Though I’m a few days late, I can’t leave 2020 in the past without doing an annual breakdown of its best and brightest cereals. And since this crappy year had its fair share of crappy cereals, too, for the first time I’ve assembled a Bottom 3 as well as a Top 5.
I also wanted to present these lists a little differently this time around. Tweaking my annual tradition as well as our typical episode outline, my 2020 Breakfast Review is explained at length in Episode Forty-Four of The Empty Bowl, a meditative podcast about cereal hosted by Justin McElroy and me. This was partly to save myself the wrist strain that comes with octupling my article length, but if you really really would rather read my lists than hear them, I’ll give a short and sweet summary below.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun making this episode, and I hope it helps start your 2021 with a heaping spoonful of chill, too. Cheers!
Cerealously’s Top 5 Cereals of 2020
5. Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie Cereal
Though not the authentic, innovative gem we may have hoped for, this stuff’s smart use of molasses makes it a well-rounded delight in a year of consistent laziness.
4. Smartfood Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn
It sounds abrasive and too simple, I know, but this power combo simply works—on a textural and taste level. An ideal beach snack!
3. South Korean Green Onion Chex
Okay, okay: it didn’t really taste all that great, but Green Onion Chex has probably the single best origin story of any cereal ever, so it deserves a place in breakfast history.
2. H-E-B Morning Sunshine Cereal
It’s time to redefine the cereal paradigm, and we need to start with Morning Sunshine. The perfect combo of flakes, fruit and yogurt, this store-brand surprise blows each and every vanilla puffed cereal out of the milk.
1. Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal
Frankly, in the end it wasn’t even close. By totally dunking on Cinnamon Toast Crunch with a heartier base grain, Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is 2020’s indisputable usurper king—you have to hunt this stuff down.
Cerealously’s Bottom 3 Cereals of 2020
3. Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch
A.K.A. the year’s worst waste of potential. As the second-ever mint cereal, I had high hopes Elf on the Shelf could invigorate the boring vanilla-verse. But nope, all we got were the smallest peppermint marbits and the strongest chemical aftertaste.
2. Kellogg’s Mandalorian Cereal
A.K.A. 2020’s worst tasting cereal. I couldn’t even bring myself to review this one. That’s how sad, uninspired, overly corny, and medicinally fruited this stuff is.
1. Ultimate Taste Comeback Cocoa Puffs
This stuff was perfectly edible, but since the cereal’s whole concept was that it contained more chocolatey flavor than your typical Cocoa Puffs, the fact that these tasted less like chocolate than ever before makes them 2020’s biggest (and funniest) categorical failure.
I can only wonder what *good* new cereals might have existed if not for the companies spending so much time and resources churning out those terribly uninspired licensed cereals.
I just tried the Oatmeal Creme Pie cereal a few days ago, and you’re right–it’s delicious! Out of the new cereals I tried in 2020 (which sadly doesn’t include Honey Maid Grahams or Cinnamon Sunshine), I would’ve put Oatmeal Creme Pie at #1 or #2.
Surprisingly, my other top choice was Minecraft, even though I know you were only lukewarm on it. Minecraft was a surprisingly cinnamon-y and crunchy bite with good-sized marbits. It’s perhaps the only licensed cereal over the past few years that I’ve bought more than once.
Thanks for another year of entertaining and informational reviews. Thanks to you, I’m able to cereals I might’ve otherwise overlooked and to steer clear of disappointments. Hopefully 2021 brings us more of the good stuff and less of the “Movie Character Vanilla-Flavored” junk.