Kellogg’s has some big, squishy shoes to fill.
By putting the Froot Loops name on a new fruit snacks product, as well as the friendly visage of Toucan Sam himself, Kellogg’s better be ready for comparisons to be drawn between the snacks and Froot Loops cereal itself (after all, that’s the only reason we’re featuring these!).
Even more important, though, is that Froot Loops Letters are also going to be compared to Kellogg’s other fruit snacks. Oh yeah, you know which ones I mean. Those succulent and divine blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries that you remember from your fondest elementary school lunches.
And while I don’t expect these letters to be that good, and I certainly don’t expect them to be as awe-inspiring as the undisputed greatest fruit snacks of all time—Scooby-Doo fruit snacks—I must hope that they are at least better than those store brand dinosaur-shaped ones that feel like you’re chewing a small candle.
I think I still have one of those nuggets wedged in my molar from 1st grade.
Opening a diminutive packet, the fruity, waxy aroma is exactly what I think a scented crayon would smell like.
Overwhelmed with curiosity, I open all of the packets to reveal that not nearly every letter of the alphabet is represented here. I won’t bore you with the statistics, but I will say that, to spell out the name of this site, I had to get very creative with my biting gymnastics, sculpting the shapes with my teeth like a post-modern fruit snack Donatello.
The texture of these is, thankfully, actually quite pleasant and gummy bear-esque. No tooth-camping gunk here.
As for the flavor, if you expected anything like Froot Loops, stop reading immediately, hoist your box of Froot Loops Letters out of a moving locomotive while driving over a bridge, burn that bridge, and sleep peacefully knowing you saved yourself a lot of disappointment.
There’s none of the tropical notes familiar from Froot Loops, and little of that addictive, puckering sweetness. All of the fruit flavor is merely hinted at behind the dominant, plasticky overtones of plain gelatin and a bizarre, filmy coating that coats your tongue with an unpleasant glaze. Let’s do a flavor breakdown:
Red —I’m not saying it’s like eating cherry Chapstick…but I’m not not saying it, either.
Orange — Remember when your school served nondescript orange drink from huge coolers? This is what would have happened if they watered it down.
Yellow — Essentially a half-chewed Lemonhead that someone sucked some of the flavor out of, or maybe one that a mother bird “brought back up” for her kids.
Green — Okay, who spilled Clorox on my fruit snack?
Blue — Like a Kellogg’s blueberry fruit snack devoid of all soul, it makes a noticeable attempt at blueberry but manages to leave an acidic aftertaste. Still somehow the best of the bunch.
Purple — Imagine grape Kool-Aid in chewy pill form: very syrupy, artificial, and lacking any authentic, puckering sweetness.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating; these are passable, but when given so many other delicious fruit snack options, there’s no reason to settle for sub-par.
But since this is a cereal and breakfast blog, I felt it only fair to give this non-cereal the cereal treatment. Aware of the incredibly stupid thing I was about to try, I poured myself what was, essentially, a bowl of Suudsu (mad props if you got that reference without clicking).
Instant regret. When coming in contact with milk, that aforementioned film intensifies and plasters the entirety of your mouth with a tangible wax. Needless to say, medicinal fruit flavor doesn’t gel well with the rich vanilla of milk, either.
But my experiment pretty well summarizes the Froot Loops Letters experience: not very well thought out. Kellogg’s had a chance to relive their fruit snack glory, but instead, we’re left with little packets of grainy gummy vitamins and a bitter taste in the back of our mouth.
Somewhere, a Shaggy fruit snack is shaking his delicious purple head in disappointment.
The “Bowl:” Froot Loops Letters
The Breakdown: Artificial (and not the good kind) and unrecognizable fruit flavors, plus an uncomfortable texture make these a forgettable snack that is a relative to Froot Loops in name and mascot only.
The Bottom Line: 2 scented crayons (get on this idea, Crayola!) out of 10