You know those quasi-popular memes that contrast one’s grieving friends & family with the reality that one is in the underworld as Doomguy, looking for vengeance? Yeah, that’s gonna be me in the bowels of H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, aiming to double-damn the infernal blight of the Elf on the Shelf. Of course, I’d never find him, since that well-hidden Elf resides either high in Satan’s castle or in some abstract negative space unreachable by human souls.
All that to say, I don’t like Elf on the Shelf. I don’t like his silent menace, his plasticine face, or his chaotic-neutral mischief. But since Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch is one of only two new Holiday cereals this season, I’m obligated to give this wintertide rascal his due bloggerly diligence.
Because if I don’t, he’ll probably curse me into endlessly wandering his snowy pocket dimension’s gingerbread labyrinth. Continue reading →
When it comes to Quick Reviews on this blog, I have a sordid history: 98% of the time that I title a post “Quick Review,” I end up removing the word “Quick” after effortlessly coasting past the 500-word mark. But this time, with Cinnamon Toast Crunch Soft Baked Bars, I’m committed to making this, perhaps, my shortest review ever. Why? Let me give you a few quick reasons: Continue reading →
Does anyone actually love candy canes? I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re irreplaceable symbols of the season, and they’re often tasty—especially the fruity ones. But is the humble candy cane anyone’s honest-to-goodness’-sake favorite wintertide treat? Growing up, I never sought candy canes out and really just got them from parades or school events. As a rough and tumble lad in East Michigan farm country, I was far too clumsy to keep said candy canes in my pocket without somehow shattering the brittle shepherd’s crooks into a million pieces. At that point, I’d rather have Pop Rocks.
Like I said, I prefer fruity to mint, so new Froot Loops Candy Canes start off on a more sympathetic foot compared to the cereal aisle’s first proper peppermint cereal. Both these candy canes and that new Elf on the Shelf cereal are hitting stores now. While I’ve yet to track down that wily sprite, I’m more than ready to see whether Toucan Sam’s sugared canes suck in the good or bad sense of the word. Continue reading →
Who is the world’s most prolific artist? Paul McCartney? Phish? Viper?
Wrong.
It’s the Dame Diminutive Deborah, better known as Little Debbie. Not counting seasonal specialties like Christmas Tree Brownies, Football Brownies, Easter Egg Brownies and every other merrily malformed hunk of brownie batter, Little Debbie currently produces 47 different snacks. I’d guess the average person could only name a handful—the likes of Zebra Cakes, Star Crunch, Swiss Rolls and Cosmic Brownies—while grease-loving gas station regulars (picture me raising my own slick mitts as identification) could probably tell you about deeper cuts like Donut Sticks, Fudge Rounds, and Pecan Spinwheels.
Despite this sprawling cake-ography, when it came time for Kellogg’s and Little Debbie to drop a cereal, there was likely no doubt about which bite would join the breakfast bowl. None of the snacks I’ve listed even come close to the sugar-sandwiched icon that is the Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. And I’m not just saying that because I grew up making my own double-decker Oatmeal Creme Pies (DIY is better: the official double-D OCPs are just a clever way to cut out half of the moist cookie middlin’).
No, an Oatmeal Creme Pie cereal has been a no-brainer for years. But now that it’s finally happened, can Little Debbie’s milk & spoon debut live up to decades of vacuum-sealed hype? Let’s unwrap Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal from the top. Continue reading →
How much Cinnadust is a single Cinnamon Toast Crunch square worth? What is the measure of a “Cinnamoji’s” life? How many of them do I hold in this cylinder of absurd magnitude? Is it really true? That all we are is Cinnadust in the wind?
Cinnamon Toast Crunch is making me think way too hard for something so redundantly simple. By almost any practical measure, Cinnadust has no reason to exist. Despite its considerable girth, at $5.48 this currently Sam’s Club exclusive Cinnadust is way more expensive than grabbing a small spice jar and a 10lb bag of Domino granulated—which, given the sweetness of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, is pretty much the right ratio.
But maybe it tastes better than just cinnamon sugar, right? Maybe Cinnadust is hiding some real magic in its “other natural flavors.” Maybe this mausoleum-sized flavor shaker was worth the brave squares it sacrificed.
