More wishes. Boom, that was easy. And for the other two, bring back Waffle Crisp and the phrase “how’s tricks?” but don’t let the Trix Rabbit trademark it. Thanks.
Oh, wait, you weren’t asking, were you?
I wish you would’ve told me. But while my dreams of a colloquial world seen through amber-tinted glasses may have to wait, I’ll instead get the three wishes I’d never ask for out loud, but which will still appear under my Christmas tree between the socks and the Seinfeld box set (you can never have too many): a healthy cereal, that’s made by a small family, without the primary benefit being fiber content so high it’d give my small intestine a 1000mb/s connection.
Three Wishes is a newcomer in a specialty cereal niche that seeks to challenge the highs and lows of the low-sugar/low-everthing category. Created by the Wishingrad family, Three Wishes Cereal offers enough healthy specifics that it’s easier to quote them than type ’em out myself: “Grain free, plant based, vegan cereals made from chickpeas and pea protein,” with “More protein, less sugar, zero grains,” plus “No peanuts, no corn, no wheat, no rice, no dairy, no oats, and no soy. Our cereals are Kosher, Non-GMO and gluten-free certified.”
But hey, I’m just the taste test jockey, so I’ll be giving the three-flavor variety pack they kindly sent me a layman’s perspective. Please note that I am not on any restricted diets, so while I will be honest when clarifying my thoughts compared to sugary mainstream cereals, those looking for a nutritionist’s opinion can take mine with a grain of anything but actual grain. Let’s go!
Cinnamon Three Wishes Cereal
Usually I’d start with the plainest variety of any given cereal series, in order to give a proper baseline, but I think my primary point of view on Three Wishes Cereal is best exemplified by Cinnamon, as it allows for the most direct comparison with Magic Spoon’s Cinnamon flavor—which I consider to be that brand’s best.
I’d argue that Cinnamon Three Wishes Cereal is the Wishingrad family’s best so far, too, but for entirely adjacent reasons.
See, in my years spent reviewing the occasional healthy cereal in between long geological stretches of gluttony, I’d say there are three main categories of low-guilt crunchy stuff: 1) the kind with strong flavor but a weird aftertaste, 2) the less sweet, but thoroughly palatable kind, and 3) the awful cardboard carvings with no redeemable features outside of warding off would-be brunch bandits.
While Cinnamon Magic Spoon falls into the first category—granted, it has the smallest magnitude of pointed plasti-protein bitterness compared to its three sister flavors—Cinnamon Three Wishes falls into the second. Which is a totally good thing, at least to me, because if I’m eating a more wholesome cereal, I want to eat a lot of it. This is the reason I once ordered Walmart’s last twelve boxes of mid-discontinuation Fiber One Honey Squares, and it’s why Magic Spoon’s potently powdered novelty wears off after the first bowl or two.
At the heart of every Three Wishes loop is a particularly hearty crunch—if you’ve ever found one of those rare Cheerios that’s actually just three Cheerios stuck together, Ghidorah style, that’s about the girth of every Three Wishes piece. They’re pretty airy inside and can carve your palate like paladins if you’re not careful, but I’m pretty impressed at how neutral the base formula is—despite the use of chickpeas and pea protein in lieu of grain, there’s no strong bean or starchy vegetable taste to distract from the cinnamon baked into the stuff.
As for said spicing, it’s a long way from Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but it certainly doesn’t try to be a CTChaser. Rather, the quite mild sweetness and cozy spice calls to mind genuine cinnamon nut bread buttered up with a thin layer of molasses. Since it’s tough to get a solid read on the flavor in just a bite or two, it helps to mindlessly munch on Cinnamon Three Wishes Cereal and let the natural cinnamon accents warm up to your taste buds—this ain’t speed dating, it’s a slow courting.
Milk helps temper the pointed crunch, while making the occasionally aimless flavor notes sharpen up, too. But overall, if you want an über-healthy Cinnamon Toast Crunch that will neither induce chemical fatigue nor cereal-dust your trousers, I’d say Cinnamon Three Wishes is worth at least 1-3 tries.
The Bottom Line (rated on the healthy cereal-specific scale): 7 Cinna-Mothras out of 10
Honey Three Wishes Cereal
Having set a base-taste baseline, I can get straight to the honey’d dew strewn across this mellower and yellower Three Wishes Cereal.
This is like no other honey taste I’ve experienced in a cereal before. As the ingredients list isn’t specific enough about the honey content—I guess it’s none of my beeswax—I find it a bit difficult to directly compare this to the pollinated spoils of a summer’s day. The honey taste is just as modest as the cinnamon, but it’s also quite floral with an underlying sting of tartness.
Now, this flavor in particular just isn’t for me, perhaps because it reminds the lifelong coffee irrigation system I call a body of honey-infused tea. If you’re someone who prefers leaves to legumes, you’ll likely find get more sleepy-time comfort out of Honey Three Wishes Cereal than me. Personally, I needed milk and a latticed drizzle of real honey to make the stuff fresh-from-the-plastic-bear-able, and even then it just made me wish I were eating the cinnamon instead. If nothing else, it is an interesting gastro-exploration for those who get tired of making their same spicy wish again and again.
But might I recommend trying a honey nut flavor next? That would be the bees knees!
(Quick, quick: read the rest of this review before I’m caught by the Queen Bee’s Royal Pun Police. They’re just jelly of my skills!)
The Bottom Line: 5.5 light yellow jackets out of 10
Unsweetened Three Wishes Cereal
Well this is a first.
I’ve had cereals so generically sweet they’re bland, but I’ve never run into a bowl of breakfast-stuff that prides itself on being entirely unseasoned—heck, even Grape-Nuts tries (and largely fails) to wordsmith its way into subliminally making us taste, you know, grapes and/or nuts.
But Grape-Nuts is perhaps one of the best illustrative analogues for understanding Unsweetened Three Wishes Cereal. Both are extremely crunchy, don’t taste like a whole lot, and are probably better used as cooking ingredients for breading or pudding or bread pudding (but not pudding bread: that recipe’s a proprietary family secret) than they are as functional cereals.
Now, that’s not to say a bowlful of chick-pea² rounds won’t appeal to someone out there—and it’s not to say you couldn’t drown this stuff in a lagoon of chocolate milk and Bailey’s to let it sop up some shameless satisfaction—but with two flavored versions right next to them, these no-hullabaloo hoops really only appeal to the small, gremlin-like part of me that wants to experience aftertastes for their own sake.
Well, and the part of me that wants to know how my cats feel when they eat grain-free kibble, but I try to keep that particular Shadow Dan shackled up somewhere near my western kidney.
Because dry or in milk, Unsweeteened Three Wishes Cereal is the only one of the triumvirate that gives you an idea of what bean ‘n’ pea-baked cereal ore really tastes like. It’s got a glossy starchiness to it as well as a nearly salty cornless-meal savoriness to it, not unlike Corn Flakes or Original Fiber One. So though I’m 100% the type of guy to eat plain, cold cooked pasta with gusto, I’d say prospective Three Wishers should start with Cinnamon or Honey, and see where the Wishingrad Genies take this brand next.
Baklava Crunch, anyone?
The Bottom Line: 4.5 id-tested, superego-approved cereals out of 10