Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Shopkins Cutie O’s Cereal

♪ ♪ “Buy all our play sets and tooooyyys!” ♫

For those without this very specific genetic disposition to oddly specific early Internet web cartoon references, Cheat Commandos…O’s are a cheap cash-in on an already merchandized-by-design franchise. And to this day, I can’t figure out which cereal they used to model it—perhaps it’s actually dried macaroni and cheese, or perhaps the petrified remains of a shredded Bronco Trolley.

Much like Cheat Commandos, Shopkins is a line of toys, apparel, and by this point (probably) orthodox faiths. In short: it consists largely of blind bag toys shaped like sentient grocery items. In long: yo dog we heard you like shopping so we put consumer goods in your consumer good so you can spend food money on fake food that implicitly costs fake money, too.

Granted, I’m not judging the ouroboric commercialism that Shopkins embodies—heck, I think the adjacently themed ’80s Food Fighters are some of the best-looking action figures in history. Though it is a shame they never made a grizzled bowl of cereal armed with a tactical bootspork.

Shopkins is just something I’m far too old for, admittedly, but I’m nevertheless hesitant any time a beloved brand of non-cereal ends up emblazoned on the front of a dubiously flavored hot pink rectangular prism. Licensed cereals are usually hit or miss or impermissibly lame. Even those remembered fondly, like Pokémon Cereal, are almost always retrospectively delicious because they’re acceptably executed bootleg Lucky Charms—with prettier marbits than the heretical excuses for freeze-dried sugar they put in such licensed cereals nowadays.

At least Shopkins’ new Cutie O’s Cereal has a relatively original flavor. Outside of one juicy box of Raisin Bran, apple and strawberry make for a rare pairing—though we are starting off on the wrong plastic footlong, as my lifelong penchant for strawberry kiwi has me Pavlovianly drooling venomous vitriol at the sight of a green-fruited competitor to my mental “Best Capri-Sun” throne. But alright, Kawaii Granny Smith: I’ll sheathe my ceremonial paring knife while you state your case. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: apple, kellogg's, strawberry. Leave a comment

Jan. ’20

Review: Chocolatey Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites

Anybody else got weird, yet oh-so-satisfying ways to eat food? And I don’t mean any particular combination of foods—though I will proudly die on the Pringles with Ketchup Hill, as it’s where my family plot will be.

No, I’m talking unconventional approaches to the physical act of eating something. Sure, there are classics, like unscrewing and licking an Oreo clean or consuming Snickers with a fork & knife. And there are more disturbing ones, like those who eat kiwis with the fuzzy flesh on, or the worryingly confident breed of Fun Dip consumer who eats the sticks totally unadorned.

Personally, I like to eat completely around the cookie part of a Twix to save it for last, consume a handful of popcorn like an apple, and more-than-occasionally swallow pasta noodles whole for the unique tracheal imprint left by each respective shape. Oh, and I used to unknowingly eat Reese’s Cups with the paper still on until an embarrassingly mature age.

Pop-Tarts are far from immune from this sort of nuanced noshing. While my formerly frowned-upon habit of freezing toaster pastries has now been largely normalized (you’re welcome), I still know many who will nibble around the crust before handling the sweet meat of the matter. This may be less barbaric (albeit less creative) than eating the insides before the crust, but either way these folks are depriving themselves of the blessed balance struck at the baked-in slip fault between frosting and crisped crust.

No, now that I’ve eaten Chocolatey Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites, I believe there is a better way: one that may be difficult to scale up to a regular Pop-Tart, but which ought to nevertheless cleave your breakfast time traditions in twain. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, kellogg's, non cereal, pop-tarts. 2 Comments

Jan. ’20

Review: Trolls World Tour Trix with Marshmallows

Is it just me, or does “marbit” sound an awful lot like “varmint?”

I’m not saying I don’t like what is perhaps cereal’s single most iconic component, but the mythical munchability of freeze-dried marshmallows, at least to me, has been their scarcity. The Biblical parable of the child who carefully picked all the marshmallows out of his Lucky Charms, only for his father to make him eat the soggy oats alongside the family donkey still rings true: “he who hems and haws makes himself an ass.”

Uh, I think that’s the…unreleased fifth letter to the Corinthians. You wouldn’t know it: Paul wrote it at a different school.

So much did I enjoy the rare treat of breakfast marshmallows as a child that I feel spoiled now—or at least my appetite is. Every cereal from Apple Jacks to Frosted Flakes is chucking marshmallows into classic cereals with no respect for tradition, boundaries, or mouthfeel. And now they’ve gotten to Trix, too. A cereal that has never been paired with marshmallows before this year of Twenty-Silly-Bunny.

