Monthly Archives: June 2016

Review: Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows

Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows Box

Welcome to Marshmallow Monday: a series I just invented that celebrates everyone’s favorite squishy sugar spheroids.

Mandatory Marshmallow Monday activities include playing games of Chubby Bunny, choking down pretzel marshmallow Jell-O dessert leftovers that have been in the freezer since last Thanksgiving, and sacrificing a flaming s’more to the box of Lucky Charms Marshmallows Only that sits above my fireplace.

Oh, and reviewing a marshmallow cereal, of course. Today’s is none other than Kellogg’s new Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows!

As you can see, Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows contain Frosted Flakes and marshmallows. As for the flavor, Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows tastes like Frosted Flakes…just with marshmallows.

Thank you for reading my review of Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows!

 

 

Oh, fine: I’ll give it a closer look. Continue reading

Cerealously Visits the 2016 Battle Creek Cereal City Festival!

Cereal City Header

It was like wandering through a desert, with only oases of milk and sugar to keep me alive.

Hold on, let me catch you up on the narrative. Each year in their home city of Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s and Post temporally set their cereal aisle rivalry aside to put on an annual Cereal City Festival, complete with entertainment, vendors, and most importantly, unlimited free cereal and Pop-Tarts!

As a Michigan native and cereal zealot, I make the pilgrimage every year. While most just come for a free breakfast, I bop and bounce around the streets like an excited anthropomorphized pinball, annoying all passerby with my unexpected enthusiasm for cereal.

But back to the desert of thinly disguised desserts. While last year’s Cereal City Festival was overcast, drizzly, and cold, Cereal City Festival 2016 promised nothing but blue skies and temperatures so sweltering that I nearly melted into my leather seats and became a horrifying half-man, half-seat monster.

They would have called me “Helter Swelter” on the news. Continue reading

Review: Trader Joe’s Mango O’s Cereal

Mango O's Box

I don’t know if I can trust you, Trader Joe.

For some reason, you chose not to pluck the literal low-hanging fruit and call your new mango cereal “Mang-O’s.” And I just don’t know if I can trust a man who doesn’t exploit every bad pun possible. It’s simply punacceptable.

But I’ll play along anyway, mostly because Trader Joe’s Mango O’s is one of very few mango cereals to ever exist. Outside of Peace Cereal’s Mango Peach Passion and the unfortunately discontinued Mango Coconut Honey Bunches of Oats, mango lovers have long been forced to eat something other than cereal for breakfast.

Like some kind of, I don’t know, fresh fruit or something?

But despair no more, mango maniacs, because Mango O’s are here to provide a breath of fresh air. Well, more like a breath of mango air that’s been sealed for a while in a plastic bag, but you get the idea. Continue reading

Spooned & Spotted: Nature Valley Raisin Oat Clusters and Chocolate Oat Bites

Nature Valley Raisin Oat Clusters and Nature Valley Chocolate Oat Bites

Nature Valley’s first three cereals were all delicious. They must have been successful, too, because now we’re getting two more!

Raisin Oat Clusters and Chocolate Oat Bites are joining Chocolate Oat Clusters, Baked Oat Bites, and Honey Oat Clusters, all debuted earlier this year from General Mills’ resident granola-smiths at Nature Valley.

If my experiences with Nature Valley’s first three offerings—which all tasted like baked goods for some reason—are to be believed, Raisin Oat Clusters will taste like a cinnamon raisin bagel, while Chocolate Oat Bites will be like miniature chocolate doughnut flavored Cracklin’ Oat Bran.

Yep, I’m gonna start surfing Craigslist now for bulk deals on larger sized pants. Maybe I’ll pick up a sketchy old mattress and a bag of soggy fireworks while I’m there, too.

To all readers who would like to see their picture or thoughts featured on a “Spooned & Spotted” post (yours truly spotted these at Kroger), head over to our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com.

Spooned & Spotted: Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch Cereal

Orange Creampop Crunch

(Update 6/15: I reviewed Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch here!)

Just looking at this picture makes my tongue melt like a popsicle.

Okay, maybe that’s just drool, but you get the point. We reported back in January that Quaker had filed a trademark application for “Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch,” and after months of worrying that this was the universe playing some sort of cosmic orange joke, the cereal has finally arrived.

