“What’s the best peanut butter cereal?” is perhaps one of breakfast’s most divisive questions—right up there with “is cereal a soup?”
(No, it’s not: soup is a concept, not a thing defined by its components. Please stop asking me.)
There are many who ardently support Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch. There are others who swear by Reese’s Puffs or new Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios (or at least, 50% of them). Some weirdos (like me) prefer the salted intricacies of Peanut Butter Puffins. And there are still others (me again) who desperately long for the return of JIF Cereal, going so far as to rally a posse of choosy moms to voice their cause.
But while peanut butter cereal has long been a small, yet hotly contested category, there’s a new contender in town, one with a long legacy of peanut butter snack cookie domination.
Yes, Nutter Butter Cereal is real, and it is debuting alongside Chips Ahoy! cereal to close a trilogy of “cerealized grade school cafeteria treat your mom used to carefully ration out in Ziploc bags, like seriously Ma, only two?”, a divine cereal lineage pioneered by the great creator: Oreo O’s.
Nutter Butter cookies have always been an aggressively peanut buttery cookie to me. So I’m not saying I want this cereal to gum my tongue to the roof of my mouth like tasty rubber cement, but if I’m left smacking my lips like a confused dog, I wouldn’t be upset.
First things first: hey, Post, remember me? Let’s let bygones be bygones.
Yeah, it’s true: I criticized you for re-skinning Malt-O-Meal cereals to make Oreo O’s and Honey Maid S’Mores. And yes, you brought down the targeted wrath of hundreds of bereaved commenters when you changed Honeycomb’s recipe.
But with this Nutter Butter cereal? With these crunchy little peanuts that resemble two pieces of Waffle Crisp undergoing mitosis? Well, I’m willing to forgive all of that. Because this stuff is good.
Nutter Butter Cereal tastes exactly like Nutter Butter cookies: particularly the cream. While these crisp little crosshatched figure 8s lack the borderline graham cracker-y base notes of their cookie ancestors, their thick glaze of sweet peanut butter flavor is, well, hyper sweet and buttery, with the kind of oily and candied peanut flavor that’s close enough to Reese’s Pieces to make E.T. throw his spaceship in reverse.
Actually, I think the most apt analogy is that Nutter Butter Cereal tastes uncannily like the innards of Girl Scouts Tagalongs (a.k.a. Peanut Butter Patties). With thick layers of sedimentary peanut butter cream and a lightly crisped wafer core, Nutter Butter Cereal is sure to leave you calling your local dealer Girl Scout troop.
It’s this creaminess that keeps Nutter Butter Cereal from standing up well in milk. While these curled little Nutter Butter pieces scoop up milk like tortilla chip legumes, their caked-on PB icing is already so creamy that amps it up to an excessive degree. You know that soupy pond of peanut water that puddles on top of unstirred organic peanut butter? Imagine that in your cereal bowl.
Okay, it’s not that bad, but being the cream de la cream is just one of Nutter Butter Cereal’s few problems. It’s also crazy sweet—with 13 grams of sugar per serving, even I—who usually has the sugar tolerance of the bug dude from the first Men in Black movie—was left reaching for a cleansing coffee as black as midnight on a moonless night.
And sweet is largely all it is. Just as Cinnamon Toast Crunch is more cinnamon sugar than cinnamon, Nutter Butter Cereal lacks any salty or savory nuance to make this a cereal worth stuffing into a crunchy PB&J—a desirable concoction that could be flipped for every plastic-bagged Oreo in that aforementioned cafeteria.
But despite these cracks, Nutter Butter Cereal is an admirable nut cereal. With its nostalgic cookie-creme flavor, it carves out a niche in the PB cereal market that none others can touch. As a certain wise supercomputer (who I hear loved to eat Nutter Butters through its disk drive) one said:
“The only winning move is not to play.” Well played, Nutter Butter.
The Bowl: Nutter Butter Cereal
The Breakdown: The creamiest, butteriest peanut butter cereal you’re apt to ever find, Nutter Butter Cereal doesn’t just taste like a Nabisco cookie, but a Girl Scout one, too. Though it’s pretty one-note in its crazy sweetness, it’s turned me into a bona fide “Nutter Butthead.” Uh…wait…I take that back.
The Bowl: 8.5 extraterrestrial u-turns out of 10
These are some funny ass comments. Bomb article
Well, I don’t know wether to be comforted or more distressed that others have been smelling the mold smell from this cereal for over a year now. We got 2 boxes on sale and we were getting afraid to eat it it was so strong smelling. Has anyone actually called the manufacture about this?!? I was actually checking to see if there had been some sort of recall.
