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Review: General Mills Loaded Cereals (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, Cocoa Puffs)

General Mills New Loaded Cereals Review Boxes

Oh, filled cereals—is there any cereal subgenre with a legacy as troubled as yours?

Perhaps it all started with 1993’s Hidden Treasures, a high-concept cereal that paired hollow cereal pieces with a trio of fruit-filled ones for breakfasters to serendipitously spoon. Heck, there was even a codex for determining which pieces held which fruit: “Pieces with a seam very close to the edge had a grape filling, off-center seams had orange, and directly center seams had cherry.”

And while Hidden Treasures is remembered incredibly fondly by today’s nostalgic noshers, it only lasted on shelves for two years, either due to poor sales or the high cost of producing a breakfast cereal elaborate enough to require a field guide.

Thus began the curse of the filled cereal: if you’re a crisped biscuit with a lil somethin’ in the center, you were destined for either discontinuation (like Pop-Tarts Cereal) or divisiveness (like Krave, which, despite being a cereal aisle mainstay and one of my personal favorites, seems to be deeply hated by about 50% of those who try it).

That leads us to today: these three Loaded Cereals are, in fact, General Mills’ third attempt at a post-Hidden Treasures filled cereal revival. First we had the ill-fated Fillows, whose dense, dessert-like decadence didn’t land with those seeking morning meals that wouldn’t leave them anchored, bloated and drooling, to their breakfast tables. Then there were General Mills Filled Bites, which were basically just Fillows all over again, and, as such, they never made it out of test markets.

Which is a huge bummer, since I, as a shamelessly indulgent density devotee, loved both Fillows and the Filled Bites. But perhaps there’s room in my heart to try again. So give me your best shot, Loaded Cereals…before you end up disappearing and breaking that very same heart again. Continue reading

News: Another Cereal News Round-Up!

New Nutty Buddy Cereal

Just as the world keeps spinning, the new cereal world keeps on spooning—whether or not I’m able to keep up with it! Here’s a quick look at the big headlines that’ve cropped up (get it, because…grains?) these past couple weeks.

First up we have the obvious headliner above. For awhile, I’ve wondered whether Little Debbie and Kellogg’s would expand their line of snack cake-inspired cereals that started with Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal and Cosmic Brownies Cereal—and if so, which of Deb’s iconic processed goodies would get the spotlight next.

Now, thanks to @steelbookobsessed on Instagram, we have the likely answer. While it’s still in the unconfirmed sampling phase, Nutty Buddy Cereal seems like a smart choice, and hopefully one that will evolve the shallow cocoa powdery taste of the Cosmic Brownies Cereal. Yes, CBC was pretty mediocre and sparsely flavored, while OCP was an agreeable, heavily powdered cinna–molasses affair, so there’s no telling where Nutty Buddy may land on that continuum.

One thing’s for sure, though: the pieces look like (fittingly dairy-ready) Milk Bones. Continue reading

Review: Trix Trax

Trix Trax Review – Box

Name: 10/10, would attempt to utter ten times tongue-twistingly fast in a public space, resulting in prompt institutionalization.

Box design: 10/10, love to imagine a world where a cartoon rabbit and a photorealistic Tyrannosaurus get into all kinds of Road Runner-y hijinks—and where said cereal-swiping Rabbit, with his forward-facing eyes, is no longer the alpha predator.

But the taste of Trix Trax? Well, let’s talk, squawk, and lumbering walk about it. Continue reading

News: Barnes & Noble Cafe Trix & Cocoa Puffs Cookies

New Cereal Cookies at Barnes and Noble Cafe - Trix and Cocoa Puffs

They say hunger is the best spice, but I love a mustardy pop of obscurity on whatever I’m eating, too. Whether it’s a ultra-limited box art variant, a colorway rarer than a shiny Pokémon, or a very specific natural habitat, weird food only gets more weirdly interesting when you have to scavenge and/or hunt for it.

Case in point: the newest General Mills cereal cookies, debuting this month, that are exclusive to Starbucks locations within Barnes & Noble bookstores. This odd breed of a breakfast–dessert hybrid first surfaced last year, with a Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookie, and now Trix and Cocoa Puffs are joining the (probably not actually) fresh-baked fray. These really look like what-you-see-is-what-you-get cookies: Trix or Cocoa Puffs pieces melded with a sugar or chocolate cookie. So they’ll probably taste good, especially when paired with an iced black tea lemonade or mocha Frapp, respectively.

