Every so often, a cereal appears that you didn’t know you needed in your life. That is, until you taste it and realize that a part of you—a small, quiet part chilling out near the gall bladder—has had its secret cravings fulfilled. Kellogg’s Pink Donut Cereal is one of those cereals.
Like Superman Cereal‘s Nilla Wafer-esque goodness or Chocolate Mini-Wheats‘ pangs of ice cream sandwich goodness, Pink Donut Cereal—one of two entries in Kellogg’s new Donut Shop cereal line (the other is chocolate)—fulfills a very specific and very nostalgic flavor niche. So before you go all hipster-vegan-doughnut-shop on me, turning your maple-bacon-ganache-primed nostrils up and saying, “Pshh, Kellogg’s just reused their Froot Loops shaped and called them doughnuts,” or, “Pink is not a flavor. She’s a wildly successful pop music artist whom I only enjoy ironically,” hear me out:
Kellogg’s Pink Donut Cereal is good, and it tastes like a very specific pink thing you already know and love. Continue reading →
Goodness knows that it’s been long enough since we’ve seen a Mario-themed breakfast cereal—28 years, in fact, since the Nintendo Cereal System, which packaged two bags of Mario and Zelda cereal in the same box. A man works 60 grueling hours a week fixing leaky sewer pipes, battling demented turtle kings, and cleaning graffiti just to be told his princess is in another castle? He deserves a cereal. Or at least a dedicated pasta brand more esteemed than SpaghettiOs.
And it looks like that might* will** finally happen. After the kind of digital sleuthing that would put Mario is Missing! to shame, I stumbled upon multiple references, including one with the above box art, to an upcoming Super Mario Cereal from Kellogg’s. In true Kelloggian fashion, it pairs oat pieces with colored marshmallow shapes—in this case, crunchy stars are flanked by Super Mushrooms, 1-Up Mushrooms, and ? Boxes. But most importantly, some boxes of this “Mixed Berry” cereal are Amiibos in and of themselves, allegedly able to be used with Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch.
I can only assume that it gives Mario a Dig’em the Frog hat, and Snap, Crackle, Pop hats for all the Toads. Either way, I hope an Animal Crossing Cereal is next: Tom Nook’s Crunchy Bells with Real Fruit Bits, anyone? Just shake it up!
*Update: Though the box art may not be finalized, reader Chris has allegedly received confirmation from Kellogg’s that this cereal should be hitting shelves soon! Mamma mia:
“We cerealously appreciate your continued interest in seeing a Nintendo cereal, Chris! We hope you’ll keep an eye out for the new Super Mario Cereal that is hitting store shelves now. This star-shaped cereal features Super Mario-inspired marshmallows, and a limited number of packages will have an Amiibo powerup sticker that can be used on the Super Mario Odyssey game with the Nintendo Switch gaming console. We also appreciate your additional feedback regarding classic cereal favorites, and thanks for taking the time to write!” —@KelloggsUS
**Update 2: While originally a rumor, Super Mario Cereal has now been confirmed through Target, Walmart, and product photographs!
Congratulations: you survived Thanksgiving and Black Friday, hopefully with minimal turkeys thrown through microwaves and tracheas trampled to get a discount microwave.
As your reward for getting through this gauntlet of fierce family feasts, you get to feast your eyes on these two upcoming Rice Krispies Treats flavors.
No, your vision isn’t still blurry from Aunt Mary’s famous extra-bloody Bloody Mary (which everyone in the family agrees tastes more like a Sloppy Joe): these product photos are really that pixelated. I had to do some covert digital spelunking to discover them, risking attack by trolls, Morlocks, and whatever those things from The Descent are.
First up is Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats, which pair a gooey-looking white frosting with rainbow sprinkles. They debut alongside Cookies ‘n’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats, which pair another gooey-looking white cream with mini chocolate bits. Presumably, if you pair them together, you can re-create the divine Oreo Cheesecake my mother blessed my childhood with, birthday after birthday.
I don’t have a release date for these, but since the boxes feature Snap, Crackle, and Pop’s uncanny, claymation-esque redesigns, I’m confident they’re legit and not relics from some early 2008 art school undergraduate thesis. So keep a lookout in your local supermarket in the coming months.
Just remember one thing: no Oreo-flavored puffed rice marshmallow square is worth getting trampled for.
Gingerbread can do things to a man. Powerful things.
Its pillowy cookie coziness can make him devour a whole plates worth of gingerbread men with all the empathy of a bloodthirsty Xenomorph.
Its darkling molasses sweetness can make him suckle a used cookie cutter like a hungry baby’s favorite pacifier.
Its intricate blend of holiday spices can make him seriously grill a Home Depot employee for a price quote on building an actual gingerbread villa in the countryside—or at least a gingerbread armoire to hold all his Shrek DVDs.