And its box is beautiful. It depicts the Cap’n waving a freshly bitten Creamsicle like a magic wand, leaving a wondrous spectral aura over his cheddar cheese orange Crunch chest pieces.

If you had read that sentence aloud before today, I would have yelled at you for stealing quotes from my fan fiction. But now my fan fiction is a saliva-inducing reality with a soundtrack of ice cream truck music blaring on infinite repeat.

This pic comes to us from Instagram user @keenancamp, so all photography credit is rightfully earned by him (thanks Keenan!). He spotted it at a Jewel Osco store, and since I’ve already heard another reader sighting of Orange Cremepop Crunch at Jewel Osco, I think it’s safe to say that the cereal has started there and will spread nationwide shortly.

The box says limited edition, but let’s all just pray this isn’t a test market cereal. That would suck harder than, well, me with a Creamsicle during. the dog days of summer.

To all readers who would like to see their picture or thoughts featured on a “Spooned & Spotted” post, head over to our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com.

Review: General Mills Strawberry Tiny Toast and Blueberry Tiny Toast Cereals

Tiny Toast Boxes

The first toaster was invented in 1893.

The first fully functional bread slicer came in 1928.

And in 2016, General Mills released Tiny Toast cereal. Shortly after, bread historians declared a new era of toast prosperity: the Golden Brown Age.

You see, since Cinnamon Toast Crunch isn’t shaped like bread, and since French Toast isn’t made in a toaster, that makes Strawberry and Blueberry Tiny Toast the first truly toast-themed cereals ever made.

It’s hard to believe that Tiny Toast is also General Mills’ first new cereal brand in 15+ years. The only thing harder to believe is that humans had to slice bread by hand like barbarians in order to make toasty delight for 35 whole years.

But it’s true: GM’s last new brand was Harmony Cereal in 2001, a short-lived cereal marketed specifically for women. I’m glad that Tiny Toast is aimed at the much more universal audience of “bread lovers,” and as a self-professed “bread head” myself, I’m just as grateful that both flavors now sit in a bowl before me.

No more loafin’ around: let’s roll!

Continue reading

Guest Review: Kellogg’s Froot Loops Cereal

Froot Loops Box

I have a contentious relationship with change.

Change is what replaced the Saturday morning adventures of TJ Detweiler, Pepper Ann Pearson, and Doug Funny with 10-year-old infomercials for the NuWave Oven.

Change is what forced out totally believable, badass bad guys like Grand Moff Tarkin in favor of obnoxiously nasally Disney spinoff characters.

Change made McDonald’s French fries less irresistible, banished Oreo O’s to Korea (the good one), and turned fifth grade gym classes of army dodgeball into sixth grade gym classes of badminton. Bad-freaking-mittens.

I have a contentious relationship with change, especially when I’m holding up the line at the grocery store because I’m three pennies short of the $1.88 I need to buy a box of Froot Loops.

“Oh. Just take it.”

I grin at the pimply-faced high schooler behind the register at Weis. I have a strong desire to pull my resident old-man card and reminiscence on my own days working through that hell on earth we call “summer jobs,” but then again, I’ve already gotten my blast from the past for one day. Besides, no one wants to relive Kmart at $7.25 an hour. Trust me.

Modern man may have relegated the greatest cartoons of all time to fuzzy YouTube videos, but it’s good to know that Toucan Sam and Froot Loops still get a place on the endcaps of grocery store aisles. This is one cereal that I can count on, obnoxiously large beaked mascot and all.

Continue reading

Review: Limited Edition Fruity Crisp Oreo Cookies

fruity-crisp-oreos

Cereal-stuffed, Fruity Pebble Oreos, baby!

Right, right: Nabisco’s new Fruity Crisp Oreos aren’t officially licensed Fruity Pebbles cookies, nor do they even say the word “cereal” on the front. But we all know “Fun, colorful rice crisps” is just Oreo’s way of keeping Fred and Barney from filing a lawsuit.

It’s like how Kellogg’s has “Cookies & Creme” Pop-Tarts, even though everyone and their cookie-dunking grandma calls them Oreo Pop-Tarts. In the eyes of me and Granny Cerealously, these are Fruity Pebble Oreos, so I’m going to review them like they’re cereal in circular, processed cookie form. Continue reading