Someone ask Gordon Ramsay for his best Caribbean fusion recipes, because in his words: “finally, some good f***ing food.”
The American debut of Tropical Froot Loops is incredible for two reasons: first, this originally Mexico-exclusive menagerie of looped Pineapples, Bananas, Oranges & Mangoes is so good that it seemed destined to be just the latest in a long line of creative breakfast explorations that never hit the U.S. Second, Froot Loops has been consistently missingthe mark with its recent releases, so the introduction of what we can assume is the same winning formula (containing all kinds of rarely-seen-in-cereal fruit flavors) from south of the border is cause for celebration.
I swear, if Kellogg’s finds a way to bungle the best bits of Tropical Froot Loops during the cereal localization process, I’ll be giving my box a viking funeral. Continue reading →
Woof, it took me a while to unscramble my brain before starting this post—just looking at a Lucky Charms Soft Baked Bar threw me into a hapless hypnotic sugar trance. It’s not that the things taste bad; they’re actually addictive little blondies, so simply appealing that after getting halfway through their initial, Costco-exclusive 40-count box release, I simply couldn’t see right. A punch-drunk man-sized Dough Boy, I waddled and swayed around the house scaring my cats like a kaiju. After giving the rest away, I vowed to never touch a Lucky Charms Soft Baked Bar again—especially not the one I found flattened into a wrapping-fused pancake at the bottom of my backpack.
That said, now that Lucky Charms’ doughy delights are available in far-more-reasonable 6-bar boxes, I recommend everyone keep an eye out for them on their next grocery trip. The unpretentious pleasantness of these Lucky Charms treats also bodes well for General Mills’ companion release: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Soft Baked Bars, which are entirely new and could very likely outshine their marshmallowy cousins.
These CTC bars, however, shouldn’t be confused with Cinnamon Toast Crunch Soft Filled Bars, a frozen product released alongside a Cocoa Puffs version, both consisting of oven-ready soft breads with neufchâtel cheese inside. Tragically, those particularly tempting desserts ended up being wholesale only, meaning the only ones who can enjoy them are elementary school cafeteria-goers and the freelance kindergarten cop I hired to smuggle me out a crate of ’em. He never came back.
Instead, I’m sure Soft Baked Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars will be less cheesy, but far easier to tear open at a moment’s notice for a quick hit of swirling cinna-sugar goodness. If you manage to find them before I do, let me know what you think in the comments below!
Lucky Charms is a cultural treasure of a cereal. So much so that I’d wager over 2/3 of TV jokes about cereal somehow involve technicolor marshmallows. But while the one-note marbits are Lucky Charms’ Wonder Bread and butter, the oat bits that complement every ‘mallow are just as foundationally important to the overall integrity of this cereal we love so much. After all, what is a burst of dreamy sugar without a little grainy realism to bring your orbiting taste buds back down to earthiness?
Contrary to what major breakfast manufacturers seem to believe (for no doubt cost-saving reasons), a cereal’s base grain choice is critical. This can make or break an entire product, depending upon how any given mixture of corn, oat, wheat or rice flours are forged into a certain shape and are given a certain flavor. And while corn definitely has its place in the cereal aisle, it works best when the cereal itself is a celebration of corn. Corn Pops? It sure does. Corn Bran? Why corn’t it? Oh, and Frosted Flakes (of Corn)? I’d expect them to be of nothing less.
But when corn is merely a cereal’s airy and craggy stage, instead of a lead actor, any nuanced flavor basted upon it has to fight for tasteful dominance against its own brazen, maize’n terrain—like sunflower rows growing from concrete. That’s Honey Lucky Charms’ mortal sin: just like Chocolate Lucky Charms and the especially mediocre Fruity Lucky Charms, oat is swapped for corn and then given a flavor, flavors that need oat’s grounding hug more than ever.
But there’s a bit more to this cereal than my rambling intro would have you believe: I’m gonna temper my corn vendetta for a moment and jump right to the honey shot: Continue reading →
The answer is way more interesting than you might think. More than just an unhinged marketing gimmick, the story of South Korean Green Onion Chex is really about a fight for breakfast democracy, 16 years in the making.
In 2004, Kellogg’s of South Korea made one very short-sighted assumption. They wanted to debut a new version of their Chocolate Chex cereal—yes, it must be noted that, for some reason, Kellogg’s SK has the rights to use Chex (a General Mills cereal almost everywhere else) in branding—so Kellogg’s marketers launched an event for kids: an election between two candidates in the running to be “the president of Kellogg–Chex world.”
Kids could vote for either Cheky, a hip young square who promised to double the chocolate flavor in Kellogg’s Chex cereal, or Chaka, a rude and ugly Chex piece who promised to put green onions in Kellogg’s Chex instead. Again, foolishly assuming that kids would naturally choose super-chocolatey Cheky over his hybrid Shrek/Mucinex Mascot opponent, Kellogg’s SK let kids vote through a public online poll. Continue reading →
Oh ho ho, how whimsical: it seems there was a simple misunderstanding here. Quite humorous, Kellogg’s, all things considered. For years we cereal diehards have been asking for “two-in-one cereals” to return, given the iron and Nintendium-clad nostalgic reputations of Nerds Cereal and the Nintendo Cereal System. There’s just something so symbolically powerful about two individually sealed bags of different flavored cereal bits snuggling up in the same box like snakes in a peanut brittle can.
