Thought Chicken & Waffles Cereal was going to get lonely in your pantry, ostracized by the other, “normal” cereals? Well fear no more: Post & the temporarily name-tweaked Honey Brunches of Oats are raising another barnyard cereal for National Cereal Day, so both sweet-meat munchies can find solidarity together as they slowly expire on your shelves.
Well, maybe. While I’ve voiced my hesitations about faux-flesh-flavored cereals, I have to admit the possibility that they may actually be good. After all, Maple Bacon is a bit more tame—especially given its pastried precedent—and given Post’s recent doughnutted decadence, I’m certainly willing to give this one a hearty (but hopefully not hot-doggy) try.
These Honey Brunches of Oats cereals will be hitting Walmart on or around 3/7/19. Though there’s still no word on whether the brand plans to complete their essential meat trilogy with Sweet & Spicy Hunan Beef Bites.
See, back in my day, when you wanted to create a mythical hybrid creature, you just smashed two normal animals together and called it a day. Like the Liger: a good, honest, all-American legend bred for its magical abilities. Not like that bootleg real liger.
But I digress. The point is that Kellogg’s boldly spliced Caticorn is but a cop out—a combination of cats and unicorns (themselves hybrids of horses and narwhals, in my brain) that merely piggybacks off the latter cryptid’s bubblegum-pop popularity. I’d rather they forged a new path, like combining cats and pandas. Or cats and koalas. Or even forging a new cat-egory of lifeform by merging cats and redwood trees.
What’s the cereal equivalent of a Bigfoot hunter? A crisp-tozoologist?
Whatever it is, I want a job doing it for the Smithsonian. Empty Bowl listeners should already be familiar with my love of cereal myths—talking about the same cereal legends all day has me craving a tasty enigma—and much like last year’s Freedom Crunch fiasco, I’m proud to report on another cold cereal case, developing in real time.
It’s about a certain Kellogg’s Splatoon 2 Cereal, and I’ve labelled it a loose rumor, despite having no evidence beyond the photographed screen above. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this possible Nintend-elicious successor to Super Mario Cereal, but other facts that help this story hold milk. Let’s run through the facts:
• This first and only photo came to light just a few days ago, shared by Reddit user /u/carloscd44. They claim to have stumbled upon it on Walmart’s website while looking for other new cereals, but after returning to the page the day after, it was gone, leaving the OP and viewers alike uncertain about its legitimacy.
• To clear up initial fears of fake leaks—a problem that has notoriously plagued the Nintendo Super Smash Bros. community—I confirmed that the URL the OP presented is (or at least was) a real part of Walmart’s site. Now, the link redirects visitors to a page for Super Mario Cereal.
This suggests to me that the cereal was either posted ahead of its planned release, and the URL will remain until it’s time, or Kellogg’s scrapped the cereal concept entirely, and this was a leftover and hitherto undiscovered page.
• While I’d love to believe the former is the case, the clearly unfinished box art presented leaves more questions than answers. Splatoon 2 the video game was first released almost two years ago now, and while the game still releases new content, this time gap is far larger than Super Mario Cereal, which debuted the same month as Super Mario Odyssey.
Back to the box art itself, we can see lots of awkward empty space, seemingly incomplete Inkling models, cereal that cannot be clearly seen, and a logo that bizarrely uses a paint splatter to cover up part of the word CEREAL—which, in itself, appears to use the same font as Super Mario Cereal.
Adding all this up, plus the fact that I can’t dig up any other info about it online, makes me very hesitant to make any confident conclusion on Splatoon 2 Cereal’s legitimacy. In my eyes, the most convincing clue is the timing: the fact that the page went down the same day /u/carloscd44 found it seems like quite the convenient coincidence, but whether I’ll be wrapping my tentacles around a bowl of it or just crossing it off my rumors list with red ink remains to be seen.
If you have any information about Splatoon 2 Cereal, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll even play you on Final Destination for it—no items, of course.
Oh no, this is all wrong: April 1st is still months (of snow and slush) away. I’m afraid we must accept an uncomfortable truth—food science’s rate of cereal experimentation has mutated far faster and more disturbingly than any human could possibly orchestrate.
Breakfast must be growing self aware. And it wants a taste of intelligent life.
First we saw cereal take on the shape and emotional imbalance of young humans. Soon it will use malleable marshmallow to mimic our planet’s cutest animals. But with this latest news? It’s trying to transmute itself into flesh.
Just a week ago, I got a cryptic tip in the comments section about a possible pseudo-Waffle Crisp revival. It wasn’t hard to picture what flavor was being hinted at, but I ultimately had no visual reference to go off of.
