Category Archives: News

News: Galactic Lucky Charms

New Galactic Lucky Charms Cereal

Wow. This is a groundbreaking cereal.

Why? Because with this, Lucky the Leprechaun has become the first Irelander in space. And, for some reason, he leaves his hat on while wearing a space helmet. C’mon General Mills, show us those luscious ginger locks!

These new Galactic Lucky Charms debut this month, alongside four other GM cereals already covered on this blog: Apple Cinnamon Chex, Ghostbusters Cereal, Almond Cheerios Oat Crunch, and, of course, Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch.

Galactic Lucky Charms are pretty straightforward: they don’t change the cult-classic Lucky Charms formula, instead just adding three in inter-(and entirely)-stellar marshmallows shaped like planets and a rocket ship. I think these marbits look great and very appetizing, as they remind me of the kind of impossibly immaculate model ideas they put on Play-Doh packaging. I also like the strange amorphous shadow lurking behind Lucky on the packaging, suggesting some sort of calamitous, Giygas-esque antagonist whom Lucky will soon slay with the reality-altering power contained within these three arcane marbits.

Well, hopefully, at least. Sorry, I get pretty headcanon-y when I’m hungry.

News: Kellogg’s Together with Pride Cereal

Picture this: a new Smash Bros. game drops by total surprise. The catch? Now each and every beloved fighter, from Egg Dinosaur to Hungry Pink Ball and Singing Pink Ball, has been replaced by a generic Mii Fighter costume.

That’s kind of what Kellogg’s upcoming Together with Pride Cereal is like. See, it’s a spiritual successor to Kellogg’s All Together Cereal, which Kellogg’s has sold online for limited times during the past two years, to celebrate Pride month and raise money for GLAAD, an LGTBQ+ rights non-profit. And while All Together Cereal was a preposterously cool amalgamation of several Kellogg’s cereals, Together with Pride Cereal is a heart-shaped cereal whose “delicious new recipe features berry-flavored, rainbow hearts dusted with edible glitter.”

Unfortunately, this is a foreboding flavor descriptor, as it all but guarantees Together with Pride Cereal will taste like Kellogg’s similarly glittered Caticorn Cereal, which had adorable box art but was about as bland and uniform as a real cereal for cats might be.

Not to mention, Kellogg’s Pride Month efforts always end up coming off pretty rainbow capitalism-y. Not saying it’s a bad thing that GLAAD is raising funds through this cereal, but it seems like it’d be way more earnest for Kellogg’s to just donate a bunch of money outright instead of asking people to buy the cereal from stores, and then validate the purchase on Kellogg’s Family Rewards site before the company will donate $3.

My ever-present uneasiness with big corporations signaling solidarity aside, I’d love nothing more than to reanimate John Harvey Kellogg and show him this art of a Mini-Wheat holding a progress pride flag.

Kellogg’s Together with Pride Cereal will debut in select major retailers this May.

News: Dippin’ Dots Cereal Returns

New Birthday Cake Dippin' Dots Cereal Box

Back by unpopular demand, now in a perennially putrid flavor! Seriously, I’m not trying to be rude, but if you asked me to guess which discontinued cereal would be getting a 2021 reboot, I’d probably die of natural causes before even remembering Dippin’ Dots Cereal ever existed. First released in June 2018, DD Cereal came in Banana Split and Cookies ‘N Cream. They were both extremely boring, and since they only debuted in family-sized boxes, I was left with enough uneaten cereal to stuff an ark’s worth of Beanie Babies.

This new variety, Birthday Cake Dippin’ Dots Cereal, has me the opposite of optimistic—well, maybe “pessimistic” is harsh. How about, “floptimistic”? As I’ve reiterated throughout countless one-note saccharine reviews, birthday cake is borderline impossible to translate into an interesting cereal, and unless this new Dippin’ Dots Cereal is actually sold in the freezer aisle, I have little hope this stuff will break its namesake flavor’s streak of blandly frosted failures.

