Monthly Archives: September 2017

Review: Count Chocula Monster Cereal (2017)

I feel like I’m starring in a movie trailer for an unnecessary 2017 reboot of a classic ’80s film. You know, the kind of trailer that inevitably starts with all the wizened and crow-footed stars of the first movie reuniting in their old haunt to topically argue about how things just aren’t as good as they used to be and crack jokes about iPads?

Yeah, that’s how I feel about buying my 2017 box of Count Chocula, because those trailers always open with someone muttering the same line: “Well, here we are again.” Or maybe, “Hello, old friend.” Or even, “Y’all haven’t aged a day.”

Even though a year has passed since I’ve tasted the Count’s sweet cocoa spoils (not counting the expired box I found in my pantry and begrudgingly—though not regretfully—ate on the 4th of July), I feel like this caped chocolate cruncher has never left my side. Like a warm memory or a Tamagotchi that just won’t die, the nostalgic spookiness of Count Chocula—who’s been on shelves for 46 years now, despite being an ageless vampire—is resonant enough to keep me thinking about old elementary school Halloween parties and goofy candy corn cupcakes all year long.

So while I’m sure I won’t find much new to say about Count Chocula’s taste that I haven’t said in previous reviews, I owe this trusty Hershey’s syrup-blooded bloodsucker his annual tribute. Let’s sharpen our canines and start munchin’! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, count chocula, general mills, halloween, marshmallow, monster cereals. 6 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts

Halloween is about the little things.

Ask any full-blooded (or at least fake-blood-slathered) Halloween lover, and I’m sure most will agree. While haunted houses, parties, and handing out candy on The Big XXXI Day itself are the holiday’s main events, savoring little spooky moments is the key to feeling merrily macabre from the start of back-to-school season ’til the end of back-to-the-cardboard-box-ghouls-in my basement season.

These bite-sized boos can be anything—or anywhere. Glimpsing a well-loved plastic goblin in a thrift store. Marathoning all the Halloween movies and spending the next week fearing any mention of William Shatner. Camping out in a Spirit Halloween with an industrial carton of Whoppers and flipping through old Goosebumps books until the staff gets scared of you.

Or maybe it’s just eating one (or thirty one) of Kellogg’s “new” Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts. It’s long been a Pop-Tartian tradition to adorn their Chocolate Fudge flavor with full Hallo-regalia (why Chocolate Fudge, I don’t know—maybe because it’s pretty much a king-sized candy bar that’s socially acceptable to eat for breakfast?), but previous years have only seen this ghost-er pastry wearing orange frosting and crunchy sprinkle shapes.

But now Kellogg’s has beautifully spurned their sprinkled tradition in favor of something somehow even better: printed scary shapes on every neon orange-blasted, baked fudge rectangle! Drink that box art in for a minute while I grab the plates, glasses of milk, and altars to worship that top cartoon ghost at.

He looks like a spectral Pikachu tail. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, halloween, kelloggs, non cereal, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Sep. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: New Looks for Old Cereals

Aside from hunting new cereals, Pop-Tarts and Hostess snack cakes (my secret passion—Chocodiles used to be my fudge-slathered white whales), one of my oldest grocery store past times is looking for box art variations of breakfast mainstays.

Sometimes the differences are nuanced and small, like earlier this year when French Toast Crunch’s plain red box adopted a drop shadow, but sometimes classic cereal boxes we’ve come to love dramatically evolve overnight, like metamorphosed sugar-encrusted butterflies emerging from their cardboard chrysalises. As we’ll soon see, French Toast Crunch just did that, too—and so did another long-beloved morning mainstay.

But before we judge those, let’s appraise Snap, Crackle, and Pop’s recent Rice Krispies plastic surgery, which I noticed while trying (and failing) to find those elusive new Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispies Treats. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: honey, kelloggs, post, rice krispies, spooned & spotted, toast crunch. 22 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Quaker Corn Crunch Cereal

There are some cereals you’d never expect to have a cult following. Honeycomb and Alpha-Bits are good examples. They’re classics sure, but unlike Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s sect of cinnamon sugar swirlers or Cap’n Crunch’s church of masochistic roof-of-mouth manglers, you never really hear people say Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits are their favorite cereals.

That is, until Post changes those cereals’ formulas, and I get gobsmacked by hundreds of torched and pitchforked comments from angry breakfast lovers blaming me for ruining their childhood memories.

Sorry, Bertha from North Dakota. I swear I just make dumb cereal jokes, not actual cereal.

Honeycomb rants aside, another cereal with a shockingly devoted fandom is Quaker’s Corn Bran Crunch. As one of those closet Corn Bran Crunch geeks, I wrote up a glowing tribute review to the stuff a while back, and the article’s popularity revealed that many share my niche passion for fibrous corn cuboids.

As comments kept rolling in, my fellow quirky Quaker-ers kept me posted on a developing narrative for our beloved Corn Bran Crunch. Tragically, the stuff disappeared for a while, and inquiring fans were told that a production error had put Corn Bran Crunch had put the cereal on hiatus.

But then it returned, and after the initial glorious hysteria wore off, something was very clearly different. The Bran had ran away somewhere down the line, leaving behind Corn Crunch, which, despite its alliterative name, allegedly tasted far different.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, quaker. 9 Comments