Tag Archives: quaker

Review: Quaker Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal

October 14th, 2017: the day Dan finally shut up about wanting a gingerbread cereal.

Yes, this is a landmark day—literally: the spot where I excitedly stamped my feet upon tasting Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal is now craterous enough to be deemed a geologic point of interest. I’ve begged for a gingerbread cereal (Gingerbread Toast Crunch, to be more specific, but gingerbeggars can’t be choosers) since the first year I had enough teeth to eat both a gingerbread man and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And after decades of disappointment, that stoically grinning Quaker Oats guy must have finally felt my annoying laments reverberate through his 2-dimensional cardboard plane, because we now have Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal: America’s first ever gingerbread breakfast cereal.

I told myself I’d wait ’til winter months to review this stuff, since i have so many autumn treats to write about, but pumpkin spice and caramel apple be damned: if I don’t give my inner child this one, he’s going to beat my internal organs with a whiffle ball bat and a pair of Sock’em Boppers. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, gingerbread, holiday, life, quaker. 8 Comments

Sep. ’17

News: Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal is Coming Soon!

Gingerbread Life Cereal – Quaker Spiced Multigrain Box

(Image via Quaker)

DAYS SINCE LIFE-CHANGING CEREAL INCIDENT: 0

It’s been a while since I had to change that sign, but this news seals it. Limited Edition Gingerbread Spice Life Multigrain Cereal is coming this holiday season, which, seeing how people prepare for winter celebration, means a box of Gingerbread Life it should have been in my pantry two weeks ago, sandwiched between Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cinnamon Frosted Flakes to make a crunchy speculoos sandwich.

Speaking of which, I have a history with gingerbread cereal—or at least with fanatically wanting it. A search on my site reveals how big of a gingerbread fanman I am, and I’ve always thought that Cinnamon Toast Crunch would adopt the flavor first (if anyone ever did), due to their reputation for holiday cereals tasty enough to open your third eye and hang mistletoe from the lashes.

Life Cereal was one of the last brands I’d expect to release a naturally flavored gingerbread cereal—right alongside Crispix, Froot Loops, and Fiber One—but seeing how well they spiced Pumpkin Spice Life, I’m willing to give old man Quaker the benefit of the doubt. Seriously: the only thing on the line is the crushingly weighty anticipation built up slowly over decades of my life. That’s it. No pressure.

While I wait for Gingerbread Spice Life to hit shelves, I think I need to add something new to my cereal bucket list. Almost all my dream flavors have now existed as cereals: maple, PB&J, and now gingerbread. I’ll just have to pick something so obscure and impossible that it’ll never happen and I can wistfully dream about it forever.

Zucchini Bread Toast Crunch, anyone?

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: holiday, life, news, quaker. 8 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Quaker Green Apple Fig Oatmeal with Antioxidants

“Aw, I gotta play with that guy??” Green Apple whines. “But Mom, he’s totally uncool! Fig always gets picked last when we play fruitball—a total poindexter.”

Yes, I imagine figs as the unpopular kid in the brutal playground hierarchy of the personified fruit world. I mean, fig has what: fancy mostarda and some under-celebrated cookies named after the inventor of calculus? I don’t blame you, Green Apple: if Momma Quaker forced me to go on a playdate with Fig, I’d turn sour too.

Yet here we are anyway: about to dive into a steaming bowl of Quaker’s newest instant oatmeal flavor: Green Apple Fig. If you’re wondering why I’m using so many colons in this review, the answer’s simple: with 4 grams of fiber and enough infused antioxidants to take a true crime TV channel off the air, this Green Apple Fig oatmeal is all about the colon.

And now that we’ve gotten my token crude joke out of the way, let’s dig in! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, apple, non cereal, oatmeal, quaker. 3 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Quaker Corn Crunch Cereal

There are some cereals you’d never expect to have a cult following. Honeycomb and Alpha-Bits are good examples. They’re classics sure, but unlike Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s sect of cinnamon sugar swirlers or Cap’n Crunch’s church of masochistic roof-of-mouth manglers, you never really hear people say Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits are their favorite cereals.

That is, until Post changes those cereals’ formulas, and I get gobsmacked by hundreds of torched and pitchforked comments from angry breakfast lovers blaming me for ruining their childhood memories.

Sorry, Bertha from North Dakota. I swear I just make dumb cereal jokes, not actual cereal.

Honeycomb rants aside, another cereal with a shockingly devoted fandom is Quaker’s Corn Bran Crunch. As one of those closet Corn Bran Crunch geeks, I wrote up a glowing tribute review to the stuff a while back, and the article’s popularity revealed that many share my niche passion for fibrous corn cuboids.

As comments kept rolling in, my fellow quirky Quaker-ers kept me posted on a developing narrative for our beloved Corn Bran Crunch. Tragically, the stuff disappeared for a while, and inquiring fans were told that a production error had put Corn Bran Crunch had put the cereal on hiatus.

But then it returned, and after the initial glorious hysteria wore off, something was very clearly different. The Bran had ran away somewhere down the line, leaving behind Corn Crunch, which, despite its alliterative name, allegedly tasted far different.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, quaker. 9 Comments

Aug. ’17

Review: Quaker Multigrain Flakes Cereal – Honey Vanilla

Can you feel it, fellow breakfast clubbers?