Improved Flavor Cookies 'N Cream Dippin' Dots Cereal

Cookies ‘N Cream Dippin’ Dots Cereal is also returning, with a “NEW! IMPROVED FLAVOR.” However, based on the box art so far, it looks like this iteration of DD Cereal has removed the crispy coated clusters, which were the only freakin’ good part about Dippin’ Dots Cereal in the first place! 

That said, it’s too soon to pass definitive judgement, because these are clearly still concept boxes—you can tell because Birthday Cake is described as a multigrain cereal, while CnC is described as corn with real cocoa. I think I scream for everyone when I say it better be the former.

Regardless, these new and/or improved Dippin’ Dots Cereals should be releasing in the coming months. You can already enter an online sweepstakes for a chance to win free Dippin’ Dots for a year, which may very well be the only good thing that could come out of this cereal’s revival.

News: Carvel Crunchies Cereal

New Carvel Crunchies Cereal

Ice cream franchise Carvel has always been a nostalgic brand. I mean, Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss are basically eternal bastions of the good ol’ days. The Batman and Superman of ice cream cakes. The Godzilla and Kong of wistfulness. The Dialga and Palkia of retrospective sentimentality. I could go on.

Part of what makes Carvel so beloved are their Crunchies. These bits of crumbled-up cookie are coated in chocolate sauce, and Carvel scatters them generously atop and between their cakes’ many delicately dairied layers.

And now, Carvel is cashing in on Crunchies’ cult appeal with a super-limited Crunchies Cereal. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to find the stuff in any supermarkets. Rather, from April 16th through the 18th, the first 150 people to make a purchase at each Carvel location will get a box of Crunchies Cereal. If we interpret that as 450 boxes per location—of which Carvel claims to run over 400, we’re talking somewhere in the ballpark of 180,000 Carvel Crunchies Cereal boxes in existence. Which sounds like a lot, honestly, but I’m still betting these will go fast.

I’ll try my best to get my cone-gripping mitts on a box to review, but no promises. Though, speaking of cones, maybe the next ice cream novelty to deserve a cereal would be Muddy Bites. I’d happily pierce my palate with those like a slain medieval dragon!

News: Apple Cinnamon Chex

New Apple Cinnamon Chex Cereal Box

And the hits keep coming! From Lucky Charms Clusters to a whole cluster of new Pop-Tarts, it’s been a big week for breakfast news—almost entirely because Midwest grocer Meijer put up early website listings for them. While I’m not sure how the big cereal execs feel about these leaks, I’m certainly not complaining: saves me from having to get seedy back-alley snack news from the same guy who told me Doritos would be releasing pentagram-shaped Diablitos.

The latest new cereal find is Apple Cinnamon Chex. I won’t say this is the most exciting news—between Apple Jacks and Cheerios, the apples & cinnamon game is pretty well covered—but since Honey Bunches of Oats discontinued their superb A&C edition to replace it with the also-solid Apple Caramel Crunch, I suppose there’s room in the cereal aisle for Chex to make a go at it, too.

My main gripe is that General Mills chose a Rice Chex base for this. It worked alright in Blueberry Chex, but rice is just such a light and flavorless base that it was a real pleasant surprise to try deeply toasted Peanut Butter (Corn) Chex. It may sound odd for me to endorse corn-based cereals, since I tend to denounce them in every other article, but until the day GM drops an Oat Chex, I’ll keep rallying for the richer of two base grains.

Either way, Apple Cinnamon Chex should be releasing within the next couple months.

News: JoJo Siwa Strawberry Bop Cereal

Jojo Siwa Strawberry Bop Cereal

ゴゴゴゴ Nani?? ゴゴゴゴ

Wait, wait: wrong JoJo. I tend to do that a lot, especially since I’ve always wanted a JoJo’s Bizarre Cereal with crunchy cherry arrowheads. But no, a different fruit is at play in this cereal collab with youngsters’ favorite singer/dancer/internet personality/marketing force to be reckoned with. I’ll admit I know precious little about JoJo Siwa—you think there’s room between the cereal factoids in my pantry-sized brain for such knowledge?—so I’m not all that excited for her Strawberry Bop cereal.

