Evolution is a slow process, one that’s unlikely for an individual to fully witness. That’s why it’s taken me so long to write about Banana Special K—this is a cereal brand that debuts new flavors in geological increments. With no fanfare and little variation in box design, trying to spot a new Special K is like trying to spot a new paint sample at Home Depot from three aisles over.
As an on-the-beat cereal blogger who lives in the milky moment—the ever-crunchy now—I could scarcely tell Banana Special K (which actually came out closer to January) from Vanilla & Almond.
But it’s better late than never, so I’ll try to make this quick—err, I mean Kwik. With a capital K. Continue reading →
When you get right down to the rock bottom of it, there are really only two types of Pop-Tarts people: People who like fruity Pop-Tarts and those who prefer Chocolate Pop-Tarts. Yes, there some Pop-Tarts that can’t be easily sorted onto this continuum, but with the exception of fan-flavor-ite Brown Sugar Cinnamon (which really should be considered a member of the extended “brown sweetness” family alongside Cousin Chocolate), I can’t think of any Pop-Tart flavors beyond the choco-fruit binary that have a significant fan following. Yes, this includes Confetti Cupcake. And no, this doesn’t and in fact can’t include The Chosen One.
It was supposed to bring balance, which is why Kellogg’s destroyed it.
Long story short, I’m a chocolate Pop-Tart kind of guy. Chocolate Chip is probably my favorite of the O.G.s, while Milk Chocolate Graham forever has my heart for evicting that freeloading marshmallow from S’Mores Pop-Tarts. Yeah, I said it.
This is why, though I love classic Strawberry Pop-Tarts, I don’t think the likes of Blueberry, Cherry, and Raspberry—the latter of which I can’t remember ever having eaten more than once or twice. When Kellogg’s first tried to re-skin Raspberry Pop-Tarts as Spidey Berry Pop-Tarts, I gave them a pass. But now that Spidey Berries have been mashed en masse to produce an ocean’s worth of SpongeBob’s Sea Berries, I figured it was fate telling me to give the flavor another shot—or else the next time they came back it’d be as Beetle Juicy Pop-Tarts. Continue reading →
With French toast and waffles soaking up the most syrupy cereal attention, the O.G. (Original Griddler) of the breakfast’s holy maple trinity has been inexplicably left out. Yeah, there’s been that one pancake cereal, but since the likes of French Toast Crunch and Waffle Crisp have already done their namesake foodstuff proper geometric justice, Cap’n Crunch’s pan-puffs feel borderline disrespectful—not to mention overeager; who makes a blueberry pancake cereal before classic maple?
Thankfully, IHOP is teasing a new breakfast product that appears to risk it for the disc-shaped syrup biscuit. Continue reading →
It is a time of indoor inertia and slow-digesting creativity. General Grievous’ great-grand-droid-child Mills has assumed his ancestral rank and inherited a diabolical plot: to pump the galaxy full of cloned cash-grab cereals offering little flavor and even less timely appeal. His defenses only loosely fortified with intergalactic vitamins and minerals, it’s up to White Squadron to douse Mills’ plans before it’s too late. But the General has come prepared, for he’s surrounded himself with a belt of razor-sharp corn asteroids, which even sogginess can’t make much worse….
Let’s be honest: Star Wars cereals haven’t been good for a while. Not since the days of C3POs, a double-hooped cereal that was later charmingly reborn as Winnie the Pooh’s Hunny B’s, have we seen the omnipresent series done crunchy justice beyond the tried-and-truly boring formula of corn pieces and marshmallows. While I love marbit cereals as much as the next Rodian, to take the graces of Lucky Charms and neuter the oat component is a tragedy most unwise.
Baby Yoda Cereal is the latest example. While I’ll throttle my own personal opinion on the itty-bitty alien muppet itself—I’ve kind of fallen off the Star Wars train since around the time in the early ’00s that my parents wouldn’t upgrade our dial-up internet solely so I could play Star Wars Galaxies—I can’t say I’m excited about Baby Yoda’s cereal. Since The Mandalorian Season 2 doesn’t drop until October, it feels strangely timed. Plus, it doesn’t even appear to have the fruity flavor of its General Mills predecessors. But since that fruit flavor was also chemically cringeworthy, maybe comparative corny blandness isn’t such a bad thing.
Whether this is the cereal you’re looking for or not, expect it in stores this summer.
Yes, yes, time is an illusion, and despite me promising last time I forgot to post an episode The Empty Bowl that I wouldn’t do it again, somehow it’s been four weeks since then and I’m grizzled as a snooze-button-happy hibernating bear. While I’d like to say this is because our meditative cereal podcast has brought me a literal amount of tranquility, it’s really because I’ve been measuring the passing weeks by how many times I make up song parody lyrics using my cats, Beignet & Jupiter’s names.
