Y’know, they say imitation is the sublimest form of flattery.
Yes, General Mills unleashed a mouthwatering downpour of new cereal news this week, and the twinkling, golden, Luciferianly tempting lightbringer leading the firestorm is CinnaGraham Toast Crunch: a game-changing union of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams that pairs the former’s sweet cinnamon sugar swirls with the latter’s hearty honey base grain.
To be honest, I’d’ve preferred if GM made this a variant of Golden Grahams instead of a Toast Crunch. I totally understand how CTC has more cult appeal, but poor Golden Grahams never gets limited edition variants, whereas there are enoughmembers of the Toast Crunch family to start a mafia, inspire an Ancestry.com commercial, and clean out an Olive Garden. Continue reading →
Anyway, it seems like I’ve been sleeping on the Cereal Killer Cafe for a long time—not surprising, considering how they’re like, 5 timezones ahead of me. But I also knew them as the Brits with the most famous cereal cafe of all time. Cereal cafes aren’t all that rare in America, but since you can just buy all the same cereals at your local grocery store, the concept is much more of a novelty overseas, where American cereals are comparatively exotic and exuberantly sweet. Add in Cereal Killer Cafe’s immersive branding, and you had a hit on your spoon-gripping hands. Continue reading →
Happy Ho-Ho-Hovember! Not to be confused with Yo-Ho-Hovember (only celebrated in international waters), H-H-H-vember is my go-to name for the late-autumn parts of November that are cannibalized by the coming Christmas season (i.e., every day in November except for like, three).
I highly recommend you celebrate with either a) strict defiance and rigid adherence to Thanksgiving tradition with a “come and take ’em” on your mashed potatoes, b) the kind of dastardly combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities that results in cranberry sauce leaking out of a stocking, or c) a new episode of The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast from myself and Justin McElroy.
I won’t lie: I do a very bad job about remembering to tell y’all when we have a new episode. In fact, it’s been an embarrassing 5 months since I’ve done so. But nevertheless, Episode Sixty is a darn good one, even if it gets a bit off topic into the rich realms of s’mores and doughnuts…and shoddy Halloween costumes.
We also discuss these new Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats, which thankfully aren’t exclusive to the Sam’s Club 53-count box after all—and instead can also be found in this 35-pack at Walmart stores, even though that’s still enough sweet little rectangular prisms to leave Santa too stuffed to slide out of your house the way he came in. Forgive him for tucking and rolling out the living room window…and taking the head clean off your front yard reindeer sculpture.
Anyway, if you want to hear all the Empty Bowl episodes I forgot to tell you about, you can find them at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one is like a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treat injected directly into our veins.
Well there ya have it, folks: Halloween is is barely dead and buried, and Christmas is already doing a perverse little gumdrop dance on its grave.
Though to be honest, I doubt Halloween minds chilling six feet under with all the skeletons, worms, and cursed alien artifacts.
Regardless, I’m not ready to dive into the holiday spirit yet. Partly because I’m a wuss when it comes to snow and winter cold, and partly because I still need to stuff my face with a metric ton of, well, stuffing. Which is why it’s a bit sad we’re not getting any new Thanksgiving cereal products this year—no Pecan Pie Toast Crunch? C’mon!—and instead diving right into the sugar cookies and….”Merry Berries?”
You’d think that’s a euphemism for mistletoe, but no: it’s the name of a limited-edition Smartfood popcorn flavor starring Cap’n Crunch and his Crunch Berries. And if the idea of Crunch Berry popcorn rankles your stockings with recognition, you’d be right. Last summer, Smartfood and the Cap’n dropped a more straightforward-branded version of the same snack.
The disappointing news is that Merry Berries Cap’n Crunch popcorn seems to be the exact same product, just with red and green Crunch Berries only. The alright news is that this pretty much describes what Christmas Crunch already is. And finally, the good news is that Smartfood’s Crunch Berries popcorn was already extremely tasty, so I’m gonna recommend you seek out Merry Berries if you haven’t tried the mix yet. I’m not even a fan of sweet popcorn, usually, but the combo of saltiness, berry-dusted popcorn, and the Crunch Berries themselves is uniquely magical.
Not as magical as a Cranberry Sauce Crunch Berries popcorn might be, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.
