Review: Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies Box

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:

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!

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies Puffs

When I first opened my Keebler Cereal bag, I nearly gasped. Had I been coaxed into some sort of cookie snafu? There were no cookie pieces to be seen! This had to be some next-level prankishness: I’m talking “Uh-Oh! Oreo” meets “Oops! All Berries” levels of erroneous trickery.

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies Shake it Up

But then I gazed deeper—past the milk chocolate sea—and saw them: dozens of wee choco-chip cookie domes, lurking like buried treasure beneath the brown brine. I should’ve heeded Cardboard Ernie’s advice to shake the box, and you should, too, if you choose to buy Keebler Cereal.

Let’s talk about those chocolate puffs first. A logical first impression would be, “Oh, these are just jumbo Cocoa Puffs.” But in reality, Keebler Cereal’s soft spheres are more like souped-up Reese’s Puffs—with all the peanut butter pieces carefully removed like nutty gallbladders.

Rather than being corny and glazed with dark cocoa like Sonny’s vice of choice, Keebler Cereal’s chocolate puffs have a densely dusted, sweet and slightly salty cocoa powder coating, along with a base flavor that’s more like a graham wafer. They’re not quite as tasty as miniature chocolate powdered doughnuts,* but they’re close.

*Though these puffs will spew embarrassing chocolate powder all over your nice dress pants, just like a certain debaucherously dusty doughnut. Don’t ask how I know.

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies Dough Bites

I was expecting the “real” cookie pieces to taste—at best—like Chocolate Chip Teddy Grahams. But I’ll be darned: Keebler Cereal’s cookies really do taste just like Chips Deluxe or Crunchy Chips Ahoy! cookies. These aren’t your Saturday morning Cookie Crisps: Keebler Cereal cookies have a gritty crunch, buttery bursts of golden brown sugar, and delightful pops of smooth milk chocolate.

The only problem is that you have to eat more than one cookie piece at a time to taste anything—and that’s if you eat them alone. When chewed in tandem with the chocolate puffs, there must be at least a few cookies per spoonful to create the delicious, yet delicate “cookies dunked in chocolate milk” combo that rewards careful cookie rationing. Anything less, and it’ll just taste like flour-tinged chocolate biscuits.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does turn breakfast into a rollercoaster of doughs and “D’oh!”s.

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies and Milk

Keebler Cereal is a breakfast treat that practically begs to be eaten with milk. Not because of what a milk dousing does to the chocolate puffs—they taste largely the same. No, it’s the ceremonial “Slurping of the Endmilk” that’s made doubly delicious here. The leftover milk is turned into a rich river by the washed-off, Nesquik-esque cocoa detritus of long-devoured Keebler puffs.

Oh, and did I mention all the chocolate chip cookie pieces that fall to the bottom of the milk? Wait, you’re saying I didn’t mention the heavy nuggets of browned butter that sink like sugary stones and suck up creamy, dairy goodness into their semi-sweet chocolate pores? How silly could I be to not tell you about them, sitting there at the bowl’s deepest depths like doughy doubloons?

Fine, I’ll tell you about them: they’re really, really good.

Kellogg's New Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies Doughy

Of course, this settling of cookie pieces is both Keebler Cereal’s strength and ultimate weakness. Drinking down milk and buttery boulders may be fun, but it makes the first 90% of any Keebler Cereal eating experience unbalanced and unoriginal. And of course, I wish there were more chocolate chip cookie pieces in the cereal to begin with. Heck, my inner child wouldn’t mind munching down an entire box of those neat little niblets.

But I can live without it: my sensible side knows that a purely cookie cereal-based diet would result in an undesirable, Chips Deluxe-sized waistband.

Overall, Keebler Cereal may have some balancing issues, but I think it’s still a welcome addition to the breakfast aisle. I don’t know if its “real cookie” gimmick will secure Keebler Cereal a permanent place on shelves (a Fudge Stripe or E.L. Fudge Cereal, on the other hand…), but I hope it sticks around long enough for me to gradually fill an antique glass vase with pilfered chocolate chip cookie bites.

