“No no, you must have misheard me,” I said to the cashier. “I want to buy Annie’s Berry Bunnies cereal, not Very Moneys cereal. In fact. I don’t think Very Moneys is even grammatically correct.”
And that’s how I ended up making a cashier grimace and walking home with a $5+ box of cereal.
I’ve joked before about how Annie’s three new organic cereals are hare-raisingly expensive, and how in the case of Frosted Oat Flakes, it made me not want to purchase them again. Yet here I am, pouring another bowl of mauve & marmalade colored baby rabbits. If you weren’t impressed enough with those color names, allow me to consult my Behr Paint Color Guide and get even more specific:
“…another bowl of Muscat Grape and Acapulco Sun colored baby rabbits.”
There, that one would make even a Home Depot employee proud.
Each crisp, bite-sized bunny has a blended corn, oat, and rice base. But since they try to mix so many different ingredients, the base ends up tasting muddled and a bit bland. It’s like that old phrase: “jackrabbit of all trades, master of none.”
The texture is also a mixed bag. While the various ridges, nooks, and crannies on each piece make for a more fun mouthfeel than say, a spherical Crunchberry, the rugged and airy craters that dot the bunnies’ backsides ended up mauling the roof my mouth—a lot like, well, a Crunchberry.
As for the advertised Berry flavor, it’s there, but not particularly potent. A pleasant ribbon of strawberry can be sensed, though, along with notes of sweet blueberry.
If you’ve had Cascadian Farm’s Fruitful O’s or General Mills’ newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cereal, these Berry Bunnies taste very similar, just with the added earthiness of oat flour and no noticeable bursts of citrus tang. There’s also no Michelangelo, which is especially sad.
How many more Michelangelo-less cereals must be released before they realize what the public is really hungry for?
Oh, and after looking at the real fruit ingredients listed, I started to realize what else Annie’s Berry Bunnies tastes like. These Bunnies are flavored with dried strawberries, dried blueberries, strawberry puree, and blueberry puree: just like General Mills’ newest Tiny Toast cereals!
So Annie’s Berry Bunnies tastes like Strawberry Tiny Toast and Blueberry Tiny Toast mixed into the same box. But since it lacks the addictively sweet powdered coating that makes Tiny Toast so great, Berry Bunnies is a straight downgrade in every way—except price.
I guess the only thing cuter than a baby bunny is a baby slice of bread. Now I know what I’m giving my kids for their first pet!
These criticisms persist when Berry Bunnies meets milk. Milk shears off the poor rabbits’ already faintly fruit-flavored fur, leaving behind shaved, mushy creatures tattooed with only a thin trace of blended berry taste. An aftertaste of lightly puckering strawberry lingers in the pieces and endmilk, but that’s about it.
The cute shapes are the only thing saving Annie’s Berry Bunnies from becoming completely forgettable, and I only say that because they look like Yoshi from Super Mario World when you flip ’em upside-down.
With Frosted Oat Flakes and Berry Bunnies down, the only Annie’s cereal left for me to open up my wallet for try is Cocoa Bunnies. So if any of you out there want to buy this review off me, I promise:
It’ll only cost you $5.
The Bowl: Annie’s Organic Berry Bunnies
The Breakdown: You could buy twice the mixed strawberry-blueberry flavor and twice the amount of cereal for about the same price with two boxes of Tiny Toast. I suggest you do that—let these Bunnies roam free.
The Bottom Line: 5 upcoming boxes of “Annie’s Organic Pizza MichelangelO’s” out of 10
(Quick Nutrition Facts: 110 calories, 2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 3/4 cup serving)
Why do even the organic cereals hide ingredients under the name “natural flavor”? No thanks Annie.
I like it! Fruity but not over the top. My kind of cereal.
Alright… so Annie’s is really driving down the whole organic stereotype lane? Meaning, they fulfill every prejudice about organic food non-believers would have? Expensive, bland and not good tasting and not worth it?
After reading the review I feel really awful to ever wished for a review cause I was or still am curious about the texture (I like the idea of puffed rice texture mixed with corn crunchiness and earthy earth hints, though I should’ve realized, that the turtles cereal has the same texture… Just without the oat part… -.-).
So thanks for the sacrifice and spending way to much money on a single box of cereal (not that I don’t know how that is, since getting the good US stuff here is even more expensive)
and before i forget it:
YOSHI!?! WTF! How did you discover that? Is it that every bunny looks like yoshi when you turn it upside down? ^^
The Annie’s cereal is on sale at Target for $3.40 per box.
I wish I had an N64 controller. If I did I’d be pressing the B button so Yoshi could lasso that bunny by the tongue. Yoshi’s Story = Highly underrated N64 game.
In all honesty, is 2016 the year of the all natural fruit flavored cereal? As a chocolate and peanut butter guy, I am a bit bummed.
There’s still hope for the Cocoa Bunnies, I suppose. The whole “anti-sugary cereal” movement doesn’t look promising for our more decadent flavors, though.