Monthly Archives: August 2020

Review: Smartfood Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn

Smartfood Cap'n Crunch Berries Popcorn Review

There is beauty in simplicity. This is known.

Example: in the 200,000ish-person city where I live, despite dozens of renowned restaurants and artisan makers, perhaps my favorite menu item is a modest egg & cheddar on ciabatta sandwich. The ability to do so much with so few ingredients never fails to blow me away and make me scramble back for more. I mean, have you seen most sandwiches these days? Their menu descriptions are borderline biblical, with so much stuff stuffed within that it’s as hard to taste anything in particular as it is to eat the thing without it prolapsing prosciutto and quarts of aioli all over your hands.

But I digress. And wipe my fingers off.

I’ll admit, when it was first announced, Smartfood’s new Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries popcorn mix turned me off with its very concept. Sharp hulls and serrated Crunch Berries teaming up to shred my palate? My dental insurance is expensive enough. But now that I’ve actually got a chance to try the stuff, I’m happy to say that I was wrong, and Cap’n Crunch is a master of minimalistic munchies. Continue reading

Review: Cookies & Creme Krispies

Cookies & Creme Krispies Review Box

This is going to be a tough review to write. Not because Cookies & Creme Krispies are so rich with nuance that their abstract appeal defies conventional language. More like the opposite: this cereal is such a big yawn that my writerly brain is distracted,  grappling with daydreams of better cereals. Or any cereal, for that matter.

It’s no secret that I’m biased against Krispies, Pebbles, and any other cereal that lacks a certain stomach-smacking density. But for the sake of this review, I will say that Cocoa Krispies & Pebbles are growing on me as indulgent late-night bowls of sopping milked chocolate. Continue reading

News: Malt-O-Meal Churr-O’s Cereal

Malt-O-Meal Churr-O's Cereal

As the world keeps turning, burning, yearning, spurning, and churning, a little Churro-ning goes a long way.

In a clear revival of their long-lost Mini Cinnamon Churros Cereal, which disappeared from shelves around 2013, Post and its cereal subsidiary Malt-O-Meal are bringing the tubular treat back to shelves with Churr-O’s Cereal, a decidedly more rounded take on churros.

Though they’ve always been a beloved dessert, churros are having a renaissance of sorts in the breakfast aisle. Between General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros, Chocolatey Churro Pop-Tarts and Kellogg’s of Mexico’s Panaderia Churros Cereal, there’s never been a better time to eat cinnamon cylinders in the morning.

Though these have already been spotted at Walmart, you can keep your eyes peeled for Churr-O’s Cereal near you with Malt-O-Meal’s product locator.

Review: Three Wishes Cocoa Cereal

Three Wishes Cocoa Cereal Review Box

There are a lot of tough jobs in this world: oil rig worker, skyscraper window washer, lumberjack. But if we’re talking about a real David vs. Goliath battle of wits and resources, being an indie cereal maker is a profession where you have to overcome a lot of lopsided odds. Trying to market a new breakfast product against multi-billion dollar corporate behemoths like General Mills or Kellogg’s means accepting that your product will have to cost more and work harder without decades of brand recognition and cheap, bulk ingredients.

This is naturally why many independent cereal companies target their own niche of cereal consumers. Since the world’s cereal giants usually lack truly wholesome releases for those eating low carb, high protein, gluten-free or organic diets, we’ve seen any number of specialty or boutique breakfast startups offering cereals that are theoretically more healthy than any Special K or Kashi product.

From Magic Spoon and Cereal School to OffLimits and Three Wishes, there’s a lot of growing competition in the specialty cereal game. So how do you tell them apart? Well, for me it all comes down to the base grain*, which I’ve asterisked because several of these use grain alternatives like tapioca flour or chicory root fiber. If you read my first review of Three Wishes Cereal, where I covered their three introductory flavors, I noted how they perform a lot better in the base grain camp.

Does their newest release measure up? Let’s find out in three (wishes), two (wishes), one (wish)… Continue reading

Spooned & Spotted: Lucky Charms Just Magical Marshmallows

Lucky Charms Just Magical Marshmallows

Well, they finally did it. After years of exclusive sweepstakes and crass imitations, Lucky Charms is offering anyone the chance to buy a 6oz pouch of ALL MARSHMALLOWS.

