Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Honey Nut Cheerios Treats (2020)

Why waste time eating many small things when one big thing does the trick?

Such is the philosophy that has plagued cereal sales for the past decade—and for understandable reasons: breakfast as a temporally restricted concept is not what it used to be. For me, entering a workday with belly bloated rarely sounds appealing, especially since I’ve optimized my morning routine to essentially get me from bed to door in thoughtless, uninterruptible, and Rube-Goldbergian fashion. And clearly I’m not alone, as cereal companies have scrambled like diner eggs to adapt classic flavors for on-the-go breakfasting, while rebranding cereal itself as the midnight snack it was always destined to be.

But while concepts like breakfast shakes and mobile cereal receptacles are comparatively recent innovations, the world of cereal bars has largely eschewed architectural change, in favor of the tried and true “cereal bits bound by sweet-cream glue and shaped into crude rectangles” approach. Though I will say that in the case of General Mills bars, like these *new* Honey Nut Cheerios Treats, they’ve been getting smaller and lighter when compared to certain sugary bricks of yore (that can still apparently be bought, albeit only in cafeteria-friendly quantities).

I deeply enjoyed those aforementioned Honey Nut Cheerios “Milk ‘n Cereal Bars”—even if the freeze-dried milk sandwiched in the middle could practically be repurposed as sticky tack—so I’m interested to see how 2020’s slimmed-down take on America’s favorite cereal compares. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cereal bars, cheerios, general mills, honey. Leave a comment

Mar. ’20

Review: Aunt Jemima & Cap’n Crunch’s Berrytastic Pancake Mix with Ocean Blue Syrup

So, I have this tradition. Every March 6th, without fail, just before my temple greets its parish of pillows, I will jolt awake with childlike wonder and adultlike anxiety, having suddenly remembered that National Cereal Day is on March 7th, and I’ve totally forgotten to draft up meaningful content.

Cut to me, scraggled by crummy overhead lighting and disheveled as the pantry shelves I’m whipping through like a lethargic whirlwind. I mean, can you blame me? Sure, I’ve got cereal on my mind a lot, but National Cereal Day has long been an annual anomaly that exists without discernible reason nor rhyme, just an arbitrarily selected and sweetened day from the never-ending passage of time.

I’m sure that’s just my brain complaining though, as it desperately wishes to get back to its dreams of supermodels eating soups or salads or whatever else my nefarious noggin gets into when I’m severed from it by sleep. After all, what better way to celebrate everyone’s favorite morning munchie than by groggily griddling up the stuff by the battered scoopful at 2am?

Though it may not be a proper cereal, Cap’n Crunch and Aunt Jemima’s historic new partnership is practically begging for National Cereal Day’s spotlight. Why? Well, not because it’s good, but because it’s so stupid, it’s great.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cap'n crunch, maple, non cereal, quaker. 4 Comments

Mar. ’20

Review: Magic Fruity Pebbles (Turns Milk Blue!)

Blue.

Like it or not, it’s already clear that blue may very well be the defining color of 2020. I mean, we’re *only* 1/6th of the way through the year, and we’ve already seen:

a) Pantone [bafflingly] name “Classic Blue” as their color of the year,

b) Cap’n Crunch drip liquefied Na’vi slime onto our pancakes,

c) Cereal blogger Dan G. succumb and be reborn by the Midwest winter blues, and

d) I’ve tried to scream the idea of La Croix kegs into existence until I’m blue in the face. La Craigs, people!!

Now, Fred and Barney are bringing a touch of Brontosaurian blue to modern breakfasts, too, with Magic Fruity Pebbles—a cereal that sells itself on the concept of turning milk blue, which is admittedly so not-innovative by this point that it feels anachronistically appropriate for this prehistoric pair.

But are these pinkened Pebbles’ gimmick still worth gulping down? I’m willing to die my intestines a peculiar shade of azure in order to answer that. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: pebbles, post. Leave a comment

Feb. ’20

Review: Rice Krispies Treats Caramel Snap Crackle Poppers

Cereal is for squares.

No, really. Though of course all food is three-dimensional, especially the well-rounded corn puff, but when it comes to crunchy quadrilaterals, we get a lot of squarish, rectangular, and pillowy things, yet never any perfectionist-pleasing union of six squares. Hence why cereal scholars have been asking for decades: when will breakfast enter its cubist period?

Following their controversial performance piece “The Bastardization of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal,” A.M. auteurs Snap, Crackle and Pop are back with a freshly caramelized coat of paint on last year’s Snap Crackle Poppers. So while I loathe what’s become of RKTC with every snap and crackle of my boiling blood, this line of miniaturized and glazed Treats is actually pretty good—especially the Cookies ‘n’ Creme ones.

