Monthly Archives: January 2019

The Empty Bowl Episode 7: Beating a Dead Shortcake

I don’t mean to brag, but this is my mom’s favorite episode yet.

Or maybe least favorite, as The Empty Bowl’s seventh journey into the pearly milk gates of calming cereal paradise covers my biggest childhood cereal influence’s debatably unjust disposal of preciously Honey Bunched goodness.

But while I (lovingly!) wait for her testimony, allow me to remind you as always of our podcast’s goal. Hosted by Justin McElroy and myself, The Empty Bowl is your roughly biweekly snack of sweetly serialized and cerealized catharsis. In addition to cereal dust drama, Seven explores Cap’n Crunch’s latest tempting treasures, my second Walmart walk of shamelessness, and some truly questionable* Pop-Tart copywriting.

*I don’t mean to say I could do any better, but I did once invent a clever term** for when people wrongly interpret other brands as better than Pop-Tarts.

Thank you all for the continued support and kind words about the podcast. If you’d like to subscribe or support the show, you can visit our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. All relevant Honey Bunches of Oats grievances will be forwarded to our most crisply suited breakfast lawyers.

**It’s “misconstruedel.”

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: empty bowl. Leave a comment

Jan. ’19

Review: Banana Creme Frosted Flakes

Cult classic cereals are fascinating.

The Rocky Horrors of the breakfast world, this ragtag bunch of sweethearts from across time and space have won the lifelong loyalty of a select few weirdos (meant in the most loving way) who may have only had them a few times, but would risk life, limb, and even liver to taste them again.

For me, it’s Neopets Islandberry Crunch. Fellow cereal pundit Gabe Fonseca has a proclivity for Sprinkle Spangles. And for a whole bunch of others, including Marvo of The Impulsive Buy, Banana Frosted Flakes has kept their eyes peeled for a suitable substitute since the early ’80s.

Though I’m left unripely green with envy that I never got to try Tony’s classic Banana Flakes, I’m hoping Kellogg’s new Banana Creme Frosted Flakes will fulfill its forefather’s lingering hype. More so, I hope it successfully charts a whole new niche for an already undersung fruit flavor. For the past few years have seen Banana Berry, Banana Bread, Banana Split, and Banana Pudding cereals, but our mom’s favorite banana dessert has stayed mum.

Until now, that is. So go ahead, Anthony T. Tiger: pie me in the face. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, banana, kellogg's. 5 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Fruity Lucky Charms Cereal

How long before seasonal cereal rotations become literal?

Someday I anticipate we’ll reach a cereal singularity. When all the ideas have been made already, it will become most economically viable to print Count Chocula and S’Mores Oops! No Graham Crackers! Cereal on respective sides of the same box. Then some grocery stocker need only flip the boxes around come October and brainwash anyone who brainwash customers into believing it never happened.

No need to read that box back, humble shopper. Just chew on that cocoa corn, because we’ve always been at war with Boo Berry.

But until that dark chocolate day arises, we must remain hesitant about letting seemingly carbon-copied cereals get away with döppelganging up against us brave breakfast lovers. That’s why when I first heard General Mills was releasing Fruity Lucky Charms, I immediately saw it as a 10-month early reanimation of Franken Berry under a different name: perhaps out of creative laziness, perhaps to use up a few thousand quarts of near-expired strawberry syrup.

So I’ll try the stuff, for sure, but don’t think I won’t be swapping my spoon for a pitchspork, just in case I need to incite a little bedlam.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, berry, general mills, lucky charms. 17 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review (x2): Hostess Honey Bun Cereal & Hostess Powdered Donettes Cereal

To me, snack cakes are near-sacred totems. Arcane talismans that exude nostalgic simplicity and forbidden sweetness so concentrated that it can be hard to process for an adult stomach.

Ironic, since they’re so processed.

In more innocent times I gobbled Twinkies and Zebra Cakes with reckless abandon—I notoriously once went so far as to fit a whole Ho-Ho in my mouth on a self-administered dare. But now I merely visit them, usually in the convenience stores I consider their most fitting temples, gazing upon how impressively unchanged they are in a more health-conscious world that’s largely moved on without them.