Worst of all, gingerbread can make that cereal blogger scour the aisles of his local supermarket for any kind of gingery breakfast product—be it a cereal, oatmeal, or granola bar—he can write about. Even a breakfast biscuit—the kind that he, after triumphantly trafficking it like a footballer through the store’s pre-Thanksgiving, stuffing-clutching crowd, now munches on—would suffice.
So here he sits a-munching, transfixed by gingerfever. Is this him speaking to you, or the gingerbread? He thinks you should bow to your new gingerbread ov—
Oh hey guys, didn’t see you come in. That was weird—I just had a quick power nap, and now there’s an open package of belVita Gingerbread Breakfast Biscuits in front of me. Oh well, might as well give ’em a try, right? Continue reading →
I know I shouldn’t incite polar breakfast violence, but it just seems a little too convenient that, right after Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs broke the ice as the first-ever hot chocolate-flavored cereal, Trader Joe’s hops into the (powdered) mix with a Hot Cocoa O’s Cereal of his own.
So now there’s bound to be a munchy melee between these two well-known cereal champions:
In this corner, we have Sonny and his marshmallow puck-studded Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs! Though they may just taste like more sugary Cocoa Puffs, these cozy–crunchy orbs contain great power—and decades of cuckoo cereal clout!
Aaaaand in this corner, we have Trader Joseph and his (hopefully dark) chocolate dark horses! Though Smokin’ Joe the Trader isn’t renowned for his cereal—his Raisin Bran Clusters are perhaps his only belt-bursting championship belt-winner to date—Hot Cocoa O’s look like holiday Oreo O’s, and that alone is enough to sell more tickets than a Bob Dylan–Katy Perry tag team at Summer Slam!
Yes, I look forward to reviewing this hot chocolate cereal as soon as I find it—hopefully right next to the almond ‘nog so I can drown my early-sunset-imposed sorrows right along with my marshmallowy chocolate hoops.
Thanks to @OUATreviewed on Twitter for coming through with the find. If you have a merry cereal snapshot of your own to share, ship it via email or Polar Express on our Submissions page!
Some things just make sense together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and bananas. Or peanut butter and analogies about things that go well together.
Oh, and chocolate and marshmallows, I guess.
That’s why it makes no sense that it took ’til 2017 for General Mills to realize just how many cents they’d make by putting mini marshmallows in Cocoa Puffs. From the humble Mallo Cup to being 2/3 of the iconic s’more, chocolate and marshmallows have a long history of delightfully gumming up people’s teeth.
But hot cocoa/hot chocolate (I refuse to take a stance on which name is better. As I’ve said before, I’m staying as neutral as a packet of Swiss Miss) is perhaps the most memorably cozy pairing of the two. Therefore, the only explanation for why this took so long is that Sonny always flies south for the winter. I’m willing to forgive him for going AWOL for Cocoa Puffs, so long as his redundantly named Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs are good. Since my childhood self used to think hot cocoa was made by microwaving chocolate milk, the bar is pretty low.
I still have nightmares about tepid, radiated and pasteurized dairy products.
Scientists have apparently perfected time travel…but only a couple months into the future…and, uh, they apparently can only bring back cereal: not any lottery numbers, sports almanacs, or whatever cryptocurrency is most valuable at the time (CrunchCoin?).
Okay maybe not, but breakfast wormholes are the only logical explanation for how the wonderful fellas at MyCountyMarket got ahold of not I, not II, and not III, but IV (allegedly: none are confirmed) upcoming cereals from General Mills—cereals so exciting and new that I’m cancelling the New Year’s Resolutions I haven’t even made yet.*
Let’s take a gander at our soon-to-be-spooned pantry-stuffers, shall we?
*UPDATE: MyCountryMarket’s video has been removed for reasons unknown.
Okay fine, Kellogg’s, I’ll forgive you for egregiously misspelling “Doughnut” as “Donut.” Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but removing the “UGH” removes the rounded pastry’s inherent charm, making me vocally say…you guessed it: “Grrr! Arghh! Zounds!”
Even a pedant like me can’t stay mad when there are two new doughnutty cereals hitting the market. We’ve known that this Chocolate Donut Cereal was coming for a while now, but the surprise debut of Pink Donut Cereal, seen in this photo from a Marc’s store that was sent in by reader GM, has left me tickled pink.
So what does “pink” taste like? Well if it’s anything like “blue,” then I’m ready for it. It could mean strawberry, plain frosting, Chicken McNugget Pink Slime, or even Canadian Birthday Cake (a reader noticed the visual similarity between Pink Donut Cereal and a certain Froot Loops flavor). Whatever it is, I’ll still happily crunch away, because cereal renditions of my favorite breakfast baked good are hard to crumb by these days.
Thanks again to GM for the photo. If you have a cool cereal photo of your own to share, or if you just want to fax me a fresh doughnut, roll over to our Submissions page.
