Category Archives: News

News (Mexico): Kellogg’s Krispy Kreme Cereal

New Mexico Exclusive Kellogg's Krispy Kreme Cereal

(UPDATE: Read my full Krispy Kreme Cereal review!)

It’s taken them a long time, but doughnut companies across the world are finally starting to realize something: huh, cereal rings look a lot like doughnuts, don’t they?

Of course, there’s been no shortage of doughnut-themed cereals. From ’80s ancients Dinky Donuts and Powdered Donutz cereals to contemporary classics like Pink Donut Cereal, Hostess Donettes Cereal, and Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, the dozen-or-so doughnut cereals released to date constitute a well-rounded munch-able microgenre. But with the exception of old-school Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal from ’88, big-name dough-masons never really seized the opportunity to miniaturize their iconic confections.

That is, until recently, when Dunkin’ returned with new (caffeinated!) cereals, Tim Hortons brought Timbits Cereal to Canada, and now Krispy Kreme is completing this veritable NAFTA of doughnut cereals with a Mexico-exclusive cereal based on their iconic Original Glazed rings.

Few fates are crueler cruller than being 2,000 miles from Kellogg’s Krispy Kreme Cereal, but hopefully Kellogg’s brings this glazed goodness stateside soon. For anyone reading this from Mexico, I wish I had more info to share with you about this cereal, but I could only find it on Sam’s Club of Mexico’s website. If you’ve managed to get your powdered sugar-dusted hands on a box of Krispy Kreme Cereal, let me know how it tastes in the comments below.

News: Two New OffLimits Cereal Flavors!

New OffLimits Cereal Flavors

If you’ve read more than a handful of articles on this blog, you’ve probably got a decent handle on what I like—because I gush about my interests and love repeating myself. Gingerbread, PB&J, Waffle Crisp: pretty much the holy trinity of stuff I can’t shut up about.

But I also love indie cereals. Simply put, I’ve been in this game long enough to get a little tired of talking about the same big four corporate cereal monoliths. That’s why I love to see startups like Magic Spoon, Three Wishes, and OffLimits seize the means of spoon-in-milk subduction. OffLimits is a countercultural cereal brand that vocally supports independent art and diversity, and for their brand’s first anniversary, they’re dropping two new flavors. Joining their first two flavors—vanilla & pandan Zombie + chocolate & coffee Dash—are strawberry Spark and cinnamon Flex.

New OffLimits Cereal Glitter

OffLimits is even offering a special birthday bonanza pack, if you want to try all four. Sure, they’re a bit more expensive than your run-of-the-General-Mill fare, but for an organic/vegan/gluten-free indie creation that comes with digital tickets redeemable for real prizes, it’s more like buying an edible piece of culture than a mindless munchie. And hey, if you buy their birthday pack, you’ll even get some cereal glitter, ideal for rolling around in before foam parties at the club, or for ethically chucking in assertive strangers’ eyes.

If you can’t tell—I’m really into OffLimits’ aesthetic. Maybe if all goes well, by their second anniversary they’ll do Gingerbread and PB&J flavors. Maybe they could call them, oh, I don’t know, Snap & Smuck?

News: Party on Cap’n Crunch’s Houseboat!

Cap'n Crunch's Houseboat Contest

What a year for nautical cereal nonsense! First in April, Lil Yachty collabs with Reeses’s Puffs to drop an RC boat with a built-in “milkcuzzi“—all of which were shamefully snapped up by scalpers, assuming it wasn’t an inside buoy-bob job to begin with. But a dinky toy schooner would never suffice for everyone’s favorite seafaring cereal mascot, so that’s why Cap’n Crunch just announced the nuttiest and downright gnarliest cereal contest I’ve ever heard of:

That’s right: Cap’n Crunch has his own decked-out (literally) houseboat, and one lucky winner will stay two nights on the thing with up to three guests. While the idea of a floating Crunch Berry mecca is insanely cool, I’m getting slight Fyre Fest vibes from this. For one thing, to enter you must be over twenty-five and upload a photo that proves you’re the world’s biggest Cap’n Crunch super fan  at capnsquarters.com. Problem is, you’ve only got four days to enter, as the contest closes 8/1. I have a feeling it took the Cap’n’s PR team longer than anticipated to prep the contest, yet they had to push it out so that winners could still stay on the boat while it’s warm out.

