Monthly Archives: August 2020

Review: Funfetti Cereal

New Funfetti Cereal Review Box

I Turned [REDACTED] And All I Got For My Birthday Was This Lousy Cake Cereal

Well of course, this isn’t entirely true—I also got a heck of a champagne headache and a long arm scratch from a cat who wasn’t as playful as I was. But nevertheless, the highest peaks of yesterday’s celebrations had nothing to do with the trough-full of sugary spheres that happened to make an incidental appearance.

Maybe I’m spoiling this review by leaking my distaste for Funfetti Cereal, but hey: it’s my post-party and I can post what I want to. Plus, I have yet to be impressed by a cereal marketed as vanilla or birthday cake, so my only scant hope for Funfetti Cereal was that—since no one really knows who’s manufacturing the cereal—it could crumb out of left field with, oh, I don’t know, actual freeze-dried frosting piped into every puff or something. As I mentioned in my news post on this cereal, the Funfetti and Pillsbury branding is a bit confusing. You’d expect General Mills to be behind this, but they only own the rights to Pillsbury cookies, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, etc., not Funfetti or other dry baking mixes.

So who’s actually behind this confetti-caked crunch fest? And is it even worth finding out? Continue reading

Review: Pillsbury S’Mores Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel

New Pillsbury S'Mores Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel Review - Box

P. is for pouches, they’re foiled & grand!
O. is for OH YES!, my response to the brand.
P. is for pouches, c’mon can’t you read?
– is the hyphenated joy of a fast feed.
T. is for toasted, as all Tarts should be.
A. is for awesome, this crust fills me with glee!
R. is for Raspberry, the worst compared to Strawberry.
T. is for the filling: is it good? My answer: very.
S. is for sweet icing, a true sort of edible art.

And those, my friends, are the reasons I love Pop-Tarts.

Okay phew, I’ve put the Kellogg’s execs reading this to sleep: now let’s talk about how good these Toaster Strudels are.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little Toaster Strudel experience. I grew up on P-T (which is, in a sense, the opposite of P.T. the game), and with that kind of lifelong conditioning, anything more than tearing open a crumb-spewing pouch with the elegance of a resident campsite raccoon feels like too much work to get a toaster pastry in my stomach.

But if there’s one flavor I’d move mountains for—assuming there’s a rich vein of graham’d ore to suckle beneath them—it’s Golden Grahams. Though I have no proof of this, Golden Grahams seems to be the most popular cereal that never gets flavor variants, despite how obvious the possibilities are. Perhaps this is just a testament to Golden Graham’s chaste and pure breakfast beauty, but with a bunch of other s’mores cereals out there using Golden Grahams-esque pieces, it’s kind of strange that the General Mills brand has only given Golden Grahams the S’Mores treatment in cereal bars and now flaky strudels—maybe when GM’s legendary S’Mores Crunch was discontinued way back, the S’Morecerer casted an unbreakable “do nut resuscitate” spell in retaliation.

Unblazed cereal frontiers aside, I’m excited to get my large rectangular graham on, a little thicker than usual. Continue reading

Quick Review: Tropical Froot Loops (2020)

2020 Tropical Froot Loops Box Cereal Review

There are many harsh truths in this world: nothing is fair, some people genetically can’t enjoy cilantro, and they’re just going to keep putting tags on shirts even though a flappy piece of rough fabric slapping your tender neck seems like an antithetical idea when considering the purpose of clothing.

Oh, and one more: there can only be one Froot Loops. The rest must be considered “Worse Loops.”

I’ve reviewed Tropical Froot Loops once already, so I will keep this quick. As my Empty Bowl cohost Justin accurately states, these deserve the title of “Froot Loops,” while the O.G. stuff can crawl back under whatever lab-synthesized schnozzberry bush they came from. But did the full cornucopia of goodness found in the once Mexico-exclusive Tropical Froot Loops survive their flight north for the summer?

Well seem to think so. Justin disagreed in our latest episode, but if my discerning taste buds weren’t able to detect a difference in Kellogg’s localized Loops, I doubt most people will have a problem. Mostly because, if you never tried (i.e. spent $20–$30 to import) Mexican Tropical Froot Loops when they came out, you’ll be too enchanted by this island time experience to get granularly critical. Continue reading

News: Chocolate Eggo Cereal

New Eggo Chocolate Waffle Cereal

How does the poem go?

