Monthly Archives: February 2017

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Nature Valley Crunchy Bar Granola

Nature Valley Canadian Crunchy Bar Granola in Cinnamon and Oats & Honey

Ready your spoons, steady your milk-pouring hands, and put those Teddy Grahams aside, because last year’s best U.S. granola is coming to Canada.

See, as part of their 2016 new product blitz, Nature Valley introduced Granola Crunch to the United States. The stuff comes in Cinnamon and Maple Brown Sugar flavors and it tastes like syrup-slathered Teddy Graham gravel and I love it and it didn’t get nearly as much recognition as it deserves and it makes me use too many conjunctions and did I mention I love it?

And now thanks to our Instagram friend Nicole, we know this delightful line is migrating northward to enchant even more taste buds. The name is different—and Crunchy Bar Granola sounds way cooler than Granola Crunch—but for all intents and purposes, the stuff looks the same: crumbly chunks of real Nature Valley granola bars in vastly varying sizes.

What’s different is the flavors. Cinnamon has been granted dual citizenship, but for some reason Maple Brown Sugar didn’t make it into maple leaf country. I’m a Michigander who lives near the Canadian border who also loves this stuff, so the only logical explanation is that I unknowingly seized all the Maple Brown Sugar Granola Crunch in my sleep.

It sure explains the crumbs on my pillow.

Instead of Maple Brown Sugar, Canada gets an Oats & Honey Crunchy Bar Granola, which, though a little redundant, sounds delightful. If it doesn’t taste exactly like compact nuggets of Honey Nut Cheerios and mashed-up Oatmeal Creme Pies, I’ll be sorely disappointed in Nature Valley—I’ve come to expect a lot from them.

Here’s hoping Oats & Honey will find its way southward to American shelves, and vice-versa for Maple Brown Sugar. And hopefully they’ll sell well enough to inspire a peanut butter flavor.

*hint hint, Nature Valley*

Thanks again to Nicole for the photo. Do you have a cool cereal photo to share? Feel free to pass it along on our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com. There’s a good chance your picture could be featured on the site.

Review: Welch’s Strawberry Oatmeal Bar Baking Mix, from Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker Welch's Strawberry Oatmeal Bars Baking Mix Box

I’ve reviewed oatmeal before.

I’ve reviewed cereal bars before.

But not until today have the two joined forces for a tasty crossover that’s more satisfying than The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo Meets the Harlem Globetrotters, and The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour combined. You’ll notice that I’ve never reviewed granola bars, either. That’s because raw oats are simply one step of effort too far away from pipin’ hot oatmeal or Cracklin’ Oat Bran. In my eyes, it takes a microwave or a mill press to turn plain grains into breakfast.

So it’s time to grow up, granola bars, because oatmeal bars have everything you do—just with a lot more gumption. Oh, and in this case: oodles of strawberry jelly, too. Continue reading

Review: Reese’s Puffs Bunnies (Spring Edition)

General Mills Spring Edition Reese's Puffs Bunnies Cereal Box

Reese’s Puffs are a lot like Krave.

As I mentioned in my recent review, Krave is a cereal with nearly limitless potential for awesome flavor fillings, a potential that’s been largely (and tragically) unrealized in America while European Krave lets its freaky flavor flag fly.

General Mills’s iconic peanut butter puffs are the same way. As Reese’s candy division is stuffing Reese’s Pieces into Reese’s Cups, cramming peanuts into Reese’s Pieces, and (probably) distilling the ethereal essences of Mr. Peanut’s ghostly grandparents into Reese’s NutRageous bars, Reese’s Puffs cereal remains plain and unchanged. Outside of our sweetest nightly dreams, we’ve never seen Reese’s Puffs with Reese’s Pieces, Reese’s Puffs with Nougat & Nut Shavings, or even Chocolate PB&J Reese’s Puffs.

I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. One of my favorite YouTube gamers went on a recent Twitter tirade that inspired this intro:

No, instead of any of those great ideas, we get Reese’s Puffs Bunnies: the same cereal, now conveniently in the same bunny shape as Annie’s recent Bunnies cereals. My brain says, “Boo, that’s lazy!” but my inner child—whose heart is concentric with mine—says, “Ooh, I love cute lil rabbits!”

Fine, 8-year old Dan: let’s (begrudgingly) dig in. Continue reading

Review: Krave Cereal (Now with More Chocolate!)

Kellogg's Krave Cereal Now with More Chocolate Box

Krave sounds like the perfect vehicle for exciting, limited edition cereal flavors. Its semi-hollow, chocolate-striped biscuits could be filled with any number of wacky tastes.

Krave could pair the chocolate with a peanut butter ribbon, pipette some strawberry filling in there for Valentine’s Day, layer on some banana for Elvis Presley’s birthday, or heck: just dip every pillowy rectangle in fudge and sprinkles. I like to imagine that all these ideas even got brought up at Kellogg’s last marketing meeting…but then that one guy in the back of the room—you know, that guy— shouted above everyone else with his mouth full of the break room’s last doughnut:

“Hey why don’t we just add more chocolate?”

And this new “Now More Chocolate!” Krave was born. Somewhere across the Atlantic, Europeans are snickering at us over their bowls of Hazelnut, White Chocolate Brownie, and Choco Roulette Krave. Continue reading

Spooned & Spotted: Reese’s Puffs Spring Edition Bunnies Cereal

Reese's Puffs Bunnies Cereal

Everyone knows that the best Reese’s candies are the ones that aren’t shaped like cups. With their increased peanut butter to chocolate ratio, Reese’s Eggs, Pumpkins, and even their lumpishly deformed Trees are tastier than their ridged, circular ancestors.