First reported by Saturday Morning Nostalgia and spotted at both Food City and Walmart, Lucky Charms Just Magical Marshmallows feels like a product that should have naturally came out decades ago. Granted, five-pound bags of generic cereal marshmallows have been just a Google search away for years now, but there’s something climactic about finally being able to buy the premium, name brand stuff.

Now what exactly do you do with so many rainbow-hued sugar nuggets? Well that’s up to your imagination. Microwave them together into a s’more-ready puck. Bake them into cookies. Or just make a bowl of Uh-Oh! Lucky Charms with just a few oat pieces scattered about. The world is your purple horseshoe!

Review: Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal

Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal Review - Box

If you came to this page in hopes of finding the Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal review with the fewest cheeky nods to the game, you’re in luck! Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal (surprisingly) deserves more respect than that. So I won’t be telling you how its “goodness creeps up on you,” how you “really should fill up a bucket of it,” nor how much I’d love to “swim in a swampy biome of it.”

Nope, just straight facts from here on out, promise: Minecraft Creeper Crunch is the latest in a long line of Kellogg’s licensed cereals following a similar squares-‘n’-marbits formula. From Frozen Cereal to Finding Dory Cereal, this is as inoffensive and forgettable as licensed cereals get, which may not sound great, but the bar for movie tie-in releases is set lower than bed—I can’t. Don’t make me say it.

Bedroc—

No. Enough is enough. The point is that, since Kellogg’s cereals of this breed actually use oat flour in their little squared circles, they’re just barely within spitting distance of Lucky Charms in terms of how good an oats with marshmallows cereal can be. All they were missing was an it factor. A flavor nebula unexplored by man or leprechaun. And yes, Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms happened, but the cheap vanilla only cut the cinnamon’s potency. No, Minecraft Creeper Crunch is a pure cinnamon and marshmallows cereal, baby. 

Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal Review

Now before you go correcting me on the uniqueness of a cinnamon-marshmallow cereal, I’ll clarify: corn-based Marshmallow Apple Jacks cannot hang, But you are right, in that there is an old cereal worth comparing with Minecraft Cereal.

Can you guess it?

Continue reading

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnadust Seasoning Blend

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnadust

Ha, good luck catching me now, legal sharks: let’s see how your eyes like…

POCKET CINNADUST!

I have reason to practice such self defense. When I first leaked news of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch seasoning blend several months ago, I immediately had to take the post down after being served a crisp Cinnamon Toast Cease & Desist Letter. Granted, it was sent not by General Mills but by a company that focus-groups new product ideas, but it is funny that this one actually came out, since a lot of products teased in programs like that never come to fruition.

I mean seriously: why Cinnadust? It’s ostensibly just cinnamon and sugar together in a spice bottle, which you can already buy, right? Well, the product’s official release also claims there are traces of vanilla and graham to be found within, which, aside from being exciting, really makes this more of a Post Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal Seasoning Blend, huh?

No matter its specific formulation, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnadust is sure to have a lot of applications when it releases this September at Sam’s Club, and in 2021 everywhere else. You could wear it on your face like fake five o’clock shadow. You could pretend to sneeze it out and convince people you’re cereal-blooded.

You could even bring it to the beach and return it to nature, allowing it to mingle with fish bones and driftwood once more.

Spooned & Spotted (Mexico): Kellogg’s Panaderia Cereals

Kellogg's of Mexico: Panaderia Cereals

Oh no, y’all: cereal is dead!

…that’s right, dead serious about celebrating Día de Muertos!

Kellogg’s of Mexico is making headlines for a new trio of Panaderia (Bakery) cereals releasing in Mexico early this autumn—and not all the buzz is the good, sugary kind, either. With Twitter users and media outlets alike questioning whether this should be considered cultural appropriation on Kellogg’s part, these Churros, Rollos de Canela and Pan de Muerto cereals have already been spotted by some shoppers and reviewed by others.

Though they may sound extremely similar, Kellogg’s Panaderia Churros Cereal appears to be flavored with cinnamon and brown sugar, while Rollos de Canela uses cinnamon and vanilla. However, more unique than either is Pan de Muerto Cereal. Based on the popular sweet bread made for Day of the Dead celebrations, this cereal version boasts not only vanilla, but butter and orange blossoms as ingredients, too. Since the last orange-vanilla cereal we saw in America was named my favorite release of that year, Pan de Muerto Cereal might just be worth the cost of importing it.

Have you tried any of these three yet? Let us know in the comments below!