It’s surely only a matter of time before Kellogg’s piggybacks off this geometric success to release Raisin Bran bites in the shape of Metatron’s Cube. But in the mean time, let’s see how the Rice Krispies boys’ latest inherently stackable snack stacks up to its predecessors. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: caramel, kellogg's, rice krispies. Leave a comment

Feb. ’20

Review: Kellogg’s Froot Loops Pop-Tarts

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards breakfast to be born?

Seriously: if you showed me the above product 30 years ago, my dad would be putting a fist in your soon-to-be-twinkling eye. But seriously Cerealously: I’ve become so accustomed to the notion of Pop-Tarts as a cereal that I hardly stopped to consider the infinite opportunity within its inverse.

Now, Froot Loops probably wouldn’t be my first choice for a co-branded Kellogg’s Crunch-Tart. I would’ve picked Raisin Bran or Cocoa Krispies, if only so they could be called Snap, Crackle Pop-Tarts. But nevertheless, this sort of fusion you’d think would be forbidden by church and state alike has come to my bruncheon nook

Churning and churning in my widening stomach
The Toucan cannot hear the toaster;
Crust falls apart, the filling cannot hold;
Iced anarchy is Looped upon my bowl. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: froot loops, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Feb. ’20

Review: Coffee Mate Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer

Sure, Dr. Robotnik might be smart in the 2020 Valentine’s Day box office darling Sonic the Hedgehog, but can he see why caffeine-addicted young adults love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer?

It’s got cinnamon sugar swirls in every swig: it’s the taste that can seep!

Jokes and flossing hedgehogs aside, something’s been messing with my brain: the fact that we’ve gotten more semifluid additions to the Toast Crunch family lately than we have crunchable cereals.

Coupled with Malt-O-Meal’s successful reintroduction of Blueberry Muffin Toasters, this leaves me wondering whether Cinnamon Toast Crunch, ostensibly one of cereal’s most iconic names, is stagnating as a brand. I mean, the last Toast Crunch we got was just the same thing cylinderized! Where’s the return of Peanut Butter Toast Crunch? Where’s the PB&J sequel to Peanut Butter Toast Crunch I just thought of? And the trilogy-closing Elvis Toast Crunch that many critics would call “breakfast’s most cinematic feat”?

Sorry, I might just be jaded and jittery thanks to this taste test. I promise I’m not dismissing Coffee Mate’s new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer before the review even starts—I’m just a mildly lactose intolerant cereal blogger who wants to get back to his oat milk. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, non cereal, toast crunch. Leave a comment

Feb. ’20

Review: Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies

Milk? Never heard of her. Is that some fermented barnyard beverage, like a cow-bucha?

I mean, it’s 2020: we’ve got more viscous things to pour over our cereal. While many make a New Year’s resolution to get thinner, there’s a skim-to-none chance that I don’t spend the year progressively thickening my breakfast additives.

Case in point: new Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies, two chuggable recontextualizations of popular cereals that are likely not meant to join their namesake noshes in bowl-y matrimony—though I am hellbent on doing so anyway. These bottles come four to a clumsily constructed cardboard pack (seriously, put these in a separate bag or you’ll end up bungling a liter of chilled Trix sauce down your front steps), and conveniently contain exactly enough smoothie to douse a bowl of cereal.

But of course, I must slug ’em back raw before any experimentation. So forgive me as I make whatever wretched noises accompany the process of “opening up one’s throat.” Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, non cereal, toast crunch, trix. 1 Comment

Feb. ’20

Review: Timbits Cereal (Birthday Cake & Chocolate Glazed)

Bits.

We all love ’em.

Or at least I do. I love all bits, whether it’s exponentially sugar-fortified cereal dust, forgotten salt-stewed French fry-lets, or the last messy bite of a restaurant meal that you saved as a parting gift for yourself after boxing up the rest of the leftovers—the very same last bite you had to awkwardly tell the waiter you were saving as he’s midway through lifting the plate from your desperate mitts. Or maybe that’s just me.

No matter how you spin it, I’ll always love bits more than pieces. Well, unless it’s those honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my strange bit-diction stems from a long childhood relationship with Timbits: those lovable lil totally-not-doughnut-holes from Tim Hortons that just about any teacher who had a hope of winning their class’ trust would bring in by the party pack-ful on syllabus day.

Though Tim Hortons and his namesake ‘bits were a source of warm nostalgia for my fellow Michiganders, the coffee chain is a more deeply in-granulated cultural epicenter in its country of origin, Canada. So it makes sense that the first ever Timbits Cereal would be released exclusively north of the states—even if I firmly believe my mitten of origin should be considered an annexed state of the Hortonian Empire. Thanks to Cereal Time’s Gabe Fonseca, I was able to secure boxes of both Timbits Cereal flavors, Birthday Cake and Chocolate Glazed.

So let’s all grab a coffee, PBR coffee, or perhaps some strange soup of poutine and Labatt Blue and see if these itty bitty Timbits are a slam dunk. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: birthday cake, canada, chocolate, post. Leave a comment