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 →
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 →
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.
Oh, I once had a dream about a donut, alright. It was the size of two Gateway Arches and had the auto-cannibalistic serpent’s head of a dough-roboros. The thing started spinning toward me like Sonic the Hedgehog, launching sprinkled shrapnel all across the Windows XP wallpaper I’d been having lunch on, and I only managed to flee by rolling down a rollicking green hill. The dream donut launched off the hill and into the sun, exploding into a yeasty meteor shower.
So yeah, Tim Hortons: any chance you could make that one?
For those who have been sleeping under a rock-hard stale cruller all year, Tim Hortons has been testing a number of experimental donut flavors in their Innovation Café and across Canada. And while the likes of Chocolate Truffle and Dulce de Leche have had some pretty crumby reviews, the latest flavor debuting in both whole-nut and Timbit form is sure to pique any cereal blog reader’s interest.
Tim Hortons Froot Loops Dream Donuts pair a pink-glazed and white-iced donut with a whole handful’s worth of Froot Loops pieces themselves—pieces that can be pummeled to smithereens and stuck to a Timbit, too. Unfortunately, if the comparatively natural colors of these foreign Froot Loops are any indication, FL Dream Donuts are likely to be Canada-exclusive for the foreseeable future. This means it’s also very unlikely that I’ll be able to do a full review of these baked treats, but other reviewers have already done the sticky work for us, if you want to know how the taste stacks up:
Personally, I’m hesitant about any cereal dessert that includes full-sized pieces, as they often end up tasting extremely stale. But if you live near a participating Canadian Tim Hortons, let me know whether these Froot Loops Donuts made your dreams come true—or if they chased you nightmarishly into the Hudson Bay.
Hey there kids, Kellogg’s here: we heard you like cereal! We even heard you like multiple cereals! Well sure, you could buy more than one cereal, but what if you bought one cereal that was two cereals? What’s that? You want an exciting two-in-one cereal that represents an iconic flavor combo like PB&J or Banana Split? Oh ho ho, well you’re in luck: we’ve got a family-sized box of every kid’s favorite dessert: corny fruit!
Look, I’m trying to be optimistic here, but Kellogg’s newest release is making that difficult. In what’s being billed as a “first of its kind cereal mashup”—very debatable when you look at Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes or even Kellogg’s own All Together Cereal—Kellogg’s Mashups is putting Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops in the same box.
Lately I’ve been critical of Kellogg’s for making so many bland sugar ring cereals disguised as ‘vanilla‘ or ‘birthday cake,’ and this inaugural Mashup isn’t really a good sign of waxing creativity. While I can see future imaginative potential for Mashups like Apple Jacks + Krave or Eggo Cereal + Honey Smacks, simply compounding the sweetness of Froot Loops while diluting the actual Frootiness of it has my stomach grumbling more so than rumbling. I would’ve much preferred to see Chocolate Frosted Flakes brought into play, or even Corn Pops feel like more exciting Froot Loop complements. Instead, we’ve got a box that looks more like a clumsy call for political unity than a mouthwatering breakfast concept.
But who knows: maybe some sort of magical chemistry will happen when Loops and Flakes are steeped in each other’s vacuum-sealed company for a while. If only there was a way to test this cereal combo for ourselves before these Mashups hit stores next months. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, right?
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.
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.
