Monthly Archives: December 2017

Cerealously’s Top 5 New Cereals of 2017!

I’m guessing that by the time your hangover has worn off—and who isn’t guilty of “eating too many Pop-Tarts” on a day like this?—and you’re actually reading this, it’ll be 2018. A brand new, arbitrarily-numbered trip around a giant fireball in the sky that we can spent eating sugary rings with cow’s milk while feeling nostalgic for when it was 20 arbitrarily-numbered fireball trips ago.

But before we crunch into the new year and all the squares and hoops it promises, I wanted to take one last look back at 2017 and the best morning munchies it had to offer. This is the third year for this tradition: 2015 gave us PB&J JIF Cereal, while 2016 bore the iconic fruit of Cap’n Crunch’s Orange CreamPop Crunch.

Weird year for cereal so far: LOTS of new cereals, LOTS of great cereals, but no 10/10s or clear contenders for best of the year…yet.

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) July 2, 2017

This year was a bit of an odd duck. For most of the year, there were few top contenders for a list like this, but then as 2017 waned and we all forgot about cereal to exclusively think about Star Wars for a while, Big Cereal rattled out a barrage of sumptuous selections came from some unseen dopamine gatling gun, to the point where last week, I had trouble making a list without hurting any inanimate foodstuff’s feelings.

Well regardless of how many upsets there are—I expect to encounter a bloodlusted Tony the Tiger in an alley behind Home Depot—I’m proud of this list. Feel free to make another mimosa and munch along with me: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cheerios, specials, toast crunch. 5 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tarts (2017 Return!)

Yes, I am ashamed.

I may outwardly appear to be a Pop-Tarts connoisseur—you know, the kind of pastry-pushing snob who considers Limited Edition Milk Chocolate Graham to be the best flavor, while simultaneously pushing boxes of Toaster Strudel to the back of the freezer case out of petty vengeance. But to my best recollection, I can’t recall ever trying Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tarts when the were first released and discontinued in 2005.

Either that, or they were so mind-meltingly good that my memory of them has been washed away in a rose-tinted sea of fruity brain fog.

But regardless of my sin against toaster pastry fandom, Strawberry Milkshakes were a cult favorite, so much so that Kellogg’s has brought them back, alongside Vanilla Milkshake (another Ice Cream Shoppe classic) for 2017.

So as usual, I’ve got one sitting plain, one in the toaster, and one in the freezer. But this time, I’m ready for that first bite of faux-lactose pastry to open my third stomach (I lent the second one to a cow in need) and flood in memories of past milkshakes eaten during my past lives—perhaps I was once a oil baron?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Uncategorized. 5 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats

Happy birthday, Jesus! I baked you a cake!

Well, okay, no I didn’t. I barely have enough culinary talent to make Chex Mix without my kitchen turning into an inferno of exploding pretzel kindling. I’m sure you could bake your own cake easily enough anyway—you won’t even need yeast, since you know so much about rising again.

But I did get you these new Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats, which are studded with fun rainbow sprinkles and all kinds of icing. I know loaves and fishes are more your thing, but hey: I think I’ve got some Wonder Bread and Parmesan Goldfish in the back.

So regardless of whether you reading this celebrate Christmas or not, let’s break out the wine and Krispies Treats and have a holly jolly day. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, birthday cake, kelloggs, non cereal, rice krispies. 1 Comment

Dec. ’17

Review: Cookies ‘N’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats

It’s about time those backstabbing cookies held up their end of the bargain.

See, during a publicized black market trade deal back in 2014, Snap, Crackle, and Pop sold off their DNA to Nabisco, so those cookie-smiths could craft their groundbreaking Marshmallow Crispy Oreos. But the trio of pixies only did it on one condition: in return, Nabisco would have to send over strands of unadulterated sandwich cookie DNA, so Kellogg’s could make an Oreo Rice Krispies Treat.

But they never did. Ever wonder why Nabisco so conveniently moved production operations to Mexico shortly after? It was to avoid a crackling vendetta.