I’m hoping the same principle of shapely tastiness applies to General Mills’s upcoming Reese’s Puffs Bunnies, an adorably rabbit-shaped variant of their classic peanut butter and chocolate corn puffs. Reese’s Puffs Bunnies are releasing just in time to celebrate the dawn of spring and the melting of gross slush all over my driveway.

Of course, I’m probably just being optimistic by thinking these will taste any different than normal Reese’s Puffs. Those keeping tabs on General Mills know that these bunny shapes are just recycled from their Annie’s cereals, so it isn’t the most original idea, either. Regardless, I’m going to take this rare Easter cereal as an excuse to celebrate…

…by lopping the ears off a hollow chocolate rabbit, filling it with Reese’s Puffs Bunnies and milk, and using it as an edible cereal bowl.

Though the cereal only appeared online in the past couple days, I’ve already spotted it in the wild at Meijer. Happy hunting—whether it’s the Easter egg or limited edition cereal kind!

Spooned & Spotted: General Mills DC Comic Superhero Boxes!

General Mills Batman Honey Nut Cheerios Box

Sweet, syrupy honey, Batman! I didn’t know you could actually fly! But where’d your fifth finger go—and how’d you fit your spandex over that stinger?

That’s right: Bruce Wayne meets whole grain on General Mills’s latest limited edition Honey Nut Cheerios box. The box features Buzz the Bee as Batman, and it includes one of four collectible DC comic books inside. I was going to make a “Bee-tman” pun, but I’m betting Beetman is already the mascot of some obscure organic dehydrated beet chips brand.

Unfortunately*, the Honey Nut Cheerios inside are unchanged. Sorry if I got your hopes up for Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios, for a second. But despite this box’s flavor consistency, I still think it’s a neat collector’s piece. This isn’t the first time General Mills has teamed up with comic book artists to make special boxes, as they did the same thing for 2014’s Monster Cereals.

Here’s hoping they do a line of Alan Moore-themed boxes next. I’d love to see the Trix Rabbit as Rorschach and and Sonny the Cuckoo in a Guy Fawkes mask.

But speaking of other mascots, Buzz wasn’t the only cereal mascot to get a DC Comic makeover. Our friend Jason at Collecting Candy found Lucky channeling his inner Green Lantern:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPyjqX1BBTY/?taken-by=collectingcandy

Apparently the miniature comic books come in boxes of Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and Multi-Grain Cheerios, too, so we might get to see our favorite zoological mascots play dress up after all. Though I’m not sure what mascot-less Multi-Grain Cheerios would dress up as.

Think they can Photoshop Aquaman into a bowl of Cheerio-filled milk?

If you spot the other boxes in this series, or if you’ve just got a heroic cereal photo of your own to share (I found the Cheerios at Meijer), feel free to pass it along on our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com. There’s a good chance your picture could be featured on the site.

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Lucky Charms Oatmeal & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Oatmeal

Lucky Charms Oatmeal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Oatmeal Canada

That’s it: I’m moving.

For most of my time running this blog, I’ve had to console my Canadian friends who can’t get any U.S.-exclusive cereals without enlisting an expensive flock of highly trained carrier pigeons to do their dirty work. But now? We’re only 2 months into 2017, and Canada has already got a Quebec-sized pile of delicious exclusives!

First they got arguably the world’s first banana bread-flavored cereal. Then they got the coolest Corn Flakes box you could possibly wake up to. And now they’ve got Lucky Charms Oatmeal and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Oatmeal. At this rate of awesomeness I bet they’ll have an ice cream sandwich-flavored Cap’n Crunch cereal by next week. And it’ll somehow involve Pokémon, too.

These new oatmeals, based off two of General Mills’s most popular cereals, mix squishy-licious instant oatmeal with either rainbow Lucky Charms marshmallows or a swirling auburn galaxy of crunchy Cinnamon Toast Crunch bits. Either way, you can’t go wrong—though I wonder if hot oatmeal would make Lucky’s marbits instantly melt into technicolor puddles. I hope these oatmeals sell well, because I want to see General Mills try Cookie Crisp Oatmeal and Reese’s Puffs Oatmeal next.

What hypothetical cereal–oatmeal combo would you love to munch the most?

Big thanks go to our friend Junk Food Dog for sending in this picture, which he took at Zehrs. 5 boxes for $10 is such a good deal that I can only assume he bought the whole display case of ’em. Who needs to pay rent when you can build a house out of sugary deliciousness?

If you’ve got a cereal or oatmeal photo of your own to share, pass it along on our submissions page, or just email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com. There’s a good chance your picture could be featured on the site.

Review: Kashi Chocolate Crunch Cereal

Kashi Chocolate Crunch Cereal Box

“Pshh, Kashi’s a health company. There’s no way their Chocolate Crunch cereal will pack enough chocolaty goodness to satisfy a certified chocoholic like me.”

Wrong!

“Oh, well, since they are a health company, surely Kashi’s Chocolate Crunch will contain satisfying, filling serving sizes.”

Wrong!

“Uh, at least there’s…surely no way I’ll plow through a whole box of Chocolate Crunch in one sitting and find myself on the floor, shamefully lying on my belly to hide the fudge stains on my overeager face!”

Wrong!

That’s three strikes, and you’re out. Please hang up your glove and hand over your Kashi Chocolate Crunch box to the proper authorities (i.e. my own hungry mitts). Despite Kashi’s reputation for clean, wholesome breakfasts, Chocolate Crunch is no minor league chocolate cereal. When it comes to cocoa-slathered goodness, this stuff hits harder than Babe Ruth wielding a king-sized Baby Ruth.

Don’t believe me? Join me in the dugout and we’ll dig into a box. Continue reading