Do not weep for Waffle Crisp, for it is not gone.
It is the wind that shakes the mighty Maple.
It is the gentle butter that melts upon your face.
It is the crisped batter bubble that griddles through the dark amber.
It is the sticky remnants of a syrup’d stream. 

Something like that. The point is that while I, like most, may never stop mourning the U.S. discontinuation of Waffle Crisp, the mantle of maple cereals now lies on strong shoulders. After Eggo Cereal was discontinued itself back in 2012 and only just revived last year in Homestyle Maple and Blueberry flavors, it seems the stuff was successful enough to warrant another iteration.

Granted, I’d think Chocolate Chip would make more sense, but I can’t stay mad at the idea of a chocolate maple cereal. First teased by Cereal Snob a few days ago and since confirmed by Kellogg’s, a Chocolate Eggo Cereal is indeed coming soon.

Though perhaps I shouldn’t get too excited, as the naming and description for this product cleverly dances around the word “maple,” leaving it unclear whether this might be just another chocolate cereal.

“Kellogg’s Eggo Chocolate Waffle Cereal has the delicious taste and mouthwatering aroma of Eggo, all packed into an indulgent mini chocolate waffle piece. Each piece is dusted with chocolatey goodness that saturates the milk all the way to the last bite, leaving a bowl of delectable chocolatey cereal milk. The new cereal will be available at retailers nationwide in December.”

Well there you have it: all we know is that we know nothing for sure. Oh well, December is a ways away (about three weeks of quarantine, it will feel like). For now, I’m just glad Eggo is helping those of us who won’t…ahem…let go of Waffle Crisp’s memory.

News: Chocolate Life Cereal

New Chocolate Life Cereal

Talk about a redundant name. We all know that chocolate, much like ball, already is life. Ergo, when life gives you chocolate, it’s really giving you it’s all.

But do I trust Chocolate and Life to successfully meld in the same cereal? That remains to be seen, as I have a bit of a review backlog to clear before I go on the prowl for Quaker’s newly released cocoa-infused, multigrain thatched squares. I’ll admit, I’m a little apprehensive; I’m not the biggest Life cereal fan, simply because they lack a satisfying crunch, instead of crisping into kindling like a road-rolled Chex piece. Plus, Life’s latest new cereals didn’t blow me away either.

But with my dark outlook on Life, I might just be the eternal pessimist. If the idea of Chocolate Life has you ready to uproot yours in search of it, you can already find it listed on Walmart.com.

Review: Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal – Caramel Macchiato & Mocha Latte

New Dunkin' Cereal Review

Not since the egg predated the chicken has such a causality dilemma been posed: “but first, cereal” or “but first, coffee”? I’m sure you’ve seen the latter phrase emblazoned on countless Etsy shirts and flea market embroideries—right next to the Live, Laugh, Love pillows and fat chicken kitchen décor—but with cereal serving as a perfect toothsome preface to just about any activity, sometimes one can face cognitive gridlock when forced to choose between a warm mugful and a cold-milked bowlful.

But worry no longer, crunchy koan ponderers, because Post & Dunkin’ have teamed up to reanimate the Donut-slinging brand’s cereal division, which has laid dormant since Ralston stopped making their chocolate and glazed goodies in the late ’80s. Granted, these two new cereals are based on coffee drinks rather than doughnuts, but that simply gives you an excuse to dunk a real cruller in your caffeinated cereal endmilk.

Yes, it is this last point that makes Dunkin’ cereals so significant—there have been mainstream coffee-flavored cereals before, but none that dared bring real bouncy bean juice into a supermarket aisle already known for sugar-rushing young kids: the last demographic that needs more energy. Sure, Dunkin’ cereals only contain 1/10th the caffeine of a cup of coffee per serving, but if my own childhood cereal consumption velocity is any indication, those perky percentiles will add up fast—the length of a single SpongeBob episode kind of fast.

But enough pep talk, let’s simultaneously eat and drink our breakfast. Continue reading