Tag Archives: blueberry

Review: Special K Nourish – Berries & Peaches Cereal (with Real Fruit & Yogurty Pieces)

Kellogg's Special K Nourish Peaches & Berries Cereal Review Box

Different foods do “chaos scoops” better.

You know, chaos scoops: when you grab a big handful of a mixed foodstuffs with blatant disregard for flavor sorting or portion control, slam it in your mouth with the grace of a Legends of the Hidden Temple contestant putting the Silver Monkey together, and relish in a lawless hodgepodge of melded flavors.

Trail mix is good about this (as long as you maintain a respectable nuts-to-M&M’s ratio), Skittles scoops are hedonistically sweet, and jelly beans are the definition of risk vs. reward—you get one black licorice or cinnamon in there and it’s a whammy for your digestive system.

That’s why I was curious about Special K’s new Berries & Peaches cereal, the third in their probiotic line of Nourish cereals (I hear if you eat them while taking an antibiotic, your gut flora unites to punch you in the colon). With so many ingredients—flakes, dried strawberries/blueberries/peaches, and yogurty bits, could Special K possibly pull such complex choreography? Or would it taste like a fire in my (Jelly) Belly?

Well it’s time to make a sacrifice for the people. If I start posting pro-bacteria propaganda next week, know that I’ve been compromised. Continue reading

Review: Boo Berry Monster Cereal (2017)

General Mills Boo Berry Monster Cereal 2017 Review Box

And the 2017 “Most Improved Monster” award goes to…Boo Berry!

Yes, it’s true, everyone’s favorite indigo apparition has stepped up his game this year—in my past two years of Boo Berry reviews, his dubiously ambiguous and ambiguously dubious “fruit flavor” has lived in Count Chocula and Franken Berry‘s shadows. Ironic, for someone who’s essentially an anthropomorphized blue shadow.

But before we give Boo his third annual taste test, I have an important announcement: Happy Halloween! May your night be full of macabre merriment and no fewer than 8 fun-sized Snickers—and by “fun-sized” I mean “king-sized” because that’s where the real fun is.

Closing out this monster cereal review trilogy feels like a fitting way to celebrate—that’s why I originally wrote this review by stupidly replacing every instance of the “oo” vowel sound with “boo,” but switched back because it was unreadable.

Okay fine, I didn’t actually do this—but self-deprecation is the key to successful blogging, and man I sure am dumb! Continue reading

Review: Frosted Mixed Berry Shredded Wheat Cereal

Post Frosted Mixed Berry Shredded Wheat Cereal Review – Box

Well, well, well: here we are again, Shredded Wheat.

My first experience with one of Shredded Wheat’s new trilogy of flavors, which not-so-subtly tries top compete with Frosted Mini-Wheats by, well, frosting the brand’s iconic miniature wheat biscuits and stuffing (allegedly) flavorful stuff inside, was cosmically bland. I swore I wouldn’t try another flavor. I started smashing all square and/or thatched things in my apparent. I even told people I was allergic to wheat—just the sight of it, not the taste.

But after being coerced by a trusted source to give this Mixed Berry variety a try, and after (unsurprisingly) failing to find Count Chocula when it’s still hot enough out to boil swimming pools into holy water, I find myself staring at a bowlful of vaguely mauve biscuits.

Alright, Shredded Wheat. Let’s do this. Just don’t forget: bore me once, shame on you. Bore me twice, I’m going to start crank-calling the National Wheat Foundation out of juvenile spite. Continue reading

Review: Blueberry Chex Cereal

General Mills Gluten Free Blueberry Chex Cereal Review Box

Ready your best Oprah impression and say it with me: “You get a blueberry flavor! And you get a blueberry flavor! Everybody gets a blueberry flavor!

With the introduction of Very Berry Cheerios earlier this year, the recent rebranding of Blueberry Tiny Toast into Blueberry Toast Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch, the unexpected appearance of Kellogg’s Blueberry Lemon Special K, the inevitable return of Boo Berry in October, and now the dawn of gluten-free Blueberry Chex, it seems like 2017 is poised to be the year of the blue-but-mostly-indigo-but-pretty-much-purple-inside-berry.

That or General Mills just had a surplus harvest of pulverized blueberry flavor dust. In that case, I expect to see Chocolate Fondue Berry Cocoa Puffs and Reese’s Peanut Butter & Blueberry Jelly Puffs any day now.

But until such a gastronomical triumph is achieved, let’s content ourselves with these Smurf-kissed corn squares. Continue reading

A Tiny Toast Eulogy in 10 Tweets

Tiny Toast Cereal

It turns out reports of Tiny Toast’s death have not been greatly exaggerated. The brand of crunchy, strawberry and blueberry-flavored mini-loaves has been officially absorbed into the Toast Crunch family of cereals, as General Mills and many suddenly cereal-happy media outlets (after the Oreo O’s news, no one’s sleeping on everyone’s favorite wake-up foodstuff anymore) are now reporting.