So while I rarely partake in glazed glee any more, I’m excited that Hostess has teamed up with Post to turn two of its standout snacks into chibi cereal cakes. Granted, neither Honey Bun Cereal nor Powdered Donettes Cereal seem like obvious choices for the brand, but in a way, I’m glad: throwing chocolate and vanilla rings in a bag with marshmallows and calling ’em Cupcakes & Twinkies would’ve been too easy.

Geometric precedents aside, let’s return to the world of swirled cereal buns and curvaceous donuts. Dare me to shove a whole box in my mouth?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 10 rating, 9 rating, donut, honey, post. 11 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Sour Patch Kids Cereal

Sour, sweet, gone? Cry me a river.

Is the plight of a Sour Patch Kid—the bouts of malevolence, the brief repentance and hollow appeasement before death—not the same as humankind’s? Don’t we all go through some tangy and cantankerous times? Don’t we all sugarcoat the past and dismiss the future as a death-defined void?

Or is Sour Patch Kids Cereal just churning my grey matter to the point of philosophical pontification?

I’m sure by this point you’ve heard the buzz and resultant public outcry surrounding Post’s latest outlandish cereal crossover. Many speak of it as a freak of nature, a forbidden union of candy and socially accepted breakfast candy. They fear it could rot teeth, and erode even a kitchen drain with its anticipated über sweetness. But hey, it got Andy Milonakis to quote tweet me, so maybe the Xenomorph blood-stained plumbing accidents will be worth it.

There’s only one way to find out, and it required me to wait for 15 minutes by a stack of clearance dog food while a Walmart employee fished one box (“really? just one box?”) out of the back of the store for me.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, post. 5 Comments

Jan. ’19

News: Peeps Cereal is Coming Soon from Kellogg’s!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsEnghnHs1J/

The vampiric cereal gene…is spreading.

Just last week I wrote about a pioneering holiday cereal: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch, which will join Reese’s Puffs Hearts as the cereal aisle’s leading Valentine’s Day voyagers.

But it’s not just Hallmark holidays that are being bitten by the breakfast bug. Call it the work of Bunnicula, but thanks to @markie_devo on Instagram (big thanks!), we have visual confirmation that Peeps Cereal is coming soon from Kellogg’s—presumably to ring, squish, and chew in Easter right.

I hereby consider the previously rumored Peeps Cereal to be the first true Easter cereal, as egg-adjacent cereals like Rice Krispies and Reese’s Puffs have only taken aesthetic approaches to the season. Void of the iconic carrot cake or ham flavors you’d expect from Easter, they simply didn’t do justice to my underdog favorite holiday.

Not to mention: you ever try to clean peanut butter powder off a pastel yellow turtleneck?

No word yet on the specific flavor of Peeps Cereal, but if Kellogg’s really plans to pair actual marbits with marshmallow-flavored, Froot Loop-esque rings, there are two likely consequences:

1. The Peeps chicks and bunnies will receive the torch of responsibility from Sour Patch Kids Cereal for contributing to my dental delirium…
2. …because I plan to pour that Peeps coffee creamer all over this cereal and make history.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: easter, kellogg's, news. 2 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: New Pop-Tarts Cereal (Strawberry & Brown Sugar Cinnamon!)

Go ahead: try and name a type of food that wouldn’t work as an adapted Pop-Tart.

A Pop-Tart Casserole? Ha, you doubt the binding power of sweet potato and marshmallow fluff.

Pop-Tart Steak? Psh, what is a grill but a giant toaster?

Pop-Tart Ravioli? I’m not even going there.

The point is that we probably shouldn’t expect Pop-Tarts’ attempted assimilation of the entire grocery store any time soon. They’ve already got the breakfast game on lock, in their classic form and in these new Pop-Tart Cereals. And their latest pouched, lunchtime snacks are poised to make Mother’s Animal Crackers cry Uncle by February. By this time next year, we’ll be eating Pop-Tarts-flavored Pop-Tarts for post-dinner breakfast. Assuming we left room after that schuh-rumptious Pop-Tarts Bolognese you made, Mrs. G. Seriously, my compliments.

Pop-Tart Bites and Crisps already wowed me, so I’m entering this first-of-the-year review with enthusiastic resolve: to eat more shape-shifting pastries than last year, in more forms than ever before. After all, Pop-Tart Cereal is the post-Internet-killing-the-video-star descendant of Pop-Tarts Crunch, a cereal remembered with near-universal fondness. What could go wrong?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cinnamon, kelloggs, pop-tarts, strawberry. 12 Comments