Monthly Archives: May 2017

Spooned & Spotted: Blueberry Toast Crunch & Strawberry Toast Crunch Cereals

Blueberry Toast Crunch & Strawberry Toast Crunch Cereals

Is Tiny Toast…toast? At first glance, that’s what the “debut” of “new” “Strawberry Toast Crunch” and “Blueberry Toast Crunch” would seem to “indicate.”

Whoops, I don’t think I needed those last snarky quotation marks.

Reader Sydney N. kindly sent us the above snapshot from Walmart, which shows the adorably fruit-speckled bread slices we’ve known as Tiny Toast for nearly a year now re-branded under the Toast Crunch family of cereals. Led by the patriarchal Cinnamon Toast Crunch, this crunchy clan also consists of wild child Chocolate Toast Crunch, Canadian uncle French Toast Crunch, deadbeat son who only comes back to mooch on Christmas Cinnamon Star Crunch, (and his long-lost twin brother Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch), as well as a plethora of dead ancestors, from Peanut Butter Toast Crunch to Frosted Toast Crunch, who the family nonchalantly buried in the backyard after they failed to live up to Daddy’s legacy.

♫ Our house, is a very very very morbid house. ♫

Tiny Toast’s relationship to the Toast Crunch kinfolk has always been dubious: the cereals look so much like French Toast Crunch that we never knew if they were related, or if Tiny Toast was just French’s obsessive best friend who weirdly emulates his hero. But now that it’s been established in cereal canon that TT is FTC’s cousin who moved south to warmer, berry-friendly weather and changed his name, I can rest easy at night—and start editing my fan fictions.

That was all a very long-winded segue into my main point about Strawberry and Blueberry Toast Crunches: that it may not mean Tiny Toast’s demise at all. The fresh-faced pair has only been seen at Walmart so far, so it could be a store-exclusive rebrand demo, like Post did with Waffle Crisp and Good Morenings Waffle Crunch. I refuse to make a definite coroner’s call on Tiny Toast until General Mills itself gives the sweet slices a eulogy.

Which is perfectly fine with me, because like my great-granny definitely might have said, “you can have too many cooks in the kitchen, but you can never have too many cute crunchy loaves in the cereal aisle.”

Thanks again for the photo, Sydney! If you’ve got a cool cereal photo of your own to share, spoon it over to cerealously.net@gmail.com for a chance to see it on the site.

News: Blueberry Lemon Special K is on the Way!

blueberry-lemon-special-k

(Image via Kellogg’s)

There’s no better way to ring in this Mother’s Day than with news about a cereal as sweetly cozy as a mother’s hug.

At least, that’s what I’m telling my mom when I glue-stick the above photo into her otherwise tragically breakfast-less Mother’s Day card.

Our Special (K) thanks go to reader Tina, who tipped us off about Special K Blueberry with Lemon Clusters, a new Kellogg’s cereal that just popped up online. Not content with just one type of cluster, this hardworking mother of a cereal combines Special K’s typical multi-grain flakes with blueberry oat granola bits and lemony yogurt ones.

Special K’s yogurt nuggets are historically pretty good, so here’s hoping these citrusy ones are more sweet than sour. Maybe Kellogg’s even convinced the Trix rabbit to defect and share his secret recipes for both lemony and yogurty goodness.

We’re not sure when Blueberry Lemon Special K is going to hit shelves, but I’d recommend you start fluffing your pillows and preparing your bed to be breakfasted in. Because any day can be Mother’s Day with enough TV trays and Family Feud marathons.

 

Review: New and Improved Alpha-Bits Cereal

Post New and Improved Alpha-Bits Cereal Box Review

The year is 20xx. Innovation is dead. No new cereals are ever released. Instead, every old brand keeps releasing “New and Improved” versions that buff their old selves with unnecessary flavor and cosmetic improvements.

Froot Loops now contains “100% more Froot Jooce” and comes in colors only visible to the hyper-photoreceptive mantis shrimp. Waffle Crisp is now just a box full of freeze-dried Belgian waffles—and the bag is made of intelligent, gelatinous maple syrup that can gain sentience when stored in certain climates. Cinnamon Toast Crunch just contains packets of wheat seeds, yeast, and cinnamon, with instructions for growing, harvesting, and baking your own miniature cinnamon toast.

As for Alpha-Bits? They now contain the letters of every alphabet, from English and Cyrillic to Egyptian hieroglyphics, Klingon, and whatever language the Bionicles spoke. Some also say that spiking a drop of blood into your morning bowl of Alpha-Bits will make them reveal the universe’s existential secrets.

But most agree that’s just ridiculous.

This revamped cereal revolution all started in 2017, as Cocoa Puffs, Krave, Honeycomb, and yes, Alpha-Bits, made a big hullaballoo about self-improvement. As a designated cereal emissary of the year 2017, I’m here to tell you whether Alpha-Bits actually followed through on their “new year, new me” promise, or if they’re just “new meh.” Continue reading

5 Cereal Oreo Cookies I Want to See from #MyOreoCreation

Cereal Oreo Banner

While the respective Golden Ages of Hollywood, video games, and breakfast cereal are (arguably) over, there are still plenty of things we’re still in the Golden Age of: memes, on-demand Full House re-runs, and yes, Oreo cookies.