I took to Twitter this morning to succinctly share my thoughts on this change, and I thought I’d reproduce my retrospection here, since copying and pasting tweets is the only way to keep me from writing 1,000+ more unnecessarily sappy words about pygmy bread pieces. Continue reading

Review: Special K Blueberry with Lemon Clusters Cereal

Kellogg's Special K Blueberry with Lemon Clusters Cereal Review Box

I will forever associate blueberry-lemon flavor combos with the word loaf.

Apparently it’s really common to stuff blueberries and lemon juice into moist bricks of pound cake so dense they could K.O. passing construction workers if not properly secured to the kitchen table. And even though Starbucks has apparently never sold blueberry-lemon loaf next to the register (I still remember seeing it: I blame a highly caffeinated Mandela Effect), fat slices of the stuff would look right at home next to the chain’s cavalcade of other pastries whose sophisticated pedestals and tiny signs tempt you to consume 80% of your daily recommended calories before 9am.

So when I heard that Special K Blueberry with Lemon Clusters was going to be the wholesome cereal line’s newest flavor, I happily ditched my macchiato mid-order and impulsively considered buying a bread maker. Tasting all the flavor of blueberry-lemon loaf without giving myself loaf-handles?

Consider it bun. Err, I mean done. Sorry: too many carbs on my mind. Continue reading

Spooned & Spotted: Blueberry Toast Crunch & Strawberry Toast Crunch Cereals

Blueberry Toast Crunch & Strawberry Toast Crunch Cereals

Is Tiny Toast…toast? At first glance, that’s what the “debut” of “new” “Strawberry Toast Crunch” and “Blueberry Toast Crunch” would seem to “indicate.”

Whoops, I don’t think I needed those last snarky quotation marks.

Reader Sydney N. kindly sent us the above snapshot from Walmart, which shows the adorably fruit-speckled bread slices we’ve known as Tiny Toast for nearly a year now re-branded under the Toast Crunch family of cereals. Led by the patriarchal Cinnamon Toast Crunch, this crunchy clan also consists of wild child Chocolate Toast Crunch, Canadian uncle French Toast Crunch, deadbeat son who only comes back to mooch on Christmas Cinnamon Star Crunch, (and his long-lost twin brother Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch), as well as a plethora of dead ancestors, from Peanut Butter Toast Crunch to Frosted Toast Crunch, who the family nonchalantly buried in the backyard after they failed to live up to Daddy’s legacy.

♫ Our house, is a very very very morbid house. ♫

Tiny Toast’s relationship to the Toast Crunch kinfolk has always been dubious: the cereals look so much like French Toast Crunch that we never knew if they were related, or if Tiny Toast was just French’s obsessive best friend who weirdly emulates his hero. But now that it’s been established in cereal canon that TT is FTC’s cousin who moved south to warmer, berry-friendly weather and changed his name, I can rest easy at night—and start editing my fan fictions.

That was all a very long-winded segue into my main point about Strawberry and Blueberry Toast Crunches: that it may not mean Tiny Toast’s demise at all. The fresh-faced pair has only been seen at Walmart so far, so it could be a store-exclusive rebrand demo, like Post did with Waffle Crisp and Good Morenings Waffle Crunch. I refuse to make a definite coroner’s call on Tiny Toast until General Mills itself gives the sweet slices a eulogy.

Which is perfectly fine with me, because like my great-granny definitely might have said, “you can have too many cooks in the kitchen, but you can never have too many cute crunchy loaves in the cereal aisle.”

Thanks again for the photo, Sydney! If you’ve got a cool cereal photo of your own to share, spoon it over to cerealously.net@gmail.com for a chance to see it on the site.

News: Blueberry Lemon Special K is on the Way!

blueberry-lemon-special-k

(Image via Kellogg’s)

There’s no better way to ring in this Mother’s Day than with news about a cereal as sweetly cozy as a mother’s hug.

At least, that’s what I’m telling my mom when I glue-stick the above photo into her otherwise tragically breakfast-less Mother’s Day card.

Our Special (K) thanks go to reader Tina, who tipped us off about Special K Blueberry with Lemon Clusters, a new Kellogg’s cereal that just popped up online. Not content with just one type of cluster, this hardworking mother of a cereal combines Special K’s typical multi-grain flakes with blueberry oat granola bits and lemony yogurt ones.

Special K’s yogurt nuggets are historically pretty good, so here’s hoping these citrusy ones are more sweet than sour. Maybe Kellogg’s even convinced the Trix rabbit to defect and share his secret recipes for both lemony and yogurty goodness.

We’re not sure when Blueberry Lemon Special K is going to hit shelves, but I’d recommend you start fluffing your pillows and preparing your bed to be breakfasted in. Because any day can be Mother’s Day with enough TV trays and Family Feud marathons.