Hi there, it’s your favorite terminally inconsistent cereal blogger here with a quick look at all the latest and crunchiest cereal headlines from the past week or so.
First up we have limited-edition Star Wars Frosted Flakes, releasing this July to commemorate the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series releasing later this month. The actual constituent concept behind these Frosted Flakes isn’t particularly groundbreaking—mixing Chocolate Frosted Flakes with like, yogurt or honey-coated ones would be more exciting than this, which will inevitably just taste like diluted Chocolate Frosted Flakes—but I gotta give props to whoever did the box art: imagining Darth Tony slaughtering younglings is one heckuva visceral mental image. Continue reading →
We have a favorite saying over at The Empty Bowl podcast—when it grains, it pours. Which is just a cheeky way of saying that after long bouts of little new cereal news, the milky floodgates tend to open all at once, and my ever-slowing bloggin’ fingers have especially struggled to keep up lately. So instead of fumbling my way through filler-some 200-word posts for every topical breakfast blurb, I figured I’d just wrangle ’em all into this post and blaze through each headline—so you can spend less time reading and more time zooming to whichever grocery store, doughnuttery, or Foot Locker has the line item you’re most interested in. Continue reading →
There are some things it feels like you just can’t do on supermarket shelves, even if there’s no explicit rule against it.
You can’t put a cute mascot shaped like a carton of milk on a box of bleach. Or at least I imagine you probably can’t.
You can’t say your plastic bottle is made from “100% Ocean-Bound Plastic” because that’s worded so confusingly and sounds like it’s made 100% from plastic that’s bound for the ocean, rather than just adding a word and saying “100% Previously Ocean-Bound Plastic.” But Windex does this anyway.
And you can’t market cinnamon bun pancake batter as a versatile creamy spread. It just feels criminal! Continue reading →
Alright, I think we’ve heard about enough from the Cinnamon Toast Crunch folks. They’ve clearly stopped trying.
Granted, it’s probably our collective fault for still buying these “new” cereals, but am I the only one who’s getting a little sick of seeing the same Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor basted onto some newfangled breakfast geometry? Cinnamon Toast Churros was one thing, Cinnamoji Toast Crunch was merely a cosmetic re-dusting, and CTC & Lucky Charms Mix was….Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms mixed. If all those sound like lazy releases to you, then I doubt these Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will be any better.
Not to be confused with actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnamon Rolls, of course, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls Cereal just seems like General Mills’ take on Kellogg”s Cinnabon Cereal. I expect nothing more than classic CTC flavor glazed atop a crunchier, airier, and ultimately less satisfying cereal shell.
Is it really too much to ask for another Apple Pie Toast Crunch, or dare I say, the return of the Tiny Toast model of cute lil powdered bread slices? I don’t know, y’all—as cereal innovation continues to flatline, it’s getting harder and harder for me to care. Anyway, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will arrive on shelves this May. Otherwise, defibrillate me if you hear from my ol’ pal Peanut Butter Toast Crunch.
Just what went wrong with the Blue Blur’s big-box breakfast debut? Well, it starts with the cereal’s poorly promoted existence. When I first got a PR email about this cereal, it was worded very informally. This is exactly all I was told:
“Available nationwide starting in March, Sonic the Hedgehog cereal is honey flavored with sonic marshmallows. The cereal pieces are gold and ring shaped, representing the gold rings from the video game/movie. The blue marshmallows represent sonic swirling around. The green emeralds represent green emeralds from the sonic games.”
Lack of capital letters aside, the problem is that the release date was set for March, before Sonic 2 released in theaters, but it’s only finally been spotted in stores as of yesterday. This all makes me wonder if the cereal was delayed and subsequently(/fittingly) rushed—the box itself reflects this, with the “enlarged to show detail” text appearing very poorly printed and scarcely legible. Continue reading →
It seems whenever the cereal behemoth finally gets around to releasing a totally new cereal IP, they end up backtracking and lumping it in with an existing, already well-known cereal family. The highest profile case of this occurred with Tiny Toast, which, at the time, got a lot of publicity for being GM’s first truly new cereal brand in over a decade. However, a year later, Tiny Toast was, well, toast—and its two flavors became Strawberry and Blueberry Toast Crunch, both of which were discontinued not long after.
And now, this seems to be happening again, at least in some sense. Remember Fillows? The extremely dense and decadent filled pillow duo from 2019 which also got axed before releasing new flavors? Well, it appears they may be back, albeit with much more prominent cross-branding with existing General Mills properties.
The above photo of two Crispy & Creamy Filled Bites cereals comes courtesy of Michael B., from a Hy-Vee in Minneapolis that is apparently a test store for General Mills—which makes sense, given that’s where the corporation is headquartered. As a test item, it’s therefore unclear when these Filled Bites might hit stores nationwide, nor is it guaranteed that they’ll even get a conventional release at all.
Either way, I sure hope they do. I thought Fillows were criminally underrated as an uber-indulgent dessert cereal, and any cereal that gives Golden Grahams the spinoff respect it deserves is a must-try in my book. What do you think? Which would you try first?
Ever since the likes of Nutella and Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter kicked off a brief “dessert spread” fad like a decade ago, I’ve yearned for those two spreads in particular to get their own breakfast cereals. And although there was a creamy hazelnut cereal released overseas, it seems my dream is no closer to actualization—especially now that General Mills is inversely turning a cereal into a spread, instead!
Launching this month, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Creamy Cinnamon Spread packs all the swirled cinnamon sugar goodness of those crazy squares into a slightly more viscous method of delivery. Much like CTC’s Cinnadust, I have no clue what I would use a whole jar of Creamy Cinnamon Spread for, but unlike the ‘dust, I would have no qualms about spooning this spread straight up (and quickly falling into a blissful cinna-tonic state).
Smoothies? Literal Cinnamon Toast Crunch toast? CTC&J sandwiches? Let me know in the comments what you would use this spread for.
Finally, finally: a licensed cereal willing to do at least the very bare minimum to relevantly connect its composition to the property it’s promoting. I mean, a Sonic the Hedgehog cereal…shaped like golden rings! Not since Buddy the Elf’s syrup-slathered slop have we seen such a thoughtful not entirely thoughtless movie cereal.
Sure, a cereal based on the Blue Blur could’ve gone for a slightly more inspired flavor—blue raspberry and cherry Sonic Popsicle flavored clusters, anyone?—but at least honey-flavored rings are better than some bland birthday cake or vapid vanilla. And sure, the marbits could be shaped a little more lovingly—the green Chaos Emeralds I get, while the blue ones “representing Sonic swirling around” are a little iffy—but I’m ready to call this upcoming release a red-sneakered step in the right direction (and hopefully the Genesis of a new, tastier era for movie cereals).
Interestingly, this isn’t Sonic’s first foray into the breakfast aisle. From appearing on Honey Nut Cheerios boxes alongside Buzz the Bee to getting a FunkOs variant, an odd Golden Rings promo seemingly sent only to journalists, and…whatever this one is, Sonic is well travelled at the breakfast table, but this is his first time headlining a mainstream supermarket cereal.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will hit theaters this April 8th, while Sonic the Hedgehog Cereal will hit stores in March.