Oh, and I suppose you’ll need to buy a good book to pair with your little sip-n-sweet treat, huh? How about Grapity Grapes of Wrath and One Flew Over Sonny’s Nest?

News: Trix Yogurt Returns

Trix Yogurt Returns!

Ever seen a grown man lean back, squeeze and gulp a whole yogurt cup like he’s a lactobacillic Popeye? Well, for the sake of my area’s grocery store security guards, I sure hope they have, because if there’s no precedent or protocol in place, they might have a tough time stopping my toot-tooting Trix Yogurt-powered form from bench-pressing the dairy cooler.

I’m just that excited about Trix Yogurt returning to conventional stores. I say “conventional” because, though Trix Yogurt has been hard for mainstream consumers to track down for years now, this sweet pastel nostalgia slop has been available in bulk to General Mills’ foodservice partners for some time. But while the foodservice includes fun, familiar flavors like Strawberry Banana and Raspberry Rainbow, Trix Yogurt’s brick-and-mortar revival is stripping back the silliness to just two straightforward tastes: Strawberry and, uh, straw-less Berry.

This is a bit sad, since I’ll miss Cotton Candy and Wildberry Trix Yogurts most of all, but I understand how it’s hard to make the same “healthy low-fat snack” pitch to lunch-packing parents when the stuff is flavored with abstract or otherwise fictional ingredients.

But hey, if these newly returned Trix Yogurt cups are as good as the smoothie version from last year, I’m willing to bury the hatchetfruit and start making some umbrella’d summer yogurt cocktails. Let’s get silly!

News: Trix Treats Cereal Bars

New Trix Treats Cereal Bars Box

T-T-T-Trix-ity Treat ya’self, before you…uh….cheat ya’self, out of a sweet new cereal bar from General Mills!

Now, Trix cereal bars are far from new. They’ve existed in several different shapes and ill-advised artificiality-free forms. So what’s unique about this newest version? Well, nothing, really. We’ve seen General Mills use this same dinky lil granola bar structure to Treat-ify every cereal from Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch to Honey Nut Cheerios and Reese’s Puffs. They taste fine, and usually do a pleasant job translating their namesake cereals into a more portably snackable form.

They’re just too darn small! They may be fine come October for giving to Trix or Treaters, but at *just* 16 bars a box, I’ll be Hungry Hungry Hippo’ing these faster than you can say “wait, you’re already done? I didn’t even think of anything to say…”

Trix Cereal Bars are out in stores now.

News: Trix Fruit Snacks for Easter

New Trix Easter Fruit Snacks

Silly rabbit, Trix Fruit Snacks are for….you know what, never mind. In the spirit of spring, I’ll do the warm thing and let you have some. After all, at 28 pouches for $5.98, there are enough of these already-debuted-at-Walmart fruit snacks to go around.

Trix Fruit Snacks come in several different shapes and flavors: Rabbit heads, eggs, grapes, lemons, limes, and most conspicuously, strawberries—the one fruit in this pouch o’ plenty that’s never appeared in Trix cereal. Just Trix Yogurt.

Like the Trix Rabbit, I’m interested to get my weirdly articulate man–bunny hand–paws on these fruit snacks. It seems like a no-brainer/hare-brainer for there to be an Easter-themed Trix product, so hopefully these are more like the delightfully gummy Scooby-Doo Fruit Snacks and Kellogg’s Fruit Snacks of the world, and less like those waxy store-brand fruit snacks.

You know, the ones that nestle themselves into your molars like fillings and require pneumatic mining tools to dislodge.

Review: Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies

Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies Review

Milk? Never heard of her. Is that some fermented barnyard beverage, like a cow-bucha?

I mean, it’s 2020: we’ve got more viscous things to pour over our cereal. While many make a New Year’s resolution to get thinner, there’s a skim-to-none chance that I don’t spend the year progressively thickening my breakfast additives.

Case in point: new Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies, two chuggable recontextualizations of popular cereals that are likely not meant to join their namesake noshes in bowl-y matrimony—though I am hellbent on doing so anyway. These bottles come four to a clumsily constructed cardboard pack (seriously, put these in a separate bag or you’ll end up bungling a liter of chilled Trix sauce down your front steps), and conveniently contain exactly enough smoothie to douse a bowl of cereal.

But of course, I must slug ’em back raw before any experimentation. So forgive me as I make whatever wretched noises accompany the process of “opening up one’s throat.” Continue reading