Whereas the 20th century closed with only the most basic of Oreo flavors, and the early 2000s dawdled about with simple novelties like the Uh-Oh Oreo and Oreo Cakesters—which are, to be fair, still my favorite ever Oreo. I will forever lay psychic flowers on their imagined grave—the last couple years have seen a Doubled Stuffed explosion of more wacky Oreo varieties than my non-mathematics degree permits me to count. And now, with the recent, literally explosive release of cracklin’ Fireworks Oreo (and Waffles and Syrup Oreo, which I’ve wanted since I first met Hungry Jack), Oreo is letting fans brainstorm the newest flavor. Sandwich cookie savants can then enter ideas online for a chance to win $500,000, a trip to NYC, and their cookie concept brought to life.

And since we’re also in the Golden Age of me not being able to find enough new products to review—especially not those elusive Jolly Rancher Pop-Tarts that I’ve skulked through enough Walgreens to find that I deserve some kind of disturbed customer loyalty coupon for half off king-sized Peanut M&M’s at any participating Walgreens (or something like that)—I thought it would be fun to think up some cereal-themed Oreo varieties to enter in this #MyOreoCreation sweepstakes.

Cereal’s made it into Oreo cookies before, and Oreo has joined cereal to make the single greatest breakfast of all time, so this mutualistic relationship is proof that there’s enough cereal–Oreo potential to fill a new grocery aisle. We’ll call it the OreO’s aisle. And put it right by checkout so I can make a quick and shameless exit with an armful of crinkling cookie packages at roughly 2am each night.

Anyway, here are 5 Oreo ideas that’ll make Nabisco want to revoke my internet access. Continue reading

Review: Honeycomb Cereal (Now with Bigger Flavor!)

Post Bigger Flavor Honeycomb Cereal Box

Not since Andre the Giant menacingly knocked on the Honeycomb Hideout’s window have I been so geeked to eat a bowl of Honeycomb cereal.

Sure, the stuff has had fun flavor iterations—Strawberry, Chocolate, Cinna-Graham—and it even briefly got “Twisted Marshmallows” 3 years back in a decades-late attempt to capitalize on the “X-Treme Snax” movement of the radical ’90s. But it has also progressively lost its flavor, as not one, but two ill-received formula changes in the early 2000s left Honeycomb a squishy and styrofoam-y compared to the golden-smacked Golden God it was before the turn of the century.

All that BIG HONEY TASTE Andre had roared about went to go live on a bee farm upstate, so to speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Vd6rv58gA

But this newly revamped Honeycomb boasts a “bigger flavor,” in a charming homage to those days when the cereal hung its hat on its humongous honey-ness. This change comes in the midst of a wider cereal flavor revolution, as Cocoa Puffs and Krave have added “50% more cocoa” and “more chocolate,” respectively. But while those two put an easy-to-measure qualifier on their taste changes, Honeycomb’s flavor is now simply “bigger,” which could either mean they added more honey or hired fatter bees.

Either way, I’m  going to try them while I wait for my Giant sideburns to grow in.  Continue reading

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Oatmeal (Canada)

General Mills Canada: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Instant Oatmeal Box Review

Can you see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Instant Oatmeal—or as some call it in Canada: “Croque Cannele Gruau Instantané?” 

Of course: it’s got cinnamon sugar amorphous globs in every bite! It’s the taste you can see…still sticking to your ceiling three weeks later if you fling it hard enough.

Wait, wait—that’s the oatmeal’s old slogan. The new one is much better: crave those crazy hot oat lumps!

Fine, I give up. There’s no real appetizing catchphrase for Canada’s second new cereal-oatmeal hybrid. And even if there was, a burnt sienna bowl of microwaved roses by any other name would taste just as sweet. Or in the case of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Oatmeal, just as bland and disappointing. I know I usually leave my opinion out of each review’s introduction, but I couldn’t resist spoiling my spoiled breakfast from the get-go. This oatmeal has a host of toasty problems, so let’s work backwards and try sourcing its flaws like a paleontologist doing CSI on a pile of raptor skeletons. Continue reading

Review: Lucky Charms Oatmeal (Canada)

Lucky Charms Oatmeal Box

This may not be canon, but I believe General Mills’ new Canada-only Lucky Charms Oatmeal is from an alternate timeline in the cereal universe.

In this truly darkest timeline, those cartoon kids who cheerfully steal Lucky the Leprechaun’s sugary breakfast aren’t motivated by hunger or anything rational. No, these serial cereal sociopaths take Lucky’s marshmallowy horseshoes and shooting stars just so they can melt them before his eyes in a bowl of bubbling, magmatic oats.

In this somber universe, Lucky Charms are “masochistically delicious!”

Somehow, those bullies’ mealy instruments of destruction crossed through an inter-dimensional portal and landed on Canadian grocery shelves. It’s the only logical explanation for the grotesque scenes of marshmallowy immolation you’re about to witness. Continue reading