Tag Archives: best of

Counting Down the 5 Best Cereals of 2022!

Woof, what a year: and that’s saying something, since I’m a cat person.

I’ll be honest, this was the hardest end-of-year best-of list I’ve had to put together since starting this blog in 2015. Sad to say, but 2022 just was not a strong year for new cereals. You know it’s bad when two out of my top 5 released way back in January, and another didn’t even reach mainstream shelves at all.

I’m no economist, gastronomist, nor Nostradamus, so I really can’t make any authoritative statements on what went wrong with ’22’s meagre chews and what that bodes for the future of cereal, but if I could summarize my observations in two words, I’d go with misplaced innovation. I know that sounds heinous considering how big of a proponent I am for doing new things in the cereal aisle, but when those new things consisted mainly of collectible hypebeast box collabs and the kind of temperature thaumaturgy that resulted in the year’s two worst cereals, maybe by “innovation” I mean I just want to see decadent new flavor explorations, rather than flashy cardboard or outright alchemy.

But enough about the bad apples: let’s focus on the good noodles. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: best of, cerealously. 9 Comments

Dec. ’21

The 5 Best (and 3 Worst) New Cereals of 2021

O dumpster fire, O dumpster fire
How flaming is thy garbage
O rubbish year, O rubbish year
Your trash was so combustive

I’m sure you don’t need your friendly neighborhood cereal blogger to remind you that 2021 has been, by and large, a rough one: a collective yikes, a 365-day-long concerted oof, if you will. And when I started this article, I initially felt like 2021 was a bad year for new cereals, too. Compared to the meaty breakfasts and Green Onion Chexes of recent years, 2021 definitely had fewer game-changing cereal oddities. The closest thing to a show-stopping headline was the 50th anniversary Monster Mash Cereal—which turned out to be a pretty milquetoast Monster Cereal send up that, while not worthy of my year-end list, was still a befitting symbol for this year.

Nevertheless, as I retro-flected on everything I reviewed this year, I was surprised to see a fair handful of fond memories. For a vast majority of this good stuff, I simply couldn’t believe they actually came out in 2021: that’s how long this year has felt. #2 on this year’s Best List, in particular, felt like something I would’ve eaten while still in high school—if not while still in diapers.

But I’m sure you’ll get enough of this blithe oh what a year small talk from your real-life NYE compatriots, so allow me to cut to the chase: here are the five new cereal(related product)s that made my mouth water this year—and the three that made my cry. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: best of. 7 Comments

Jan. ’21

The Empty Bowl Episode Forty-Four: 2020’s Best & Worst Cereals

Though I’m a few days late, I can’t leave 2020 in the past without doing an annual breakdown of its best and brightest cereals. And since this crappy year had its fair share of crappy cereals, too, for the first time I’ve assembled a Bottom 3 as well as a Top 5.

I also wanted to present these lists a little differently this time around. Tweaking my annual tradition as well as our typical episode outline, my 2020 Breakfast Review is explained at length in Episode Forty-Four of The Empty Bowl, a meditative podcast about cereal hosted by Justin McElroy and me. This was partly to save myself the wrist strain that comes with octupling my article length, but if you really really would rather read my lists than hear them, I’ll give a short and sweet summary below.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun making this episode, and I hope it helps start your 2021 with a heaping spoonful of chill, too. Cheers! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: best of, empty bowl. 1 Comment