After all, the last licensed General Mills cereal to feature strawberry, Shopkins Cutie O’s, was so aromatically potent it could down passing aircraft. If this were Kellogg’s, on the other hand, I’d have a little more hope, since their strawberry Disney Princess Cereal was above average and made use of a better-than-corn multigrain base.

Oh well: if nothing else, the fact that this is a Nickelodeon branded box may mean we could finally get a new Garfield Cereal someday. It just better be made with spherical lasagna noodles.

 

 

News: Lucky Charms Marshmallow Clusters

 

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We’re saved!

Wait, on closer inspection: we’ve been duped! Bamboozled! Positively smeckledorfed!

Let me explain. This saga started in June of 2019, when Kellogg’s inexplicably and abominably reformulated Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, making it a shallow shell of what it was born to be. Gone are the sticky, marshmallowy toasted rice clusters, replaced with plain ol’ Frosted Krispies and a smattering of marbits. Embarrassing? Yes. But irredeemable? Also yes, but that’s been the case since they changed from the iconic teal box to a purple one.

For a moment, it seemed like the crisis has been averted by General Mills and Lucky Charms, because early, grainy box art of a Lucky Charms with Crispy Rice Clusters appeared. But just when we needed him most, Lucky and his Clusters vanished—and the concepted cereal was presumed extinct for two years.

Until, of course, the above box appeared on Meijer’s website. Perhaps GM just needed the extra two years to make this stuff great, right? After all, both Dunkin’ Caramel Macchiato and Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal had similar origin hiatuses, and they ended up tasting awesome. Well, now I’m not so sure.

You may notice that these Lucky Charms with Marshmallow Clusters are still a corn-based cereal, like just about every forsaken LC variant that isn’t the oat-laden original. Why it took General Mills two years to change their Rice Krispies Treat-alike into another, Monster Cereal-esque corny trick, I don’t know. I just know that, in these few months leading up to Lucky Charms with Marshmallow Clusters’ release, I will be treating it with apprehension.

I’ve just…been betrayed too many times before.

News: Lemon Creme Pie, Tropical Mango, Peach Cobbler, & Banana Creme Pie Pop-Tarts!

New Lemon Creme Pie, Tropical Mango, and Peach Cobbler Pop-Tarts

(Updated after the fact to include Banana Creme Pie)

You know what they say: good things come in threes. And pouches of two. Within boxes of eight.

No matter the quantity, this is some quality news for fans of fruity Pop-Tarts. I’ve discussed before how if you like Pop-Tarts, you’re probably in one of three camps: a Fruity Freak, a Chocoholic, or a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Purist. And for that first camp, this unexpected trio is sure to make you, well, a happy camper.

Between Lemon Creme Pie Pop-Tarts, Tropical Mango Pop-Tarts, and Peach Cobbler, only lemon and mango have appeared in Kellogg’s toaster pastried form before—in fact, Pink Lemonade Pop-Tarts are returning to shelves as we speak/drool, so I wonder what will be different about Lemon Creme Pie. Regardless, the stand-out flavor here is Peach Cobbler, marking a bold foray into the Pop-Tart world for everyone’s favorite butt-shaped fruit.

These flavors can already be found on grocer Meijer’s website, though it will likely be a few weeks before they start hitting shelves. Which of the three has got your mouth watering like a juiced melon?

New Banana Creme Pie Pop-Tarts Box

After I posted this, Kellogg’s also announced Banana Creme Pie Pop-Tarts, which will be store exclusives. No word on which store yet, but since these are 16-packs, it’s probably safe to assume Walmart.