Oh, Lucky, you beautiful chameleon of predatory cereal assimilation: you’ve done it again!
Early last year, the breakfast aisle’s favorite impish Irelander threw all caution to the sugar-swirled wind with Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes, a marbit mashup that may not have tasted amazing, but was nevertheless a flippant play that earned my respect for poking the Kellogg’s tiger-bear.
And now, in a move so unprecedented in both shade and punctuality, it seems Lucky Charms wants to remedy the biggest cereal crisis to plague an infinity of earths: the death of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal as we knew it. Continue reading →
Listen, when the slogan tells you to “save big money at Menards,” there’s an invisible asterisk attached that reads “if you’re willing to wait two full months per 60¢ saved.”
For those confused by most of that (rather than just some of it): Menards is a midwestern hardware store comparable to Home Depot or Lowe’s—if you add a twang of ope-fulness. When news of Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts broke in mid-May, I immediately started looking for a place to buy them. You know, so I could get them in time for Independence Day.
Both wonderfully and strangely, the only place I could find them was on Menards’ website—what’s more patriotic than discount lumber, I guess?—and with a 60¢ mail-in rebate to make the box cost me under $1.50. Sounds like an American Dream come true, right?
Well, 48 automated Menards customer service emails later, I learned that not only were the Pop-Tarts on a seemingly infinite backorder, but I’m also probably the only person to buy them from the site. The page where I bought them has been deleted, and they finally arrived conspicuously in a package better secured than Fort Knox’s solid-gold diary.
So while the actual Fourth of July is weeks behind us, perhaps we can rechristen this occasion: Happy Menardian Solstice, everyone! Who wants fireworks? Continue reading →
Hold onto your unripe pumpkins, because it’s about to get prematurely spooky up in here.
What better way to beat the summer heat than to dream of cooler, crisper times ahead? That’s why the latest episode of my and Justin‘s meditative cereal podcast covers a diverse temporal spread of seasonal products, from sarcophagus-juicy Halloween gossip to Christmas cookies in July.
New to this calming corner of the world’s breakfast table? Get yourself good and horizontal—if you want to go the extra mile, fill your belly button with 2% for good luck—as we tackle muffin-flavored toast, Bubsy the Bobcat, and the many uses of the word “mythos.”
Oh, and these:
New perennial potluck favorite, anyone?
If the world’s got you hot and bothered, rather than buttered, you can find more existential cereal reassurances at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but reading them beats the heck out of daytime television.
The more time passes, I think the more our society is not just normalizing raisin bran, but celebrating it. Gone are the days of clumsy bathroom humor. Gone is the Seinfeldian slander. And gone are the chronic misinterpretations of the stuff’s sugar content (the servings are heavier. heavier I tell you!)
Now, I like to believe that we as a culture can appreciate and thank our sun-dried stewards of more nutritionally substantive sweetness.
Even in our darkest hours, we’ve learned to praise the sun.
To evidence this, I’d point to the wealth of limited edition Kellogg’s Raisin Bran varieties we’ve seen lately, all of which have been arguably effective evolutions of the twice-scooped formula. Apple Strawberry hit us with an unexpectedly creative haymaker, while RB + Bananas boldly did what no lazy breakfaster has done before: acted on the diced-fruit “serving suggestion” seen on cereal boxes everywhere.
Vanilla Almond Raisin Bran continues that curiosity-driven tradition with a flavor pairing that’s more familiar, but perhaps more fitting. Rather than overtly fruity, V.A. takes R.B. back to some earthier thematic roots.
Yes, I was indeed only sent an (empty) miniature box. I guess now I can use it to hold…belly button lint?
When I got an email about a secret Cinnamon Toast Crunch surprise coming to my house, my mind swirled with possibilities:
Peanut Butter Toast Crunch’s return?
The early merriment of a new Gingerbread Toast Crunch?
Ooh, or maybe a personal Cinnamon Toast Crunch feeding trough, with two sides so me and the boys can chug some endmilk and also dispose of it baseball stadium style?
Unfortunately/hygienically, it was none of the above, but instead a rousing rebrand of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch we’ve come to know and love (by which I mean immediately recycle as the cereal inside evaporated into the no-longer-thin air of my esophagus).
My thoughts on the new design, including its now-emojified and less-sociopathic squares? It has its ups and downs.
The new mascots themselves just don’t sit right with me. I get that emojis are pretty much pictographic accents, but this looks like they were sort of pasted onto the box like a kid committing the mortal sin of slapping a few Goofy stickers on the side of his mom’s sedan.