Benny & the Jupes! It writes itself!
But I both digress and hope you’re handling your time indoors well. If the space-time continuum’s sucked you in and rattled you around like a child’s toy vacuum, at least there are two new episodes of The Empty Bowl to unplug and unwind to. As you may notice, we’ve got a new show look & feel that aptly maps the feelings we try to project. So put on the rose-colored glasses of a Saturday morning cereal-eating child and join me + Justin on a beach made of Franken Berry dust, as we listen to crashing waves of milk (vanilla almond, for my sake) and explore breakfast’s latest and greatest news.
In these episodes, we try to tell Sea Berries from Spider Berries, check out cereal history’s least remembered video game, and once more sing the praises of those oh-so-underrated Golden Grahams.
Still working on your tan? Our beach never closes, with more episodes at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but they’re all eligible for consideration in our seaside book club.
For one spice, cinnamon sure wears a lot of hats. Just like Sailor Moon with her disguise pen, cinnamon can be just about anything: the faint infusion grounding Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s hyper sweetness. The sinful spear wielded by a Hot Tamale. Or the soon-to-be-regretted cornerstone ingredient in the tempting elixir known as Rumchata (or the more nefarious, Fireball).
The point is that, though it’s simple to write off the likes of Cinnamon Cheerios as ‘just another cinnamon cereal,’ the rich historical matrix of cinnamon cereals proves that very few of them—from Cinnabon Cereal to Cinnamon Crunch Krave—present the exact same shade of auburn delight. So while your first reaction—as mine was—to Cinnamon Cheerios may be “oh, it’s just Diet Oat Crunch,” I’m happy to report that not only are Cinnamon Cheerios a wonderful gluten-free option for cinnamon cereal fans, but their approach to cinnamon is different enough to make both worthy of a place in your pantry.
But I’ve said too much: let’s start from the top of the bowl. Continue reading →
I’ve written about a lot of battered & baked cereals in my time, but this one takes the confetti cake.
Coming soon from Pillsbury, Funfetti Cereal promises to be ‘the fun and only’ birthday/vanilla/angel food cake cereal you’ll ever need. Just how it will be “bursting with fun” remains unclear, but as Funfetti Cereal’s release trails a full Chuck E. Cheese itinerary’s worth of birthdaycakeflavoredbreakfastproducts, these sprinkled spheres are going to have to work really, flavorfully hard to avoid being just another boring, exponentially sugared cereal.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit over vanilla and birthday cake in the breakfast aisle, because its typical one-note sweetness feels like a cheap cop-out to avoid paying for richer, more imaginative flavors, but hey: at least Funfetti looks pretty (pretti?).
What’s especially strange here is that General Mills is not producing this cereal, despite Pillsbury being their subsidiary brand. This tip comes from longtime friend Gabe Fonseca, who suspects Post might be producing the product, as they were the ghost writers behind the similar-looking Canada exclusive Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal.
Though it already appears on Walmart’s site, Funfetti Cereal’s release date is as of yet unknown. Hopefully Pillsbury & their mysterious co. take their time with this one, because unlike a real gooey cake, a half-baked cake cereal is like a trick candle: it blows, and never grants our wishes.
What is hotdog water, but the cereal endmilk of boiled meat byproduct?
I’ll be frank, I’ve never been to a Wienerschnitzel restaurant before, and after a cursory perusal of their website and its liberal use of phrases like “World’s Most Wanted Wiener” and “#WienerFam,” I’m confident I haven’t missed much. But since the nearest one is a whole state over, I am a bit bummed I won’t be able to try the franchise’s new cereal-infused confections—unless an Illinois-based reader can chuck a perfect-spiral Froot Loops Dipped Cone across the border.
“For a limited time, enjoy a sweet Wienerschnitzel Dipped Cone or Shake bursting with the fruity flavor of Froot Loops cereal,” the release for this partnership reads. While Burger King has already set a strong precedent for fast food Froot Loops shakes, the cone in question captures my interest thanks to its supple swirls and near gravity-defying chunklets of studded Froot Loop. In the midst of dine-in closures everywhere, Wienerschnitzel is vocally proud to offer both these treats through their drive-thru—we can only hope that no window worker is subjected to cabin fever-induced regressions to middle-school ‘pranks’ like cone-ing.
Since I won’t be able to, if you try either of these items, let me know what you think in the comments below or on Twitter. I’ll just be up here, wiener-less in the Mitten, wondering if this means we’ll get savory Froot Links cereal next.