Those winners will be able to pick two nights between 8/9 and 8/17 for their stay, and while transportation to the houseboat in Boston isn’t included, winners will receive a $2000 bank card.

Call me crazy, but this sounds like the plot of a cereal themed spinoff called Project X Marks the Spot. A borrowed boat stocked with only sugary cereal, plus $2000 in a state with legal weed? I wouldn’t be surprised if this real-life S.S. Guppy’s maiden voyage ends with Crunch Berry-filled chests dumped into the harbor. To anyone who enters: good luck and godspeed—wait, does Cap’n Crunch believe in God? I always pictured him as more of a Cthulhu man.

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn & Cocoa Puffs Popcorn

New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn

Corn this, corn that: we get it, Big Cereal, you love corn. We might as well call you stalkers (get it?), what with the putting corn in our beloved, formerly oat-based cereals and now cereals in our popped corn. General Mills? More like…Colonel Mills (get it??)!

Sorry, I’m just a jealous, oat-loving son of a gun who can’t quit bellyaching. In reality, there are plenty of fine corn-based cereals—Corn Flakes, for example, or Corn Pops, or Corn Crunch. Really any corn cereal that’s transparent about how corny it’ll be. Oh, and popcorn is good, too. There are even other cereal-flavored popcorns that have been good—darn good, I might even say. So this new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn, which is already out at Sam’s Club, is probably going to be pretty darn/dang/dunk(?) good, too.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRoYDOLFQti/

As shared by Cereal Life, Cocoa Puffs Popcorn is also coming to Sam’s Club this fall, if it isn’t at your local SC already. I’m particularly tickled by the idea of Cocoa Puffs Popcorn, since Cocoa Puffs (unlike CTC) is already a corn-based cereal. That makes Cocoa Puffs Popcorn a strange recontextualization of the classic cuckoo-fronted cereal, from puffed corn to popped corn. Honestly, if there’s a salty element to this popcorn, it’ll probably taste better than its namesake cereal, which I’ve recently criticized for its “More Chocolatey” reformulation, which is in reality, less chocolatey.

Have your tried either of these popcorns yet? Let me know, because without a membership, I might be forced to attempt the most weirdly specific panhandling routine the Sam’s Club parking lot has ever seen.

News: Monster Mash Fruit Snacks!

Monster Mash Fruit Snacks - Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Frute Brute, Yummy Mummy Monster Cereals

 ♪ It was a graveyard smush! ♫

No, that’s not a typo: it’s a dumb pun, referring to a) the squishiness of these upcoming Monster Cereal fruit-flavored snacks, as well as b) the smushed state of any gravestone that dares bear the sheer squishy mass of ninety fruit snack pouches.

Seriously, these fruit snacks, discovered and kindly shared by Mikey H. on Sam’s Club’s site, are listed in four-pound boxes—no doubt big enough to serve as a fun-sized mausoleum. No word yet on whether Monster Mash Fruit Snacks—the sidecar to this Halloween’s massive menagerie of a Monster Cereal main event—are Sam’s Club exclusive and thus locked to such an insane per-box quantity, but hey, at just $9.98 (eleven cents a pouch!), maybe these are worth stockpiling. If nothing else, I’m sure they’re shelf stable long enough to outlast a Monster-pocalypse, and if not, they’ll probably ferment into Spooky Jungle Juice pouches you can stab with a straw, Capri-Sun style.

While Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Frute Brute, and Yummy Mummy all have iconic flavors associated with their namesake cereals, these fruit snacks seem to mix things up a bit to fit their ambiguous “Spooky Berry” name. Franken Berry, usually strawberry, now appears to be strawberry, cherry, or fruit punch. Frute Brute, typically cherry, is probably lemony here. Boo Berry, in blue, will probably be as vaguely fruity as usual, while Yummy Mummy too will retain his recent orange pedigree. Count Chocula, in an understandable adaptation, looks like grape here instead of chocolate, and we even get a gelatinous green cameo from the Monster Cereal Castle. No idea what green is supposed to taste like, but since green Scooby-Doo fruit snacks were always my favorite, I can see this castle fruit snack giving the gummy Venus de Milo a run for her artisanal money.

No word yet on just when Monster Mash Fruit Snacks will be available, but I’m at least happy we have one more new thing to look forward to this fall, as the summer heat continues to turn my brain into a grey matter Fruit Wrinkle.

News: Golden Grahams S’Mores Soft-Baked Bars

Golden Grahams Soft-Baked Bars

 

Cereals become bars, bars become cereal. Thus goes the modern breakfast lifecycle: entropy into order, cuboids into crumbles.

Yes, hot off the mountain-scaling heels of CLIF Cereal, Golden Grahams is bringing karmic balance to the bar–cereal continuum with a new S’Mores Soft-Baked Bar.

It’s the same type of treat treatment that Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch already got. Those were good—like pillowy cereal brownies—but personally, I’m betting Golden Grahams will do it even better, mostly because graham (and by extension, S’Mores) is an undefeated taste note in the breakfast aisle.

Golden Grahams Soft-Baked Bars are hitting stores as you read this, so let your eyes glaze over, your watering mouth spilleth over, and head over to your nearest Walmart for your best chance at finding these.

News: Clif Bar Cereals

New Clif Bar Cereals

Finally, a cereal for the breakfast fan who loves eating the most important meal of the day in precarious, out of the way, or otherwise naturally awe-inspiring places! Fittingly enough, I’m actually on a bit of a vacation right now, so forgive me if I don’t say too much about these new CLIF Cereals and instead ponder their glory on a kayak in the middle of a sparkling lake.

Debuting in Chocolate & Peanut Butter, Blueberry & Almond Butter, plus Apple Cinnamon & Peanut Butter (also, allegedly Honey & Peanut Butter, though I couldn’t find a photo), these CLIF Cereals are already listed on Walmart.com and available in store. They combine coated flakes and oat clusters with nut butters and sweet extras. However, priced at $7 a box, the cost of entry for each CLIF Cereal is steeper than the rock faces they envision you eating the stuff on. Here’s hoping CLIF Cereal actually tastes good, unlike the similarly priced KIND and Larabar Cereals that ended up being the cereal aisle’s blandest bad value.

News: Barnes & Noble Cafe Trix & Cocoa Puffs Cookies

New Cereal Cookies at Barnes and Noble Cafe - Trix and Cocoa Puffs

They say hunger is the best spice, but I love a mustardy pop of obscurity on whatever I’m eating, too. Whether it’s a ultra-limited box art variant, a colorway rarer than a shiny Pokémon, or a very specific natural habitat, weird food only gets more weirdly interesting when you have to scavenge and/or hunt for it.

Case in point: the newest General Mills cereal cookies, debuting this month, that are exclusive to Starbucks locations within Barnes & Noble bookstores. This odd breed of a breakfast–dessert hybrid first surfaced last year, with a Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookie, and now Trix and Cocoa Puffs are joining the (probably not actually) fresh-baked fray. These really look like what-you-see-is-what-you-get cookies: Trix or Cocoa Puffs pieces melded with a sugar or chocolate cookie. So they’ll probably taste good, especially when paired with an iced black tea lemonade or mocha Frapp, respectively.

Oh, and I suppose you’ll need to buy a good book to pair with your little sip-n-sweet treat, huh? How about Grapity Grapes of Wrath and One Flew Over Sonny’s Nest?