Yearly Archives: 2022

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms MIX

Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms Mix

Ah, looks like General Mills and I both have the same mindset for 2022: “just f*** it, who cares.” I mean, why ideate a new cereal when you can just reroute the pipes in the cereal factory and call it a day?

Sorry if I sound bitter, but as a sprightly and imaginative hobby cereal mixologist, it irks me a bit when cereal companies take the brainstorming fun out of dreaming up your own cereal combos—though they’ll have to pry the “Honey Nut Bunches of Cheeri-Oats” out of my cold, spoon-gripping hands.

This trend started with the Frosted Failure of Kellogg’s Mashups, and now GM clearly just wants their own cut of the low-hanging fruit harvest. It’s no surprise that they’re starting with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, since these are two of their most iconic brands, plus they get paired up time and time again when it comes to cross-branded cereal infusions. However, I have to imagine this won’t be a particularly satisfying MIX! (their excited emphasis, not mine; I’d’ve used a glum ellipsis…), as combining these two cereals doesn’t really evoke any common flavor pairings (would it’ve been so hard to just give us like, PB&J Reese’s/Trix Puffs or something?). Plus at this point, why not just bring back Cinnamon Lucky Charms?

Sorry if this blog post comes across as aimless and disordered—I wanted it to be lazy as the subject matter. But whatever: Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms MIX! is hitting stores now.

Quick Review: Reese’s Puffs Cluster Crunch

Reese's Puffs Cluster Crunch Review Box

Sometimes you just want the movie theater popcorn, with the sextuple pumps of atomic yellow butter that’ll leave your palms semi-translucent.
Sometimes you just want Chinese food from the place in the rundown strip mall, where the sesame chicken is so oily that the paper takeout container is leaking from every fold.
And sometimes (most times), my cats would rather eat the processed kibble equivalent of a Big Mac, instead of a freshly ground turkey pâté.

That’s how I internally rationalize any remaining appeal of Reese’s Puffs. Simply put, for me Reese’s Puffs are outclassed on every edible level by Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios, which really nail the sumptuous blend of milky cocoa and authentically nutty butter that I’m looking for out of such a cereal.

In comparison, the choco-PB approach of Reese’s Puffs feels cheap and hollow, yet weighed down by an oily processed-ness that progressively glazes your tongue with sluggish sweetness. And while that may sound unappealing, sometimes that’s exactly what you need out of a mainline cereal—nothing too high falutin’, just glorious garbage. I’d say I get such a specific craving for Reese’s Puffs maybe once a year, so I’m getting it out of the way early for 2022 with this new Reese’s Puffs Cluster Crunch. Continue reading

Review: CinnaGraham Toast Crunch

CinnaGraham Toast Crunch Review Box

*Extremely Ferris Bueller voice*

You’re still here? It’s over. Go home—then get in your car and go to the store and buy this cereal!

Seriously, you need a review to tell you that CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is good? You’d think it would only take one look at the box above to stoke the very same deep, primal hunger for cinnamon-coated graham goodness that helped early humans evolve beyond simple hunter-gatherers and into sophisticated graham miners, their crude pickaxes chiseling away at vast veins of golden grain.

I joke, but seriously: there’s something about graham, be it crackered, pie crusted, or Teddy’d, that just gets my motor runnin’, directly counterintuitive to the anti-prurient origins of the foodstuff itself. And since, two years ago, we already got a spiritual predecessor to this CinnaGraham Toast Crunch in the form of Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal—which I called my Cereal of the Year—I went into this review beyond confident that General Mills’ latest Toast Crunch crusader couldn’t possibly fail.

But what if I told you…I was wrong? Continue reading

Review: Peanut Butter Plentifull Cereal

Plentifull Peanut Butter Cereal Review

Ha, Apri—err, I mean, January Fools!

Either way, I totally got ya, didn’t I? I bet when you saw General Mills’ lineup of new 2022 cereals hitting shelves this month, you thought I’d spring right for the exciting ones: most likely the golden twinkling CinnaGraham Crunch, or possibly the bold Reese’s Puffs Clusters Crunch. But no, instead I’m tearing into the new year with the less assuming, least outwardly exciting box of the bunch. The one whose whole branding is based around one of cereal’s tiredest tropes—that is, the proposed benefit of a making you feel more full using whole grains and other assorted brown stuff. I mean, just look at that bowl on the box: it all kinda warps together like a Magic Eye puzzle if you stare at it too long.

Of course, the second you look beyond the bland branding (blanding), Plentifull’s true promise shines through. With the promise of peanut butter coated flakes, you know you’re in for a cereal that isn’t so much filling in the sheer gut-leadening, bland and Grape-Nutsian sense of the word, but rather in the “candy bar filling” sense of a cereal using dense, rich ingredients to make it feel more like a full meal. That meal being dessert. Continue reading

News: 2022 Froot Loops

New Froot Loops Sweethearts

You’re on thin ice, Toucan Sam: thin ice!

Like I mentioned in yesterday’s 2021 “Best Of” countdown, the Kellogg’s Strike may be over, but I’m still hesitant to support and outright endorse new Kellogg’s releases. While we wait to see how Kellogg’s corporate rhetoric and worker treatment evolves over the coming months, I’ll still share news of upcoming Kellogg’s releases on this site—but I’ll be including caveat reminders that a) it took Kellogg’s three whole months and endless bad PR just to make small concessions to the people who make their cereal, b) there are always satisfying alternatives and taste-alikes for these new Kellogg’s releases for those who would rather spend their money elsewhere, and c) a number of people noted dangerous finds in their Kellogg’s purchases while the company was using less-experienced scab labor to replace striking workers, and given lengthy production timelines, it’s unclear when cereal made by the reinstated striking workers will reach shelves.

That said, two new Froot Loops varieties are coming soon from the Battle Creek cereal behemoth. The first is the above Froot Loops Sweethearts, which is basically the exact same Froot Loops you already know, just resculpted into heart shapes and with a laughably ironic “Spread Love Edition” label. This is also the first new limited edition Froot Loops variety to feature the recently redesigned Toucan Sam—who looks….okay, I guess? Personally, I wish they would’ve stuck with the bolder, Adventure Time style Sam who was scrapped after a poor public response.

Froot Loops Color Mix Ups

The other new Froot Loops variety is still a bit more esoteric at this time. It’s called Froot Loops Color Mix-Ups, and reader Laura sent me this pixelated evidence of it from an Acme grocery digital coupon. It’s unclear whether these Mix-Ups will taste any different from normal Froot Loops, but they appear to feature kaleidoscopically multicored Loops instead of the single-hued classic Loops.

Also worth noting is that, as the digital coupon applies to a number of other new Kellogg’s products, there’s a “Mixx Jumbo Snax” listed as well, albeit without any image. Could this be a jumbo-sized remake of 1990’s cryptozoological classic Big Mixx? Probably not, but a Loch Ness-loving boy can dream, can’t he?

Anyway, if you find a better image of Froot Loops Color Mix-Ups, please let me know!