Look out, Frosted Honey Bunches of Oats—you’ve got an usurper approaching your throne of supreme cereal unnecessity. If you thought “Honey Bunches with 66% rather than 33% of its constituent components glazed in sugar” was silly, meet Kellogg’s JUMBO SNAX: four classic cereals enlarged so they’re…more…snackable?
Ah yes, of all the issues plaguing breakfast cereal, my main concern is that the darn stuff keeps slipping through the sieve of sausages I call fingers. I can’t tell you how many thriving ecosystems of microorganisms I’ve nourished beneath stadium bleachers where lost Loops go to be resorbed by Earth’s foundations.
But sorry, mosses who’ve evolved to masticate: no more free rides! This boy has enough JUMBO SNAX pouches to strap a bandolier with Jacked-Up Jacks and Weapons-Grade Caramel Corn.
So now that I’ll have no trouble doing so, let’s articulate the nuances of each variety.
Kellogg’s Froot Loops & Apple Jacks JUMBO SNAX Review
Okay, let’s get this twofer out of the way: neither Froot Loops nor Apple Jacks JUMBO SNAX do anything to muddle the familiar flavors that have deified each cereal over the decades into the pantheon of breakfast iconicity.
Since there’s nothing novel to say about the tastes of these two, I’ll use this space to more closely critique to very concept cornerstoning the JUMBO SNAX line. Yes, the pieces are bigger—you could probably nest a normal Loop or Jack within the inner circumference of their jumbo compatriots, much like Japan’s Donut Mart Cereal. So while I’d personally prefer a little drama given the premise of big ol’ cereal—why not a juicy Froot Loops I could cut like a steak—my real beef with JUMBO SNAX are the equally laughable and baffling serving sizes.
So, the standard edition of JUMBO SNAX is 0.45oz pouches. If this sounds small, it’s because these things are hardly worth the packaging. Just as plastic-wrapped oranges assault the senses with absurdity, so too is it disorienting to blow through a 50-calorie packet of like, twelve Apple Jacks in less time than it took to wrestle the plastic open.
Unless you really like dry cereal and want something slightly chunkier to teethe on, I’m not sure I can recommend these JUMBO SNAX pouches in lieu of an actual, resealable cereal box. Especially for Froot Loops and Apple Jacks, which taste immeasurably better in high quantities with milk, anyway. Perhaps if nothing else, milked JUMBO SNAX get soggy less easily, but nothing about them thrills me to the point of a re-purchase.
Especially not the unforgivable and explicable absconsion of the green Apple Jacks pieces. Where are you hiding them, Kellogg’s? Did the hungering peat by my high school football field demand a crunchy chlorophyllian sacrifice?
The Bottom Line: 6 milk steaks out of 10
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Tiger Paws JUMBO SNAX Review
I argued that the single-serve JUMBO SNAX pouches are purposeless primarily so I could make a better case for the 6oz resealable bags of the stuff. These 12x heftier receptacles still have nothing on a genuine cereal box, but they’re at least worth toting around or stowing on your dashboard.
actually wait, the big bags are equally confusing.
at first I was surprised that they were proud to contain 12 WHOLE HANDFULS, but then I realized their idea of a handful is ridiculous even by my massive mitts' standards pic.twitter.com/yCs7YlwI6v
— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) April 4, 2020
What I find most charming about this size is the excited claim that each bag has twelve handfuls of cereal! This statement seems piddly on its face, but when you realize that Kellogg’s measures a handful as twenty pieces—perhaps the first time in breakfast history that any serving size has been overestimated—one has to wonder if Tony the Tiger himself was the reference model. My hands are a bit large for my height, and I had trouble cupping them so my XX-piece bounty of XXL Tiger Paws didn’t runneth over. Plus, whatever you do, don’t try to eat a whole handful like it’s a fresh pear, because it’ll leave you looking and feeling unhinged.
This is nevertheless a long intro to Frosted Flakes Tiger Paws, a remolding of Frosted Flakes—because who would want massive corny razor blades?—that softens the cereal’s rough edges into cute little mitts that wouldn’t look out of place on King Vitaman‘s head.
Nor would the flavor of Frosted Flakes Tiger Paws feel jarring in the Quaker multiverse of coconut oil coated cereals like King Vitaman and Quisp. While I expected these Paws to be boring sugar puffs like Kellogg’s has been spurtin’ out in rings lately, they’ve got a delectable buttery sheen that puts them in a scrumptiously uncanny valley between Frosted Flakes and Cap’n Crunch.
Sure, Frosted Flakes Tiger Paws fulfill the JUMBO SNAX promise of eminent munchability, but they would also fare perfectly well if reworked into a full-blown cereal. As a bit of a spoiler, Tiger Paws are the best JUMBO SNAK (is that the singular of SNAX?) and worth sinking your claws into.
The Bottom Line: 8 sovereign sugar states out of 10
Kellogg’s Caramel Crunch Corn Pops JUMBO SNAX Review
Far and away the strangest inclusion of the bunch, JUMBO SNAX Corn Pops change the shape, texture and flavor found in your run-of-the-combine Pops to produce a cereal that’s familiar yet implacably eccentric.
Instead of chewy little deflated corn kernels, here we’re served the same serrated spheres found in Canadian Corn Pops. Both in regular and JUMBO form, spherical Corn Pops are denser than a typical corn puff, pleasingly delivering on the Crunch in this Caramel spinoff’s name.
But what about that caramel flavor? It’s tough to describe. I’ve always found that caramel, along with birthday cake, is a taste incredibly hard to replicate in all its nuance within a limited cereal vehicle. And Caramel Crunch Corn Pops prove me right—sure, there’s that same butteriness found on the Tiger Paws, and it’s a browned butter, too, roasty and caramelized. But beyond that, it lacks the deeper richness of a caramel candy. It’s not entirely disappointing, but maybe a more fitting name for these would be Burstin’ Butterscotch Corn Pops. Even a touch of salt would have helped elevate these Pops closer to the realm of tin-fresh caramel corn.
But hey, with the 6oz bags, neither laws, gods, nor fortified kings can stop you from turning Caramel Crunch Corn Pops into a poppin’ snack mix featuring real caramel corn and, oh, I don’t know, crushed up Pop-Tart bits.
Overall, Kellogg’s JUMBO SNAX are a mixed pouch of untouched classics, half-baked experiments, and surprising successes. While I may think the concept is ridiculous in light of all the cereal innovation Kellogg’s could’ve worked toward, in these trying times even a Froot Loop big enough to be a pinky ring might be enough to get you through the weekend.
The Bottom Line: 6.5 well-rounded half-Werther’s out of 10
The Apple Jacks and Front Loops jumbo rings are actually closer in size to the original cereals when they (the original) cereals first came out. The modern day cereals are much smaller and cost more.
Hello! Splendid reviews. I think 0.25oz may br a typo for 0.45oz? Which, oddly enough, would presumably mean that the 6oz packages actually contain more than 13 Kellogg’s Standard Handfuls. Why don’t they put that on the box, hm? Mere deference to popular triskaidekaphobia, or something more sinister? Only one cereal journalist can find out…
Keep up the keep work!
Good catch! I was quoting the erroneous press release instead of cross comparing with reality