For decoration, you know?


 

The Bowl: Keebler Cereal with Real Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Breakdown: A precarious balancing act of passable puffs and chipper chocolate chip cookies, Keebler Cereal will disappoint the impatient and reward those who treat it like a trapeze.

The Bottom Line: 8 instruments of medieval baked good warfare out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 130 calories, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 3/4 cup serving)

***Huge thanks to our friend Snack Cellar for sending over this box of Keebler Cereal, when all my local grocery stores failed me. Be sure to check out his review, too! If you want even more Keebler Cereal, Junk Banter baked up a fresh review, too!***

13 responses »

  1. I happened to see this cereal recently and just now tried it. Was curious, (for the first time ever, lmao) on someone else’s review of it. I was surprised to actually see a whole article about it. My conclusion, this cereal is 100% grade A GAR-BAGE!! Do NOT buy this CRAPOLA!!!! Wanna know what’s up? All the “cookies” (whatever the F%#k they actually are) sink to the bottom never to be retrieved due to the barrage of constant brown sand bags. By the time to do get to one, IF ANY, they are all soggy nasty completely GROTESQUE slime balls of garbage. I tried a second helping (to at least try with solid “cookies” and to my amazement, THEY GET SOGGY WITHIN SECONDS!!! Awful awful awful cereal. Never in my life would I think I’d be looking for a cereal review let alone writing one. STAY AWAY FORM THIS PRODUCT!!!

  2. I expected more from this. But to my surprise, it’s absolutely disgusting. I’ll forever buy Reese’s puff and Cookie Crisp. Keebler should never make cereal ever again. Stick to the packaged cookies

  3. The good news is I found it at Walmart last night.

    The bad news is I was slightly underwhelmed. I definitely don’t like it as much as I liked Keebler Cookie Crunch.

    But I can see adding it to my rotation for the forseeable future.

    I guess I was disappointed the cookie bits didn’t taste like raw cookie dough(!) but I also only encountered a couple of them. So the jury is still out on the trove of cookie bits I hope to run into at the bottom of the box.

  4. Glad the cereal turned out to be “no let down”. You know i was a bit afraid of the cookie part to be rather more like a different flavored “Hershey’s Cookies And Cream”s than having a cookie texture and taste, but it seems Keebler (or Kelloggs) is able to deliver here. 🙂

    I’m glad Hillary already asked my question, ’cause besides the “do they taste good?!”-question the other main question is, how do they hold up to the top dog on the cookie flavored cereal shelves. especially ’cause that will be the indicator for kelloggs to keep them available or mark this “adventure” as another failure.
    But as i said, it seems the cereal seems to “deliver”, though not as much as hoped. 🙂

    I’m not sure if we both already “talked” about it, but as you mentioned the sometimes overwhelmingly “corny taste” of cookie crisp i got kinda irritated, ’cause i can’t really remember such a strong corn taste in them. So looked up the ingredients of the german and UK cookie crisps and compared them to the us ones…. and there it is… the US Cookie Crisp have just Corn in it while the EU versions have quite the high Whole Grain Wheat Flour content.
    Now i would really love both of us getting together… me packed with the EU versions of Kelloggs and GM cereal, you packed with the US versions and let’s see the differences in taste. xD
    (and don’t be afraid… it will probably never happen. ^^)

    Last point:
    I kinda wonder if Kelloggs is really testing their new cereal… besides the fact that the cookie piece have a major gravity problem, ’cause they always want to be near to the ground, the uneven distribution of the cereal is a major problem. I already heard/read it from several people, that the cereal would be more than awesome with either more cookie pieces or a more balanced “cookie to puffs on spoon ratio”…
    Maybe they’ll change it sometimes ^^

    Thanks for review again mate! 🙂

    • It might be too soon to tell, but right now I do, yes. I like how these Keebler cookies aren’t aggressively corny like Cookie Crisp…but CC does have a more even distribution of cookie flavor.

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