There’s a war going on, cereal fans. A war on breakfast!
And no, I don’t mean the ongoing blood feud between Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudel (though the latest news is that Kaiser Doughboy is attempting a surprise attack on a troop of Frosted Blueberry pastries just east of the toaster).
No, this new battle is one of superheroic proportions. Just in time for the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, DC Comics (which I can only assume stands for Delicious Cereal) has licensed a new cereal for each of the famous combatants.
Don’t ask me why, but Superman was bestowed the power of “Caramel Crunch,” while Batman pulled “Chocolate Strawberry” out of his utility belt. Which will be the hero of your tastebuds? Let’s wait for the artificially flavored smoke to clear and find out!
I guess since he has the strength to lift a car, it’s fitting that Superman has carried caramel into his cereal (that’s right, I pronounce it “car-mull.” All of you “care-uh-mel” people can throw your angry Batarangs at me in the comments).
After munching on some of Superman’s lightly dusted, gem-shaped pieces, my eyes opened wider than, well, Superman using heat vision. These are some seriously tasty sons of bitches Krypton! Their flavor is complicated, though, so allow me to explain it in a way that will sound like a geeky superhero fanfiction:
It was a seemingly normal day. A chunk of cornbread and a Nilla Wafer were taking a tour of the old caramel factory. Disaster struck when the two fell into an industrial-sized vat of bubbling Hershey’s caramel syrup! It was at that moment that their two sweet, cookie-like flavors merged into a single, buttery and caramelized entity!
His name? The Caramercenary! A tasty, ruthless, and slightly doughy hero for children everywhere!
For all you more socially adjusted readers who skipped that and now want to beat me up for my lunch money, I’ll sum it up for you: Caramel. Yes. Good.
But the best part (or maybe the worst part, for my waistline) about Superman cereal? There’s a noticeably salty caramel aftertaste that will make your mouth instantly water for more.
Moving on to our caped, crunchy crusader, his Galaga ship-shaped pieces (I’ve also heard them described as little Nintendo 64 controllers) have a flavor that is as deep, mysterious, and complicated as Batman himself.
And like Batman, I had a hard time determining his cereal’s true taste identity. I had to eat a handful and think hard, and then eat another handful. And another handful. And another handful. And another…
*30 minutes and many calories later*
I think I figured it out! Batman is Bruce Wayne! But in all seriousness (cerealousness?), the reason this cereal is stranger than a certain Marvel superhero is that the fruity undertones are way closer to a tart raspberry than a sweet strawberry.
As for the chocolate? It has an unexpected richness that is biting and almost…alcoholic? I’m not crazy: the ingredients confirm that “chocolate liquor” is an ingredient! How fancy! I was expecting a kids cereal, but this has all the taste notes of a white chocolate raspberry dessert straight out of a restaurant.
Maybe once this movie is out, General Mills can rebrand it as “Wolfgang Puck Cereal.” Heck, the pieces already look like upside-down W’s.
While both of these cereals are already wired with weirdness, the weirdest thing is that neither performs well in milk (I guess they should have given Aquaman his own cereal). Superman’s cereal becomes soggy and mushy in seconds, and Batman’s loses its raspberry flavor and chocolate complexity. Before long, it’s just a bowl of jagged jigsaw puzzle piece Cocoa Puffs.
Who would’ve thought that pasteurized 2% is more powerful than Kryptonite?
But I’m sure you’re all thinking, “Darn it, Dan. We sat through your crappy fanfiction and your obligatory stupid video game references. Now which cereal wins?”
As usual, there’s no one right answer. For those looking for a complex, innovative, and even slightly adult cereal experience, let the Dark Knight enrobe your tongue with his dark chocolatey fruitiness.
But for those of us who are still kids inside and don’t want to grow up (like me!), Batman may be the hero we deserve, but he isn’t the one we need right now. What we need is to eat a bowl of niblet-sized caramel cookies. Superman cereal blows Cap’n Crunch’s Caramel Popcorn Crunch out of the water he’s sailing in, and it’s exactly what I imagine Caramel Toast Crunch would taste like.
For that matter, they’re also what I imagine Vanilla Weasels from Full House would taste like (1,000,000 points to whoever actually gets that reference).
So bravo, Superman, I think you win this round. But just one question for you, Supes: only 25% of my daily recommended value of Iron? I expect more from the Man of Steel.
The Bowl: Batman versus Superman
The Breakdown: Batman’s cereal is a bizarrely sophisticated, choco-liquor dipped treat, but Superman’s delightfully juvenile cornbread/Nilla/salted caramel trio is unstoppable (except by the flow of milk).
The Bottom Line (Batman): 8 crunchy Nintendo controllers out of 10
The Bottom Line (Superman): 8.5 issues of Caramercenary Adventures out of 10
Good idea gone bad i love bat man but not the cereal it tast horrid
The caramel is textured like “pops” but doesn’t quite taste like them! Kind of like plain pops with a dusting of caramel “powder” wasn’t bad at all. Would possibly purchase again if I can find them again for .75 cent a box! Didn’t even bother to waste .75 cent on the Batman version… chocolate/strawberry flavor for cereal was enough to scare me and my son away! Lol! All over all well spent .75 for the Superman version! However, I wouldn’t pay more than $2.00 for them AFTER TAXES!
