BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Strawberry Rice Krispies Treats are actually pretty amazing. Compared to Strawberry Krispies Cereal, the fruit flavor here is sharper, juicier and more fruit-snacky. Plus they look like weird alien brains when photographed in portrait mode. That's a win-win! pic.twitter.com/6UfvFnspu4
— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) May 16, 2021
My cereal cupboard overfloweth, so a tweet will suffice for this pink eat (that kinda looks like meat).
Cereal is for squares.
No, really. Though of course all food is three-dimensional, especially the well-rounded corn puff, but when it comes to crunchy quadrilaterals, we get a lot of squarish, rectangular, and pillowy things, yet never any perfectionist-pleasing union of six squares. Hence why cereal scholars have been asking for decades: when will breakfast enter its cubist period?
Following their controversial performance piece “The Bastardization of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal,” A.M. auteurs Snap, Crackle and Pop are back with a freshly caramelized coat of paint on last year’s Snap Crackle Poppers. So while I loathe what’s become of RKTC with every snap and crackle of my boiling blood, this line of miniaturized and glazed Treats is actually pretty good—especially the Cookies ‘n’ Creme ones.
It’s surely only a matter of time before Kellogg’s piggybacks off this geometric success to release Raisin Bran bites in the shape of Metatron’s Cube. But in the mean time, let’s see how the Rice Krispies boys’ latest inherently stackable snack stacks up to its predecessors. Continue reading
Following the heralding Thanks of this past week, the season of giving can truly commence. I see no better way to start than by giving Gabe Fonseca’s latest generously and genuinely cereal-smithed quartet of Cereal Time breakfast OCs.
If you haven’t already subscribed to Cereal Time on YouTube, I recommend it. Not only is it a great retrospective counterpart to the modern crunchy journalism done here, but Gabe is dedicated enough to the cereal craft to have helped me out innumerable times with cereal knowledge and memorabilia.
And then after that, he has the nerve to still be nice enough to create fully realized cereal properties and send them as gifts! In comparison, I’m the kind of Grinch that would give burnt Grape-Nuts hunks for Christmas. Nor is it the first time: Gabe’s first wave of creations spanned everything from Gracelandic nutter ‘nanners to unfiltered gingerbread ore.
But can Gabe’s second take on bespoke breakfasts live up to his own standards, or will I sophomore slump face-first into my Piña ColadO’s? Allow me to pop, Ziploc and drop the facts on you. Continue reading
Cereal mixology is a topic close to my heart.
Granted, I don’t actually mix cereals often—usually when I’m running uncomfortably low on one and/or the other cereal—but the infinite conceptual liberty that comes from architecting palate-impacting pairings that transform a familiar cereal experience into a work of edible interpretive art. And that’s before you add different milks to the equation!
There are obvious mixes, like Donettes + Honey Bun Cereal + Milky Coffee.
There are weirder ideas, like Banana Creme Frosted Flakes + Millville Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs + Vanilla Almond Milk + Maple Syrup (I call it “An Unforgettable Bruncheon”).
And then there are mixes so uncouth and dubious that they border on cereal slander. Mixes like the one proposed and encouraged (but never confidently owned) by Kellogg’s in its All Together Cereal.
Released in support of GLAAD and LGBTQ+ youth for Spirit Day, All Together Cereal is a $20 novelty box stuffed with six miniature cereal boxes that, theoretically, you’re meant to gob all up in the same bowl as a symbol of intersectional solidarity. Of course, when you realize that Kellogg’s is only donating up to $50,000, a ‘stunning’ 1/258,640 of their annual revenue, All Together Cereal becomes a pretty obvious face for Rainbow Capitalism.
So while the concept is good-natured and silly, it has its share of ethical undoings before even cracking it open. But hey, might as well see just how offensive the proposed cereal concoction is, too! Continue reading
That teal…that shade of uniquely aquamaritime teal.
It’s not too late to mend your heretical misdoings, Kellogg’s, and to put this color on this product makes my heart snap, my joints pop, and my stomach crackle with rage.
Err, that last one might’ve been the spicy tikka masala, but my vitriol stands. Yes, I’m talking about the original, perfectly poised and turquoised Rice Krispies Treats Cereal box, which is the cornerstone of my (largely intact) theory that all cereals in teal boxes are bound for greatness, or at least cult appeal. Sprinkle Spangles. Cinnabon Cereal. Cinnamon Roll Fillows. And even Toasted Coconut Cheerios now. The only outlier here is Maple Bacon Donuts Cereal and its putridly glazed porkiness, but I choose to willfully ignore it—after all, it was a clear, anarchistic gimmick of a cereal that was likely tailor made to send my pet theories to a farm upstate. Continue reading
Move over, pumpkin spice: I can sense a pulpy orange sea change coming this autumn.
Gone are the days of the grocery store’s overindulgence in pumpkin spice beverages, foodstuffs, and assorted lifestyle paraphernalia. No, this year should be all about pumpkin pie.
And before you open your gourd-hole, of course they’re not the same! I’m sick of limited edition products that reduce an entire pie to its perfume of spiced accents. I want to taste scoops of purĂ©e! I want crust and whipped cream! I want the whole darn snack-o-lantern!
Now will I find those subtleties in Kellogg’s returning Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats? Probably not, but I feel like a fool for not yet trying. Though these auburn cereal squares were introduced back in 2017, I somehow never reviewed them. I think it was partially an accidental oversight caused by cloves blown in my eyes, and partially an intentional oversight due to 2017’s PPRKTs coming forty to a box. Since such a quantity is bigger than my lifetime list of friends I like enough to give a Rice Krispies Treats, I think fourteen is a reasonable compromise—this way, even if they’re bad, I can tape ’em to my mailbox for trick-or-treaters.
While you’re here, I might as well give a speedy account of all the other returning fall cereal products spotted so far: Continue reading
Oh, Lucky, you beautiful chameleon of predatory cereal assimilation: you’ve done it again!
Early last year, the breakfast aisle’s favorite impish Irelander threw all caution to the sugar-swirled wind with Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes, a marbit mashup that may not have tasted amazing, but was nevertheless a flippant play that earned my respect for poking the Kellogg’s tiger-bear.
And now, in a move so unprecedented in both shade and punctuality, it seems Lucky Charms wants to remedy the biggest cereal crisis to plague an infinity of earths: the death of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal as we knew it. Continue reading
As one legend falls, another shall rise.
Just as Kellogg’s U.S. has made the borderline despicable choice to make Rice Krispies Treats Cereal a crudely deconstructed caricature of its former, cult-favorite self, Kellogg’s U.K. is bringing its version of Cocoa Krispies to a bold new frontier of flavor.
Fronted by Coco the monkey, a mascot that once blessed boxes of U.S. of Cocoa Krispies from 1991-2001, White Choc(olate) Coco Pops are the first introduction of white chocolate into a cereal brand that I can think of, outside of Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme cereal (which is still appropriately and anachronistically present on Kmart’s website). That cereal was a bit of a flop, which puts the onus of white chocolate revelry squarely on Coco’s shoulders.
But hey, at least he hasn’t been uncannily CGI’d yet, unlike a certain trio of elves who now appear to be haunted wax sculptures.
While I’m unsure whether I’ll ever get the chance to taste White Choc Coco Pops, it’s no doubt been a good month for Kellogg’s U.K., who also stirred up a lot of buzz by making three different beers from the production waste of Corn Flakes, Coco Pops, and Rice Krispies—meaning that if I can’t get my hands on White Chocolate Pops, I might be able to sooth my sorrows soon with a tallboy of White Chocolate Poppin’ Porter.
