That teal…that shade of uniquely aquamaritime teal.
It’s not too late to mend your heretical misdoings, Kellogg’s, and to put this color on this product makes my heart snap, my joints pop, and my stomach crackle with rage.
Err, that last one might’ve been the spicy tikka masala, but my vitriol stands. Yes, I’m talking about the original, perfectly poised and turquoised Rice Krispies Treats Cereal box, which is the cornerstone of my (largely intact) theory that all cereals in teal boxes are bound for greatness, or at least cult appeal. Sprinkle Spangles. Cinnabon Cereal. Cinnamon Roll Fillows. And even Toasted Coconut Cheerios now. The only outlier here is Maple Bacon Donuts Cereal and its putridly glazed porkiness, but I choose to willfully ignore it—after all, it was a clear, anarchistic gimmick of a cereal that was likely tailor made to send my pet theories to a farm upstate. Continue reading →
(Yes, I know the best by date is before I post this—rest assured, I tested them literally just in time before it was too late.)
Heh, if you thought the economic prognosis for cereal was grim, then its perennial bowlfellow is facing an udderly dire future.
Of course, as active eaters are focusing on more energizing breakfasts, and as dairy consumption is plummeting by the billions of dollars, interest in milk alternatives is increasing amongst consumers across all levels of lactose tolerance. Oat milk, especially, is taking off as the hippest, sippest stuff to put on your cereal—especially if you’re eating a creepy–corny cereal that desperately needs to throwback to the good oat days.
In a radical effort to make milk more appealing to modern kids, Borden Farms has launched three State Fair-inspired milk flavors in select, fair-friendly states. Symbolically implying a situation wherein a blue-ribbon 4H cow broke loose from the clumsy trappings of man to storm the deep-fried fairway before being milked by opportunistic carnies looking to get the most bang out of their heifer-heisted buck, these milks bring Blueberry Cobbler, Banana Taffy, and Cotton Candy to the breakfast table.
Overlooking the clear missed opportunity for a caramelized Funnel Cake Milk (milked from real elephant ears!), this potent lineup of tastes was kindly sent to me by Borden’s Elsie the Cow herself, who pseudo-calmly reminded me between moos that I simply must squat on my stoop in anticipation of a shipment that must be refrigerated immediately in order to keep her sweet nectar crisp and uncurdled.
Well, mission accomplished, Elsie. I don’t do many milk reviews on this site, but given that atomically hued milks are practically begging to be poured atop flavorfully complementary cereals, I couldn’t resist the chance to get a little artsy with my pairings. Here’s hoping I at least get a participation ribbon in the Pastoral Landscapes category. Continue reading →
You know, if it weren’t for the Country Music Awards, we might not be in this mess.
See, the use of “Cereal,” “Cereal Bowl” or any other such noshing nomenclature really needs to be standardized. When a company tries to infuse cereal flavor into a distinctly non-cereal entity, there’s no bottom line for quality control or forced respect for the wild diversity of cereal flavor available. Much like the Food & Drug Administration, I feel we need to establish a similar agency to ensure we don’t grow complacent with plain ol’ cinnamon as the generic stand-in for cerealized snacks.
Such a bureau would have to be called the Cereal & Milk Administration, but who would take our acronym seriously?
Now I’m not knocking on Target’s Market Pantry store brand, but out of all the possible iconic cereal tastes you could choose as the stuff’s ice cream ambassador, the likeness of Cinnamon Toast Crunch—itself an interpretation of a different breakfastuff—seems underwhelming compared to the possibilities presented by Froot Loops, Golden Grahams, or even Crunch Berries.
But hey, if Cereal Bowl Ice Cream sounds right up your aisle, don’t let my mildly lactose-intolerant mewling take your eyes off the prize. I’ll still probably buy it, just to spite my intestines.
They’ve been getting reeeeeal cocky lately. Someone’s gotta put ’em in their place.
Feelin’ blue? Then we’re berry excited (Justin’s joke, not mine) to share something that might make a grey day a little milky-whiter.
After a fourish week hiatus, Justin and I are back in The Empty Bowl to close out our “first season” with Episode XX. For the temperamentally troubled and unfamiliar, The Empty Bowl is an ever-placid voyage across a bottomless sea of milk—milk known for its epsom-esque therapeutic properties.
In this twentieth of all episodes, we cover a glutting gauntlet of upcoming blueberry cereals, juxtapose the highs & lows of coconuts & Chocula, and lend our expert advice to a few listeners with pressing pantry inquiries.
If you want to hear us talk until we’re proverbially blue in the face, you can find nineteen other episodes of cereal seafaring at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one helps put a Crunchling through college.
