet cereal flavoring blends boringly into the base grain of toasted corn.
Yes, milk can improve things a bit, but it still feels like the La Croix Pure of sugary cereals—every other cereal out there will provide this same level of sweetness, but with an additional interesting flavor on top of that! Eating Funfetti Cereal leaves me deeply unsatisfied. Maybe it has potential as a mix-in with other cereals, but I’d rather turn my whole bowl in like a handful of all Scrabble vowels. But that’s just me; I know there are plenty of people who like to snack on sugar cubes, so Funfetti Cereal could very well be someone’s heaven on earth.
Me, though? I have to wait 364 days to give this stuff away at a party.
The Bowl: Funfetti Cereal
The Breakdown: A lot of sugar and a little bit of ho-hum vanilla, all atop a craggy bedrock of maize? No F’un way.
The Bottom Line: 2 active warrants for the Pillsbury Dough Boy’s arrest out of 10
I came here to look for recipes using this cereal so I can get rid of it. I can’t even give it away. I guess too many people agree with the major consensus I’m reading here. Any ideas on how to hide it in something else? My first idea was to toss it into the yard so the birds can use it up, but I’m not into animal cruelty.
The cereal is disgusting. Horrible aftertaste. Got a huge box at Dollar Tree. Tried it once and will be giving it away. And I’m extremely cheap. I’ll eat almost anything once I’ve bought it. But I can’t stomach this stuff.
Yo Dan! Im a big fan of your website. I enjoy eating cereal too. I get such a kick out of all your reviews! However, I’ve had a bowl of this cereal and I have to disagree with you some. I personally think these are tasty. Especially in some ice cold milk. They were not too sweet and still had enough vanilla taste in them. Anyways just my two cents. Keep up the great work!