I found this post after searching “Nutter Butter Smell”. We had mold problems in our house in the past, so I frantically searched the house for the source. Cleaned the trash can, garbage disposal, dishwasher… couldn’t find it. Eventually my nose led me to the box of Nutter Butter cereal sitting in the pantry. Sick! It was making my whole house smell like mold!!! It’s now in the trash where it belongs.
I just had my first and last bowl of Nutter Butter Mold. It stinks and tastes NOTHING like the cookie. This stuff is nasty! Reese’s Puffs tastes and smells like peanut butter. As for this crap, don’t waste your $$$.
I agree the smell is horrible. Like a dirty dish rag. I trashed the rest the box&poured the bowel I did try down the garbage disposal NASTY
MY DOG wouldn’t even eat a piece but he loves the cookie.. 1 bummed consumer, tanya in Washington State
Bowl not bowl sorry for auto correct
Omg 2wice bowl not bowel. Gee .i’m good hope iI made somebody smile though
Why does it smell like mildew?!
The cereal tastes good however it smells like mildew bad enough to stink up the room why?
Seriously so glad I’m not the only one. I tol husband they smell just like mold, every time he opens the box I GAG! Its so strong and disgusting. I can’t even get close enough to them to try them. But I’m not a fan of peanut butter anyway.
Yes! I got to this page trying to find out if I was crazy, I literally can’t be in the room while my kids eat this, it makes me gag. 😷😷
..bought some today ..unfortunately we CANUCKS can not buy this cereal off the shelf here…only at a little store that brings in these cereals ..
that aside , pretty good but THE CAPn will always be the best in my books 🙂 thanks
The Nutter Butter cereal is ok but it’s smell leaves a lot to be desired. It a bit hard to get past my nose when it smells a lot like mold. The taste on the other hand is good and I love the fact it doesn’t get soggy and nasty in milk. If you could do something about the smell when you open it each time you would have a HUGE hit.
I’m currently on a cereal diet and I’ve been eating mostly peanut butter flavored cereals. I just purchased the Nutter Butter cereal and the PB Cheerios is the best then captain crunch, then Reese’s Puffs then these new Nutter Butter cereal.
It’s here (at Walmart)! I like the taste, shape, and texture. I don’t like that they don’t really absorb milk, nor do they give any taste to the milk. But I think it’s going into the rotation with Pink Donut Shop.
Looks like we don’t agree on the milk. And I also think they’re pretty salty, which I like.
These are better than JIF cereal was if you like a STRONG peanut butter flavor. These are amazing. I’ve never seen PB Puffins, but will have to order some of those.
I’m w/ you. PB Puffins FTW!
Walmart will be one of the first stops on my trip to Chicago for the holidays, and I’ll likely be stocking up on these to pad my suitcase. Cereal packing peanuts.
So, what retailers have you noticed this at? I don’t see this at Meijer yet, I’m in the Midwest.
Is this only available in the really big size? In case I don’t like it, I’d prefer a smaller box.
It is not out until next week, at Walmart.
OMG Dan! That was fast?! Did Post send you examples or were you really lucky this time to snag the Nutter Butter this fast? 🙂
IIRC i liked Nutter Butter after i tried it with my gf ages ago 😉
So i was really curious how well Post is going to turn the “sandwich cookie” into cereal.
It seems they nailed the real PB part pretty well… so well, that it reads as if eating Nutter butter cereal is more like eating a scoop of pb xD
That said, i’m a bit disappointed in reading, they missed out on the graham part a bit. Especially ’cause i really hoped for the graham part to shine in milk after the pb coating would’ve been washed of the little “eights”… 🙁
So all in all: Did it dethrone PB Puffins as your fav PB Cereal or not? 😉
CHEERS!
PS: The “grammar nazi” in me just needet to point out the two typos here (just because i would want someone to point it out for me too :D):
With thick layers odf sedimentary peanut btuter cream and a lightly crisped wafer core, Nutter Butter Cereal is sure to leave you calling your local dealer Girl Scout troop.
Yeesh, good catch on the typos. I’m embarrassed how bad my proofreading has become!
And no, I would say this hasn’t dethroned Puffins, or even JIF Cereal—I need that salt factor!
Also to add, yes, I got both this and Chips Ahoy from Post. Expect a review of the other shortly!
I’m looking forward to your review about the chips ahoy cereal (as always ;))! 🙂
And no worries. My proofreading is worse. I just got lucky ’cause sometimes it’s easier to discover typos when it’s not your mother language (’cause you can’t rush through the text as other can ^^)
Reminds me of this little “brain teaser” a couple of years ago, where you had to count the “F”s in a text or the word “of”. Most people counted wrong, ’cause they either didn’t count the f within the word “of” or – in case of the other brain teaser – they didn’t saw that the word “of” was written twice several time within the text. That’s our human brain for you 😉
Cheers!