Listen, I’ve been cereal blogging for four and a half years now. After about two, adjectival creativity gets tough.
I mean, even for a concept as broad as cereal, there aren’t that many words to clearly convey its flavor without getting too hokey—which I still do, to the point of putting the wrong words in and taking the right words out before I shake the sentence all about.
Sweet. Buttery. Toasted. Crunchy. I pray for anyone who’s been diligently reading long enough to count how many times I’ve even stooped to using more idiosyncratic descriptors like “hedonistic,” “sugar soaked,” or “droolbending.”
Actually, wait, I should use that last one more.
Regardless, if cereal adjectives get stale, then specific flavor words are even worse. For example, after reviewing a lengthy patchwork of pumpkin spice products, I feel obligated to pay the hyphen in pumpkin-y overtime. And that’s nothing compared to the fines I owe Merriam Webster for unlicensed neologizing.
But there’s pumpkin spice, and then there’s coconut. At least PS has like five constituent spices I can rely on to split cloven hairs: once I use the phrase coconutty in this review, it’s all over for me…and there you have it. I’m all out of ideas. Well anyway, Toasted Coconut Cheerios are good. See you in the next one! Continue reading →
No, what any true-goo cereal fan should be excited for is just this: dry, sugar-dusted wheat bricks tenderly squelched (12%) full of dried mixed berry goo.
Uh, you know, when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound quite as good as bite-sized griddle cakes and cerealized Seinfeld concept restaurants. But regardless, thanks again to cereal sleuth of the month (year?) Devin, we now know that the Mixed Berry variety of Filled Frosted Mini-Wheats will be returning—though I wouldn’t blame you if you never noticed it leave.
In fact, this cereal concept is so niche—and admittedly blasé in its appeal—that I can’t even find an accurate lifespan for its original incarnation. The only key indicator that 2019 (or 2020)’s version is new is that they’re now simply called “Filled” instead of “Touch of Fruit in the Middle,” a welcome renaming that will no-doubt stave off my carpal tunnel minutes longer when it comes time to review this stuff.
Regardless, fans of fruit and obfuscatory wheat cages for said fruit can prep their berry-discerning taste buds to try this one soon. I mean, there is blueberry in there, so we can safely assume these will take well to butter and maple syrup.
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the phrase “jumping the shark” by this point. You know, major turning points in the absurdity of any given property over time. The final season of Scrubs. The 3D television. The Renaissance. Many such cases.
And it seems even breakfast products in the best couple years have been iteratively cranking the the dubious complexity dial on their flavoring up to 100(g of sugar or degrees of abstraction). For cereal, this was less of a shark jumping than a sour patching, as this year’s gut-warpingly weird Sour Patch Kids Cereal eroded a hole in the proverbial stomach lining of possibility, allowing and normalizing the entrance of other cereal mutations—for better or worse.
Pop-Tarts, on the other hand, seemed to go off the deep end—right into the uncanny crumb catcher—earlier, with Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts heralding many other largely gimmicky Tarts.
Thankfully, Pop-Tarts’ latest conceptual sneak peeks are far more domesticated in their wildness than their second latest—I was worried we’d too-quickly evolve from Scanning our Tarts to Embedding Our Holo-Tarts With Genetic Seasoning (for the last Valentine’s Day before the Pastry Singularity.
Do you love cereal as much as Han Solo knows Leia loves him?
Do you find yourself hyperdriving through boring, terrestrial cereals without a dent in your appetite?
Has your stomach ever rumbled so hard that you wondered whether there was a hypothermic Jedi warming himself inside you?
Well then you may be in luck: General Mills is teaming up with Lucasfilms again to bring back Star Wars Cereal. The last time we saw this stuff was in 2015/16, when it debuted in boxes bearing Yoda, Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, Rey and BB-8. After The Force Awakens, we didn’t get anything special for The Last Jedi. But now that The Rise of Skywalker is looming like a metropolitan cloud formation, we’re getting updated boxes featuring BB-8 and new droid D-O (who looks like a mobile megaphone), alongside Kylo Ren and a “red Sith Trooper” (who looks like a more vanilla Emperor’s Royal Guard).
Granted, this cereal really isn’t anything special: it’s a generic corn base with the same ol’, largely inscrutable marbit Darth Rorschachs.
But if you’re a die-hard Star Wars fan or the parent of one, you’ll probably want to sneak some of this into theaters this December—in a milk-filled fanny pack, of course. Just don’t expect the back of the box to be anything but a watered-down version of those Star Wars Cross-Section books.