We’re at the epicenter of a Quakerquake.

Much like the seismic phenomenon from which it draws its name, a Quakerquake is a tough to predict event that really shakes up the norm. It occurs when Quaker, on a whim, decides to release an onslaught of new products—often of shaky quality—to flood the breakfast aisle with various tan boxes that look identical to the company’s other thousand oatmeal receptacles. This is why aftershocks of a Quakerquake will often be felt months later: they leave the “NEW” label on their flavors so long, you won’t know whether the antioxidant-rich. steel-cut. all-natural apple cinnamon oatmeal came before or after the gluten-free, sugar-free, enjoyment-free apple cinnamon.

I guess with babies (and suckers) born every day, oatmeal is always bound to be new to someone.

Long story short, these new Quaker Honey Vanilla Multigrain Flakes are from the cereal arm of Quaker’s latest a-Quake-ening. It debuts alongside Cranberry Apple Multigrain Flakes and Oats & Honey with Vanilla & Pecan Granola. I chose to review this one first, because even though Cran-Apple is more autumnal, last week’s Shredded Wheat burnt me out on fruit, while the granola simply has too many ampersands to be trusted.

Plus, granola is barely cereal anyway. It’s like that weird cousin who ate gravel in kindergarten. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, honey, quaker, vanilla. 7 Comments

Jul. ’17

Review: Quaker Overnight Oats – Toasted Coconut & Almond Crunch

Is it just me, or has the humble coconut been having a quietly nutty couple years in the breakfast aisle?

Before 2016, we rarely saw the milk-stuffed tropical sphere appear at breakfast time—unless we watched Monty Python’s Holy Grail while eating our Saturday morning munchies—but now it seems like every Girl Scout, superfood, and massive anthropomorphized consonant is paying homage to the fruit with translucent slivers of coconutty love. I can’t say for certain just why there’s been a coconut resurgence. Perhaps it’s piggybacking off the coconut oil fad, but I like to believe it’s because Super Mario Sunshine’s 15th anniversary is next month.

Regardless, it unfortunately doesn’t feel like any recent coconut breakfast food really nails the coconut experience—Nature’s Path’s latest Love Crunch flavor comes closest, but even then, the dark chocolate is the star of the show.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh, since this is his introduction to a Toasted Coconut & Almond Crunch Overnight Oats review, that must mean this new Quaker product finally breaks the ‘weak coconut streak’ like a cracked coconut over a marooned cartoon islander’s head!”

Wrong. Sorry to break the bad news, like a cracked coconut broken over a…you know…but this second flavor of Quaker Overnight Oats I’ve tried (after the borderline heavenly Raisin Walnut & Honey Heaven) doesn’t get coconut right, either. But what it does get right is that other nut in its name. Boy, does it ever. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, almond, coconut, non cereal, oatmeal, quaker. 4 Comments

Jul. ’17

Review: Quaker Overnight Oats – Raisin Walnut & Honey Heaven

I don’t remember learning about Raisin Walnut & Honey Heaven in Sunday school. Is that where young folks who like to eat breakfast like senior citizens go when they die? If so, the whatever higher power is up there can hurry up and smite me, because there’s nothing I secretly love more than eating bowls full of fibrous cereal and grapes that got the shrunken head treatment.

Hey, something’s gotta balance out all the Cinnamon Toast Crunch I eat, um, for science.

Yes, Raisin Walnut & Honey Heaven was my natural first choice when presented with Quaker’s four new Overnight Oat flavors. The little cups of oats, which you’re supposed to pour milk on and refrigerate for 6+ hours before eating (my condolences to the world’s insomniacs), also come in Toasted Coconut & Almond Crunch, Blueberry Banana & Vanilla Bliss, and Orchard Peach Pecan Perfection.

Why each flavor sounds so euphoric and zen, I don’t know, but I do know I’ll now forever picture the Quaker Oat guy’s face on the Buddha’s plumply smiling body. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, non cereal, oatmeal, quaker, raisin. 4 Comments

Jun. ’17

News: New Quaker Product Oat-stravaganza

Oh come on, Quaker: give that poor ol’ Oats guy a rest. We all know that he has to hand-toast every single Quaker oat before it’s ready for consumption. It takes him hours just to meticulously craft a single oatmeal packet, and now you’re throwing a smorgasbord of new products onto his to-do list! His work–life balance is going out the window, all for the sake of our balanced breakfast.

Oh well, he’s a man who loves his craft, so let’s respect it by rounding up all the new Quaker products hitting shelves now. Above we have an extension of the brand’s iconic instant oatmeal pantheon: two antioxidant-rich varieties. I don’t know much about antioxidants—my childish self would assume you throw the packets in a room ful of your enemies to slowly drain them of oxygen, supervillain-style—but I know that the two flavors here are pretty unique. Blueberry Cranberry is bold for brazenly removing strawberry from the expected berry rotation, while Green Apple Fig is the first fig flavored anything I’ve heard of since the Fig Newton.

(I really hope this oatmeal contains crushed-up Fig Newtons.) Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: oatmeal, quaker. 1 Comment