But the funny folks at Kellogg’s must have misinterpreted that as a request for two cereals in the same bag. An understandable semantic switcheroo, true, but the separate bags thing is kind of a dealbreaker. Well, that and the part about wanting new cereal flavors.
I’m sure there’s someone out there whose whole body is positively quivering with excitement about a convenient cereal Mashup of Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops specifically, but that person isn’t me—and I’m someone that loves mixing different cereals on my own accord. For reasons that will soon be made even clearer, this isn’t exactly cereal mixology’s power couple. They may be Kellogg’s two most iconic breakfast flagships, but Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops are famous because their familiar and universally lovable flavorings stand alone and taste consistent, in contrast to some of Kellogg’s more divisive, but in-bowl experiment-friendly brands like Krave or Raisin Bran (yes, I said it: GORP is practically the patron saint of intersecting snacks).
Because even if we put aside the obvious question—why wouldn’t I just buy one box of each Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops so I can mix them at my own personal ideal ratio?—there’s plenty of taste bud trouble here in Tony and Sam’s paradise.
“An upper crust choice.” — The American Pastry Society
“A new high for the genre.” — Popular Tarts Magazine
“Do this one justice with a Stainless Steel Wolf Gourmet WGTR124S 4-Slice model.” — Toast Fancy
I’m not gonna beat around the crumbly, biscuity bush here: new Frosted Chocolatey Churro Pop-Tarts are good. So good that you shouldn’t need to read my next few hundred words of assorted praise to just go out and buy a box. But nevertheless, I will do my due diligence and explain why this is the best new Pop-Tarts flavor in a long time. Continue reading →
It’s 2020, and as if you didn’t already have enough to worry about, we’re about to see the most pointless cereal war of the century come to a head: yes, I’m talking about The Great Fun–Dunk Dispute.
Bad vanilla and birthday cake cereals aren’t uncommon—in fact, I feel like I have to mention the burgeoning blight of them in every other blog post at this point. But with the recent announcement of Funfetti Cereal, things have gotten…confusing. See, many traditionally associate Pillsbury and its giggle-some Dough Boy with General Mills, who do indeed manufacture many of the brand’s most familiar products, like cinnamon roll tubes and those shaped holiday cookies. But when General Mills first acquired Pillsbury, anti-trust laws required that they sell off the rights to Pillsbury dry goods—rights that have since been secured by Hometown Foods, makers of other peripheral grocery store mainstays like Sunny D and Hungry Jack.
So Hometown Foods—who, to my knowledge, has never made a cereal, a fact made more complex when you remember that General Mills did make a Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll Fillows Cereal—is making Funfetti Cereal, potentially with the help of Post, who also made a very similar looking cereal for Tim Hortons. I know this because I was (somewhat curtly) told so by a General Mills representative when inquiring over email.
But now that Dunkaroos are back, and acting as a banner nostalgic reboot for General Mills, it only makes sense for it to be turned into a cereal inspired by the iconic cookies & frosting duo, right? Or could it be that General Mills’ upcoming Dunkaroos Cereal is a direct clapback to Hometown Foods for weaving sugary layers of uncertain breakfast brand ownership?
Maybe it’s both, but what matters is that, according to Cereal Life on Instagram—who appears to have a very close and very trustworthy contact in General Mills’ cereal production wing—Dunkaroos Cereal is coming soon. While this is labeled as a rumor here, we can pretty confidently say this stuff will hit shelves, probably just with different box art—hopefully box art that brings back Duncan the Kangaroo, who has a history of obscurely interacting with cereal mascots.
Just as Hometown Foods’ Funfetti Cereal strongly resembles Timbits Cereal, so too does this first look at Dunkaroos Cereal call to mind General Mills’ Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp. And as someone who has long begrudged that stuff’s existence despite its mediocre presentation alongside the vastly superior Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, I sure hope Dunkaroos Cereal can bring a whole lot more authentically iced flavor to the breakfast table. Because if it doesn’t, it’ll just be another forgotten facet on the faceless, tastelessly saccharine mass that is vanilla cereal’s past.
Thins. Crisps. Lite Snacks. Husks. Narrowed, flattened, and otherwise vaguely “healthified” versions of popular junk food flavors go by many names, but they share one constant: they’re never better than the originals, though one could hardly expect them to. At best, they make the toothsome tastes they’ve inherited more lithe and mobile.
I’m not sure whether portion size or convenience was the primary genesis behind Pop-Tarts Crisps—or perhaps it was heritage?—but thus far, we’ve seen threeflavors of the little pastry planks hit shelves, each more okay-ish-er than the last. Now with Appletastic Pop-Tarts Crisps landing out of left field, Pop-Tarts has made the conspicuous decision to not only drop another fruity Crisps flavor, but to also make it one that’s no longer even part of the main Pop-Tart cast. While Pop-Tarts Bites have at least made noble efforts to expand the taste profile of its line’s spotlit flavors, I have to wonder whether these will be Appletastic enough to make up for not being S’Mores Pop-Tarts Crisps.