I know its way late, but I just got 5 boxes of each, because I got them for 99c a box. That is super dirt cheap. The superman cereal was better, the batman cereal sucked. It isn’t even tolerable. I’m gonna sell these to my friends or something.
It’s never too late! It definitely seems like Batman was the more divisive cereal of the pair.
I have not tried the superman cereal. Being that I’m an avid Batman fan, I bought the Batman cereal. I have never had a cereal that tasted this bad. I was shocked at how terrible this was. It’s like cardboard, sugar and death. I still love batman but will not be purchasing this cereal again.
The Batman cereal is like the awkward, malformed son of Frankenberry and Count Chocula, sans marshmallows. I really hate cereal mallows but love monster cereals so this is right up my alley. I’m stocking up.
Why would you mix the two cereals together for a photo and not mention what they taste like mixed together?
My apologies. I did it more for aesthetic purposes, figuring that caramel and chocolate strawberry was a bizarre enough flavor that no one would really care what it tastes like. If you’re wondering, it really just tastes like a mess, as both flavors blend together into a fruity, sugary, half-chocolatey, half-caramelized amalgamation. Really hard to even tell the flavors apart. Would not recommend.
I tried these for the first time yesterday.
I’d describe the Superman cereal as tasting like crunchier and slightly less version of “Corn Pops”, with that nice burnt taste you get with caramel. I rather loved these and would recommend those to anyone.
The Batman cereal was just as crunchy, but the taste was simply awful on mine. It was like taking a strawberry from the fridge, rolling it in a bad hot chocolate powder, than taking a bite only to realize the strawberry had gone bad. Honestly it was disgusting, and despite the “no artificial flavours” claim it tastes and smells really artificial to me. Since I still have the box I tried some with milk and it’s *slightly* better, but still I would never ever recommend that flavour to anyone.
Should have read “slightly less sweet version” — sorry about that.
I know I am very late here. Let me say this- I haven’t tried the Superman variety, because I can’t stop eating the Batman variety! I love chocolate and strawberry together, and I love that the cereal isn’t too sweet. It does taste more like a berry mix or strawberry and raspberry, but I love both of those combos with chocolate. And yes, the chocolate liquor makes it such an amazing flavor that this cereal has supplanted Capn Crunch Peanut Butter as my day off cereal treat. My wife and mother-in-law also eat it, and they laughed when I put it in the pantry! Luis it has higher quality ingredients than most kid’s cereals.
I am afraid that my first taste test of the Batman and Superman cereals did not yield the results as described by the author.
I tried one cereal one morning. I tried the next cereal the next morning. Both taste tests were in the expected form of pouring a generous portion into a bowl and pouring a modest volume of 2% milk into the mixture.
The shape of the cereal was a reasonable non-detailed facsimile of Superman’s “S” logo. The Superman cereal tasted somewhat bland. Upon continued eating, I could tell a vague inflection of caramel flavor, but it was not as pronounced as I would have expected or wanted. Mind you, I wasn’t expecting it to taste like caramel candy—and let’s face it, eating candy for breakfast cereal is rather sketchy. (Or it could be par for the course if you’re a featured guest on Jerry Springer.) But the caramel taste was not “super”, pun intended. In full disclosure, after eating half of my test bowl, I added a sprinkling of Golden Grahams to spice things up (also from the General Mills family, BTW, so I doubt if the manufacturer would be overly offended.)
The Batman cereal was puzzling, to me. Before I tried it, I felt that combining chocolate and strawberry flavors was unnecessary. Upon tasting the cereal, my concerns were confirmed. The chocolate flavor—such as it was—was decent. I could also taste the strawberry flavor. But the combination, for me, was too much of a contrast. If given the choice, I would have kept this as chocolate only.
I felt the cereal design had better results with Batman’s bat-symbol compared to Superman’s shield.
I ate both cereals before they turned soggy, so for now I have no frame of reference for anyone who doesn’t eat a bowl of cereal in the first couple of minutes of milk-contact. The Batman cereal did manage to turn the cereal slightly pink, however. Hooray for food coloring science!
As a middle-aged adult of comic-book heritage, I acknowledge that I am not the primary audience for this product. If I were seven years old, I might be all-in for whatever these ostentatiously marketed cereals have to offer.
I won’t be throwing away either box. But I won’t be buying a second set of either one.
Ok Dan, here we go. Found the time to write a quick comment on this AMAZING! review (how exactly do you always come up with all those references and great sentences ^^?):
While reading the part about the superman cereal (and yeah that was probably the only part i was interested in, ’cause as you know, i hate strawberry and strawberry flavor and chocolate is something i only enjoy from time to time ^^), i was almost biting my into my screen and keyboard ’cause i wanted the cereal sooo much!
As i mentioned already in my comment on the frozen cereal news,i was already hooked by the cap’n caramel cereal and when you say this is even better.. man… i wish this wouldn’t be a limited promotion to give me some time to get my hands on it…. 🙁
So the only right thing for me to do here is to totally ignore that this cereal exists xD
And hell… am i that old, that i got the Full House reference? oO
(so they have a slight vanilla taste?)
Enjoy the superman cereal for me until it lasts! 🙂
I was all OVER these. While Batman is the superior superhero, the cereal battle wasn’t close in my pathetic opinion. Choc and strawberry is a strange combo while the caramel was tremendous.