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!
Credit where it’s due: this is an aesthetically pleasing cereal. Looking like a cross between Smurfberry Crunch and a hotel swimming pool, Unicorn Cereal looks lively enough to fill an Easter piñata with, while the sprinkles are hefty enough to be used as a size reference by a local weatherperson during a hail storm.
But while it’s beautiful—and has a titilatingly tangy yogurt aroma—it tastes beatifully boring.
While Unicorn Cereal has the uniquely recognizable, vegetable oil-doused cornbread/shortbread base flavor of regular Froot Loops, its taste is like Froot Loops living in a heavily censored, totalitarian society. We’ve been spoiled recently by two similarly cake-y Kellogg’s cereals, and both easily outrank Unicorn Cereal.
Where Canada’s Birthday Cake Froot Loops had an unplaceable mouthwatering fruitiness, and where Pink Donut Cereal had the buttery goodness of frosted animal crackers, Unicorn Cereal lacks all nuance—it just has a thick, artificial vanilla cream glaze. This cream lacks the buttercreaminess that would make it more than just passively sweet.
No surprise there, though: both those cereals come from the more honorable lineages of bakery greats like Fudgey the Whale and Lard Lad.
Because granted, the yellow cake-esque corn flour base and one-dimensional “icing” does mimic the kind of equally vapid grocery store bakery cupcake you’d buy for a barely-understood coworker whose birthday uncomfortably fell two weeks after his hiring date. But I was hoping for a little more flavor magic from a creature as legendary as the unicorn.
And while this sounds disappointing, it’s still better than Unicorn Cereal with milk, where the cereal loses its palpable vanilla taste and just becomes a tasteless bowl of Mute Loops.
So while I’ll likely never buy another box of Unicorn Cereal, it’s still an addictively mindless dry cereal to munch on during binge watches of Adventure Time or your own beloved technicolor cartoon of choice. Plus, the pieces are neat enough to nail to your wall, and the side of your box is great for generating annoying D&D character names.
Hi there, the name's Rainbow Spirit Dancer. And you are? pic.twitter.com/oDs2zL6g08
— Cerealously (@cerealouslynet) March 17, 2018
How much is it to legally change your name again?
The Bowl: Unicorn Cereal
The Breakdown: Too one-note and subtle in its vanilla sweetness, this clear Froot Loops descendent is too easily out-shined next to its fruity ancestor and Kellogg’s smash donut hit. Buy it for aesthetic novelty if you wish, but I’ll keep praying to Pegasus for another muffin cereal instead.
The Bottom Line: 5 chlorine-scented Smurfs out of 10
I saw this at Walgreens earlier. Was intrigued, but didn’t get it because I’ve just had a tooth extracted and can’t eat crunchy foods (and I hate mushy cereal). First thing I thought when I saw the display case of it was “that is so ’80s.” Nine-year-old me would probably have been all over it. (Also: using my unicorn name :p )
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I had to buy it from boxed.com and I am disappointed. It is similar to, but not as good as Pink Donuts.
So even with a cupcake flavor Kellogg’s wasn’t able to do the unicorn thing right? xD
Sad… 🙁
First i was a bit jealous you guys got the whole box art and flavor makeover, while we were stuck with just plain old froot loops flavor in a fancy new box with a coloring picture on the back, but after reading this review i’m not that mad anymore.
Especially ‘because it sounds like a light/bad version of all those other bakery flavored cereals… -.-
I guess it’s pretty hard to come up with new cereal flavors, that actually taste better than (or as good as) the already existing top cereals, but it’s still sad to see Kellogg’s is throwing out such a flavor… 🙁
– “Hey how is the development on the flavor for our unicorn cereal going on?”
– “so so… we have a flavor and it taste okeyish”
– “what do you mean with okeyish? Does it taste good?”
– “that’s the problem, it doesn’t taste bad, somehow like a cupcake, but not as good as our donut shop cereal, it will never beat “sprinkled donut crunch” in flavor and even our canadian take on a birthday cake taste better… so we don’t see a point why the flavor we have could be a selling point over the other cereals”
– “but it doesn’t taste bad right?”
– “that’s what i said. But even our testers don’t thing the flavor is that great”
– “doesn’t matter, we have a mediocre flavor, the rest is done by the unicorn! We’ll make millions with it! Muahahahaha!”
🙁
Cheers!
Am I the only one who is hoping for Kelloggs to bring back the Simpsons cereals? Both the Bart Peanut Butter cereal and Homer Donut cereals were great! I’d gladly buy 100 boxes of those instead of Unicorn cereal. Nothing against unicorns lol
That is a terrible review (the score I mean, not the always enjoyable writing), but as a grown-ass man I can’t wait to get a box of Unicorn (“cupcake”+ no marshmallows = intrigued!)