That is, until today, when Instagram users Dan J. and Canadian Candy Hunters shared this very real, very mouthwatering pore-watering box of Post & Honey Bunches of Oats’ Chicken & Waffles Cereal in Toronto. But while it may make sense that this sticky-skinned Southern comfort flavor has flown to land of maple syrup, U.S. thrill and grill-seekers need not fret: this Canadian-made cereal is hitting America.
But it’s not just Hallmark holidays that are being bitten by the breakfast bug. Call it the work of Bunnicula, but thanks to @markie_devo on Instagram (big thanks!), we have visual confirmation that Peeps Cereal is coming soon from Kellogg’s—presumably to ring, squish, and chew in Easter right.
I hereby consider the previously rumored Peeps Cereal to be the first true Easter cereal, as egg-adjacent cereals like Rice Krispies and Reese’s Puffs have only taken aesthetic approaches to the season. Void of the iconic carrot cake or ham flavors you’d expect from Easter, they simply didn’t do justice to my underdog favorite holiday.
Not to mention: you ever try to clean peanut butter powder off a pastel yellow turtleneck?
No word yet on the specific flavor of Peeps Cereal, but if Kellogg’s really plans to pair actual marbits with marshmallow-flavored, Froot Loop-esque rings, there are two likely consequences:
1. The Peeps chicks and bunnies will receive the torch of responsibility from Sour Patch Kids Cereal for contributing to my dental delirium…
2. …because I plan to pour that Peeps coffee creamer all over this cereal and make history.
What does Franken Berry do for the 10.5 months of the year he isn’t slinging spooky strawberry cereal and reclining seductively in plain view of traffic?
Trading secrets with Lucky and Mario, apparently.
Thanks to tips from sega_retro_revival and cereal compatriot Gabe Fonseca on Instagram (thanks!), we now know that General Mills is at the very least testing a new Fruity Lucky Charms cereal. While the cereal hasn’t been confirmed to be hitting stores, the “not for resale” boxes sega_retro_revival received directly echo four cereals play-tested by General Mills about this time last year, allof which ended up comingout. So I think it’s safe to say that those specifically nostalgic for 2006’s Berry Lucky Charms will have something to look forward to soon.
Hold your forks and pitch-horses there, friend: let’s take it easy. You’re probably justifiably wondering why I, an admitted Funko apathetic, am writing another headline about the culture collectible collective—especially not long after my (and my now-gothic digestive system’s) recent run in with their black-dyed Cuphead FunkO’s?
Well it wouldn’t be December without a countdown, so here are my favorite answers to that question:
6. Because I’m sure whatever-sized segment of my readership likes Funko—and I’m so sorry for all I’ve said and will soon say again about the Pops’ eyes—would like to know that the brand is re-releasing their earlier Target-exclusive Cap’n Crunch Funko Pop this month, with this fresh fleet of cubelike Cap’ns likely shipping in January 2019.
What kinds of cereals do our various internal organs even enjoy?
I mean, I can pretty confidently say that my tongue enjoys anything sweet and preferably chocolaty, and my trachaea probably loves a good bowl of soft oatmeal after an incendiary round of car stereo sing-alongs. But what do you get for the pancreas that has everything? Or the discerning palate of a kidney?
A big ol’ bowl of milky beans?
Thankfully, Kellogg’s is helping cross one anatomical ally off our holiday gift list: the stomach. With the release of Big K’s new HI! Happy Inside cereal, we can now treat our Best Gastrointestinal Friend to its favorite stocking stuffer: a diverse kingdom of neighborly microflora!
(Image via Kellogg’s)
The cereal’s three alliterative flavors, Bold Blueberry, Simply Strawberry, and Coconut Crunch, all boast an alleged 3-in-1 benefit for gut health: prebiotics (for feeding helpful stomach bacteria), about a billion live units of probiotic bacteria, and your regular dose of fiber. Emphasis on the regular.
Reported by news sources as Kellogg’s first new product in 6 years—a statement that seems dubious by just about any interpretation—HI! Happy Inside can be purchased at Costco, through Boxed, on Amazon, or at Kellogg’s NYC Cafe, in both resealable pouches and bulk packs of cups.
The one caveat? These constructive gut bombs retail between $12.99 and $13.99, so if you aren’t too entranced by the opportunity to turn your digestive system into a prokaryotic zoo, you might be better off with Fiber One of Special K’s Nourish cereals for a boost of digestive health that’s easier to stomach.
Or you could just buy a dozen Krispy Kremes and eat the box—that’s how I was (self-)taught to eat my fiber.