This review is a long time coming. In fact, it’s been brewing in my brain since before this blog was even a glimmer in my temporal lobe.
First things first: I’m a lifelong maple cereal mark, born and bred. I mean, my blood is practically golden syrup’d cereal milk—which is why I bring a satchel of leeches to Denny’s. It might not’ve been the very first cereal to spark a journalistic interest in the stuff (that title, incidentally, goes to Cinnamon Honey Bunches of Oats), but Waffle Crisp nevertheless is one of the foundational cereals whose never-fading nostalgic spirit drives Cerealously to this day. Seriously: eau de Waffle Crisp is a fragrance so potently sentimental, physicists are considering it as theoretical time machine fuel.
And though Waffle Crisp is gone—at least for now, I weep to myself—granularly analyzing other maple cereals still gets me through the day. From modern classics and bold pairings to the genre’s lowerlights, I’ve used just about every relevant adjective in the book to describe the breakfast aisle’s ever-shifting forest of maple tastes both authentic and sweetly synthetic. But ever since I first saw it on the side of my Brown Sugar Oatmeal Squares, one mythic maple cereal has eluded me.
Until now. See, I was always convinced that Golden Maple Oatmeal Squares was an antiquated, discontinued variety that Quaker forgot to take off the boxes of the line’s other three flavors. I searched and searched for years, even bookmarking Quaker’s product locator to no avail. But after Justin and I discussed the stuff’s scarcity during Episode Thirty-One of The Empty Bowl, a number of listeners confirmed that the stuff is still sold in stores—albeit only in very specific regional areas. One listener, Brooke from Wisconsin, was kind enough to send us both boxes to try.
So with my decade-old mission drawing to a close, one question remains: are Golden Maple Oatmeal Squares worth the long-fermented hype? Continue reading →
Ahh, okay. The extended Elven cereal mythos is starting to make sense.
So seventeen years after the events depicted in the 2003 Will Ferrell holiday family comedy Elf, an unfleshed-out character tribe known as the South Pole Elves resurfaced in reality, when known Chaotic Neutral trickster archetype “Elf on the Shelf” escaped from an Antarctic prison, as described in my recent post on the Shelved Elf’s upcoming second cereal.
We can then assume that, since Buddy the Elf & the North Pole’s noble proletariat are the Nice List antithesis of Elf on the Shelf’s menacing malice, General Mills’ new Elf Cereal must be on a divine Clausian crusade to restore wholesome holiday energy to the breakfast table. I mean, why else would an Elf Cereal take nearly two decades to happen? And no, we don’t count the false prophet.
Personally, though I think Elf is a well-written Christmas movie, I’ve seen it enough times that my fanaticism for its fa-la-la follies tapered off after the first decade or so of annual airings. Nevertheless, I’ll be reviewing Elf Cereal, all maple-puffed and pine-mallowed, with the unbiased palate of a…
Line?
Yeah, from Elf, or at least Buddy’s Musical Christmas.
Chocolatey & Fruity: the Adam & Eve of cereal flavors. Or to be more secular, the Dialga & Palkia. As two admittedly broad classifiers. Chocolatey & Fruity nevertheless encapsulate the vast majority of non-Honey Nut cereals—we’ll call that one Giratina.
But while “Fruity” is a very malleable term, representing every cornucopious blend from Trix to Froot Loops, “Chocolaty” deals primarily in shades of subtlety. Sure, texture aside, you could probably tell the tastes of Cocoa Puffs & Pebbles apart, yet daring revolutions in chocolate cereal technology are rare. Usually things just get fudgier, or tweaked with a supplementary flavor enhancement. I want to know what it tastes like when a cereal brand focuses on refining chocolate and chocolatey flavor alone, which is why General Mills’ Ultimate Taste Comeback—particularly the cocoa’d duo of the four—have high expectations to live up to.
Well that, and we’ve already been slightly disappointed by Retro Recipe Golden Grahams, as well as unimpressed that Ultimate Taste Comeback Trix didn’t actually change anything (further evidenced by the fact that when General Mills sent me all four cereals to sample, they included old Trix box art rather than the fresh, big rabbit-headed version seen in Ultimate Taste Comeback graphics).
Enough exposition! Let’s expose these Puffs and Cookies for what they really are… Continue reading →