But their relentless mascot mafia, with the help of the Keebler Elf yakuza, finally tracked down the Oreo formula they sought, and now we have these new Cookies ‘N’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats. It’s been a long snack snafu*, and many were left sleeping with the Flavor-Blasted Goldfish, but now I can finally stop painstakingly mixing my Rice Krispies and Oreo O’s.

*Note, none of the above is true, but it would make a killer graphic novel, wouldn’t it? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, chocolate, kelloggs, non cereal, oreo, rice krispies. 2 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Nutter Butter Cereal from Post

“What’s the best peanut butter cereal?” is perhaps one of breakfast’s most divisive questions—right up there with “is cereal a soup?”

(No, it’s not: soup is a concept, not a thing defined by its components. Please stop asking me.)

There are many who ardently support Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch. There are others who swear by Reese’s Puffs or new Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios (or at least, 50% of them). Some weirdos (like me) prefer the salted intricacies of Peanut Butter Puffins. And there are still others (me again) who desperately long for the return of JIF Cereal, going so far as to rally a posse of choosy moms to voice their cause.

But while peanut butter cereal has long been a small, yet hotly contested category, there’s a new contender in town, one with a long legacy of peanut butter snack cookie domination.

Yes, Nutter Butter Cereal is real, and it is debuting alongside Chips Ahoy! cereal to close a trilogy of “cerealized grade school cafeteria treat your mom used to carefully ration out in Ziploc bags, like seriously Ma, only two?”, a divine cereal lineage pioneered by the great creator: Oreo O’s.

Nutter Butter cookies have always been an aggressively peanut buttery cookie to me. So I’m not saying I want this cereal to gum my tongue to the roof of my mouth like tasty rubber cement, but if I’m left smacking my lips like a confused dog, I wouldn’t be upset. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, peanut butter, post. 25 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Cereal Time Cereals, by Gabe Fonseca!

If there’s one tangible distinction separating the rank of Cereal Knight from Cereal Master, it’s hand craftsmanship of one’s own cereal.

And while I once (keyword: once) tried baking my own “Golden Dan Grahams,” that particular odyssey ended with a smoking oven full of half-cooked honey cardboard crisps. So even though I may be on the Cereal Council, I’m okay with not being granted the rank of Master.

Because after receiving a surprise shipment of homemade cereals from Cereal Time historian Gabe Fonseca, I feel like a corn-puffed Padawan.

As an awe-inspiring holiday gift to a select crew of cereal lovers like me, Gabe made four cereals, complete with custom box art and prizes & trading cards inside. So as but a tiny, Chuck E. Cheese token-sized token of my gratitude—and in accordance with my responsibility as reviewer of all cool cereals—I’m gonna taste test them all. Because after taking just one look at his cosmonautical Neil deGrasse Tyson and Hunka Hunka Burning Monkey, I’m convinced these mascots could fit in on shelves next to the Trix Rabbit and Tony the Tiger.

Silly Neil: theoretical astrophysics is for kids! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cereal time, cerealously, specials. 3 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s

Joe, Joe, Joe! Merry Christmas!

I know, I know, it’s crazy: even after a devilishly creative line like that, Trader Joe’s corporate still won’t hire me to write their Fearless Flyer. Well buckle, up, Josè, Joey, and Joseph, because your nativity-era copywriting ain’t getting any better than that!

In fact, I ‘d like to try writing a Fearless Flyer entry for the store’s newest cereal, Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s, before diving into the review. Let me just clear my keyboard—*ahem*:

It’s all fun and reindeer games until someone skips breakfast. So click-click-click on over to the cereal aisle to kick-kick-kick-off a merry day of snowball fighting and cookie dough munching in true winter style, as we turned a classic Yuletide flavor into a box of ho ho hoops and marshmallows. It narrowly beat out our second idea: Fruitcake-Frosted Coal Flakes.

Not bad, eh? Hopefully we can say the same for the cereal. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, chocolate, holiday, trader joe's. 8 Comments