For real though, Krave haters be darned, I’m absolutely psyched that not only is there a new variety hitting shelves now, but it’s one of my all-time favorite flavor profiles. Sure, chocolate chip cookies are alright, but nothing beats a chewy, slightly grainy, and brown-buttery gob of unbaked cookie dough—salmonella also be darned. Granted, cookie dough is a pretty nuanced flavor to cram into a single cereal shell—sadly, the filling on these is only chocolate—but Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is also probably my favorite Pop-Tart flavor currently available, so I trust Kellogg’s to infuse the same amount of indulgent goodness into these chips off the ol’ chocolate block.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Krave has already been spotted at Meijer. Have you tried it yet?
While General Mills dropped their entire Early 2021 cereal lineup in one concentrated dump of rendered cardboard, Kellogg’s is sharing their New Year’s offerings in drips & drabs. with each of the products pictured here hitting headlines across the past week or so.
First we have two cereals on opposing ends of the sugary–healthy cereal spectrum. Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats clearly has no reservations about frosting full-gloss, twinkling and gooey cinna-bun flavor atop its thatched squares. Granted, Frosted Mini-Wheats variants often aren’t flavored that potently, regardless of how rich their dessert inspirations may be. In fact, while I’m sure Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats will taste just fine, this isn’t entirely new territory for the brand. Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats Little Bites were around in 2012, and I’m a firm believer in the superior flavor of Mini-Mini-Wheats—simply because they have a higher frosting-to-wheat ratio.
Likewise, Special K with REAL WHOLE BLUEBERRIES seems kind of like a downgrade from Blueberry and Lemon Clusters Special K, which may not have had whole blueberries, but it had freakin’ yogurt clusters. That’s way more deserving of an obnoxiously all-caps box banner. But hey, it’ll probably also taste alright, if not good! Continue reading →
If you follow cereal news, one thing you quickly learn is that January is the December of joyous new breakfast tidings. For whatever reason, cereal companies love to ring in the New Year by announcing a dozen or more products in one bulk batch. This usually leaves my poor fingers aching as I try to cover everything in one mega post, but thankfully—at least for General Mills’ January announcement—I’ve covered just about everything already.
Everything but the above three cereals—probably the only three in General Mills’ Class of ’21 that won’t sabotage your Resolution. Continue reading →
(Update: there will also be a third Larabar Cereal variety: Cashew Cookie!)
Six months after the first bar-turned-cereal reared its overpriced head, Larabar is giving chase. It’s unclear whether KIND inspired Larabar parent company General Mills to deconstruct their energy bars too—try as I might, I couldn’t figure out who makes KIND Cereal. KIND is owned by Mars, a name that certainly isn’t a breakfast aisle regular, as they repeatedly refuse to drop an M&M’s cereal. But I digress; I like Larabars a lot more than KIND bars, so I’m genuinely wishing them well with the ambitious Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip above.
I’ll be honest with y’all: I think this cereal is going to taste amazing.I anticipate a total slapper, if not a Cereal of the Year contender. Why am I so confident? Just look at it! Chocolate chips, peanuts, oats and flakes—how can it go wrong? I’ll lament that there probably won’t be any doughy notes like in a real Larabar, but this is giving me serious Love Crunch vibes. And that’s saying something.
I say, as I shotgun a half-gal of 2% and punch Boo Berry-shaped holes in my drywall. But really: Monster Mash Cereal could prove to be the biggest cereal headline since General Mills first revived Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy for one year in 2013.
To quickly summarize the wholly grainy image above’s significance, General Mills’ seasonal Monster Cereals, which appear each Halloween season, are nostalgic cultural touchstones for cereal lovers the world over. While Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry are regular spooky shelf fixtures, cherry-flavored Frute Brute and orange-flavored Yummy Mummy were discontinued in the ’80s and ’90s respectively, having only returned once in 2013—though recent Monster box art loves to make nods to them.
Brute and Mummy or not, the expectation is usually that General Mills will do something different for the Monster Cereals each year, whether that’s mixing up the marshmallow shapes or bringing in guest artists to do the boxes. Sadly, in recent years a malignant malaise has surrounded the cereals, which keep recycling the same box art and continuing to use controversial corn ingredients instead of the oat flour that made 20th century Monster Cereals so memorable.
However, for once, we’re entering a new year with a monstrous helping of hope. Thanks to Michigan Ghostbusters, who first shared the below image, we now know that some sort of 5-in-1 “Monster Mash” cereal is planned for next autumn. This isn’t 100% surprising—I sort of predicted that 2021 could mean something special, since it’s the 50th anniversary of Count Chocula and Franken Berry’s 1971 debut.
Listen here, theoretical gastro-physicists: cereal is a solid. Sure, you add milk to it, but some licensed tie-ins of late seem to be cutting out the middle-matter and melting cereal down to a refined, fluid form from the get-go.
And International Delight’s new Pebbles coffee creamers are no exception. Releasing in both Fruity and Cocoa varieties, I think we can safely assume one of these will be more innovative than the other. Whereas a Fruity Pebbles coffee creamer implies a unique fruity cereal flavor, I have trouble picturing the Cocoa Pebbles version being much different from the chocolate lava overflow of other cocoa–mocha creamers. Unless, somehow, they’re able to make a liquid crispy.
Both Pebbles creamers will be hitting mass retailers in early 2021, priced at around $3.29 each. This release coincides with the Pebbles brand’s 50th anniversary, a celebration Insta-foodie Markie Devo claims will also include a release of Birthday Cake Pebbles
General Mills’ upcoming Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios, releasing next month, has big, choco-nutty-buttery shoes to fill.
By the stylization of the box and typography, Chocolate Strawberry is ostensibly the next in line to the throne of Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios. Since Choco-PB Cheerios is one of my favorite ever Cheerio varieties—it’s like a Reese’s Puffs HD remaster—I have high expectations for Choco-Strawb. Will it be potently powdered? Will the strawberry hoops taste just like Strawberry Cheerios, or will they up the puréed ante? And if they succeed, will General Mills complete the holy trilogy by dropping Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jelly Cheerios?
Let us all send prayers and psychic Gatorade to Cereal Life, who, as the online cereal correspondent with the closest connection to General Mills insiders, must be exhausted lately. For whatever reason, while Kellogg’s, Post, and Quaker have merely trickled out new cereal news, General Mills tips are spillingoutin torrents. The most likely explanation for this is that, since January is the biggest time of the year for new cereal, and since most of Cereal Life’s finds are still in the sales sample stage, he’s simply getting a sneak peek at a huge wave of news to come in a couple months.
Among these bountiful chronicles of cereals foretold are two new types of Cheerios. First, the above Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberry Pieces. As Cereal Life mentions in the caption, a Cheerios variety with strawberries (rather than flavored with) hasn’t been seen since the Berry Burst line in the early 2000s—which, on an interesting tangent, contained the scarcely documented Cherry Vanilla Cheerios, first documented as a Cereal Myth in The Empty Bowl’s first-ever episode.
Granted, 2003’s version of this formula didn’t use Multigrain Cheerios, so at least this (presumed) 2021 version can be considered less of a bland reboot and more of a remaster. Continue reading →