May he rue the day he unleashed the scourge of residue.
But besides the boys in beige, I like the rest of what General Mills did with the Cinnamon Toast Crunch color palette. I’m getting serious Splatoon vibes from the iridescent puddles of liquefied CTC Pantone swatches, and I can only wish my own cereal milk was painted with such a powerful technicolor dream coat.
So what do you think of it? No word yet on how this branding might extend to the other Toast Crunch properties, but if Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch makes its triumphant return come December, I hope the Cinnamojis at least bring some of my favorite emojis over for dinner.
🥥🐌🍣🦑🍖🐄
Hmm, on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be in charge of the entrees.
I was going to ask why we’ve never gotten an M&M’s cereal yet, given that M&M’s Cocoa Krispies Treats exist and would make for a logical in-bowl deconstruction. But then I remembered that I’ve already put M&M’s on cereal before, during an ill-fated attempt at cereal trail-mixology that resulted in a food dye-streaked sea of milky raisin anchors. It had a sort of radioactive beauty.
Now that I’ve spread that memory contagion, I can move on. Perhaps testing the borders of what this blog will continue “cereal news,” Mars is releasing Creepy Cocoa Crisp M&M’s, which have already been spotted at Target. This means that either the Halloween season has annexed half of summer, or we’re about to waste away the dog days with werewolves.
Of course, Crispy M&M’s have been around for a while (after not being around for a bit), but Krispies be darned, their branding isn’t as overtly….Cerealous (I’m allowed to say that) as Creepy Cocoa Crisp.
Now, the gentle M&M’s consumer—who feels like inspiring autumnal dread in even the sunniest day—can more viscerally picture themselves carving open an M&M lengthwise to make two edible mini-bowls of chibi cereal crumbs. But hey, that Seymour-pleasing borealis coming off the spoon? And that nugget of a cloak clasp that is apparently giving Red nefarious spectral privileges?
You know what, I’m on board. Let’s skip past Emperor Augustus’ month and autumn’s crimson entrance, landing fudge-filling-first into Halloween’s now-crisper winds. Heck, let’s do the M&M’s Cereal too.
Phew. If just thinking about these cereal-adjacent M&M’s gets me this imaginative, eating them might make me drool auroral energy. But luckily, most of America probably has until September until this cereal–creature confection hits shelves. Our thanks to Munchie Bunchie for sharing the first spotting, from notoriously pro-M&M retailer Target.
And not only in sporadic bursts of sunny feelings, but in a systematic and exponentially improving sense?
I awoke today planning only to share the duel of wills that occured between me and Blue-Eyes White Dragon Cereal. And then I was gobsmacked by a Reddit tip about larvae-shaped Twinkies Cereal.
And now, after following the Twinkies lead shared by /r/YukiHase (thanks again!), I’ve struck sapphire. This something more potent than a Blue-Eyes Blast, and more nostalgic than a Twinkie and four Ghostbusters.
Nope, I’m not Kid-ding: the mild, mild spongecake west’s fastest creamslinger is having a litter of amoebic children!
Thanks to /r/YukiHase on Reddit, we now know that Twinkies will be the next titan of the gas station snack aisle to become a Post-produced Hostess Cereal. Twinkies would arguably have been the more obvious choice for the first wave—not to discredit the fine, fine work of our nation’s honorably Honeyed Buns and elite corps of Powderiest Donettes. But better late than never, I suppose—though the pressure is now squarely on this cylindrical Twinkies Cereal to live up to the high standards set by its caked contemporaries.
All we know about Twinkies Cereal thus far is a) they look like undusted Cheetos Puffs and b) they probably aren’t creme-filled, as they should be, and c) Twinkie the Kid is worryingly absent from the whole affair. I get that many Hostess mascots have crossed the Rainbow Funfetti Bridge, but T the K has been Hostess’ ride or die frontman, even through the bakery’s brief sabbatical in bankrupt purgatory.
(I hear, in limbo, they suck the soulcream straight outta the three holes in your back!)
As Twinkies do, they’ve taken me deliriously off track. Unfortunately there’s not much else to say about Twinkies Cereal just yet—unless we’re guessing which cake comes next.
Cupcake? Too obvious. Snowballs? Too controversial. No, I hope it’s Peanut Butter Ho Hos or White Fudge Ding Dongs….or both, monstrously spliced together.