It’d be a low-hanging comedic fruit to say it feels like the cereal industry is Trolling us with all these clumsily composed marshmallow cereals, but I will say that, thanks to the Trolls 2: World Tour branding on these Trix, I’m marginally more optimistic about the concept. Because while I deeply, even spiritually prefer the Trix fruit shapes to spheres, I will admit that swirled spheres are aesthetically pleasing enough to thread onto a friendship bracelet.

If I made two, how fast do you think UPS could get one to the Corinthians? Or at least, The Corinthian? I’ve had eyes for him for a while. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, movie cereals, trix. 5 Comments

Jan. ’20

Review: Frosted Honey Bunches of Oats

In 2020 we’re staying honest with those we love, so I’m gonna come right out and say it:

Honey Bunches of Oats, how in your infinite wisdom have you made the most tearable cereal bags in the breakfast aisle?

There are already enough things in this world that I have trouble pulling apart without blunder nor bother: perforated notebook paper, most pieces of mail, command strips off a wall. My delicious cereal shouldn’t fissure and fizzle out cereal spillage at a moment’s notice.

This is difficult to cope with, especially since Honey Bunches of Oats is a) built on a near spiritual trinity of corn flakes, frosted corn flakes and granola bunches, but this triple blessing is also b) very consistent at producing flavorful varietals.

(We don’t talk about the less savory ‘Zilla ’98s of the franchise.)

Yet HBoO’s latest release—whose bag was torn asunder by inescapable fate—seems, to me, to be its ostensibly least original idea in recent memory (with one notably irrelevant example). Simply culling one third of the cereal, coating it with sticky sauce, and shoving it back in the mix? As someone who values a good novelty cereal, from the start I’m skeptical. Will this be the equivalent of a bubbly Disney remake that’s so saccharine it crashes lifelessly?

At least give us some crudely handsome CGI bunches at that point! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: honey bunches, post. 5 Comments

Dec. ’19

Review: Hershey’s Kisses Cereal

Smooches. Pecks. Snogs. Canoodles.

I’m not saying Hershey picked one of the lamest, most ironically vanilla word for the union of impassioned lips, but plain ol’ Hershey’s Kisses? Even the white chocolate Hugs light a hotter fire under my stomach. But perhaps it’s just my own deep-seated disinterest in purely unadorned and lower-mid quality milk chocolate—especially when sculpted into a dainty form that a) always has its fragile tips break, and b) leaves behind a wholly unnecessary second wrapper component in the form of an annoying miniature fortune cookie fortune. One that never changes.

Despite all this, I’ll try my best to set aside these misgivings (that likely stem from the unendingly obnoxious death knell of the Kisses Christmas commercial) to impartially review Hershey’s Kisses Cereal, a creation that somehow dances around every other erotically nougated candy at the party to Kiss the chocolate frog in the corner, who ends up transforming into a cereal that looks something like, uh, this: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, general mills. 7 Comments

Dec. ’19

Review: New Pretzel Pop-Tarts (Chocolate & Cinnamon Sugar!)

The crustular revolution will not be televised.

Probably because crustular isn’t a real word, let alone an FDA-approved one. Though one could consider it an antonym of ‘cromulent.’

Pop-Tarts varieties have gotten wilder than a berry in recent years, with a number of crazy flavors and gimmicks that weren’t necessarily crazy good by extension. But through it all, Kellogg’s wasn’t able to open up their third eye to see the true opportunity for creativity that lies in a Pop-Tart’s largely unmodified third component—arguably the most fundamentally important component. The crust.

I struggle to think of many Pop-Tarts with crust that tastes like anything more than “classic puff pastry” and “chocolate puff pastry.” There’s Red Velvet, but that’s really just clown chocolate. Perhaps the only worthy ancestral analogue I can think of for these crust-bending Pretzel Pop-Tarts would be Kellogg’s line of weirdly wonderful Peanut Butter Pop-Tarts. With a more crumbly and baked-cookie-esque crust, that trilogy of PB, Choco PB & PB&J cemented themselves as an unforgettable, holy trinity of revelatory revolutions in Pop-Tarchitecture.

So why did it take Kellogg’s so long to break the expensive factory mold again?
And was it worth it?

Continue reading →

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

Dec. ’19

Review: Jolly Rancher Cereal

Poll 100 full panels of 100 Family Feud survey respondents, and I sincerely doubt, with every last drop of mouthwater I have ready to dribble, that anyone would choose Jolly Rancher as the candy most deserving of a breakfast cereal.

I mean, first of all, Jolly Ranchers are popular for having several distinct, atomically potent candy flavors—each a strong personality that threatens to react with combustive volatility if kept too close to another. Second of all, they’re just not that great. Sure, I have a soft spot for the Blue Raspberry Jolly Ranchers I used to melt raw spots in my tender palate, but put these glossy little cylinders next to just about any chocolate candy and I’d feed every Jolly Rancher on Earth to a cabal of feral hogs if it meant getting a Three Musketeers Cereal with freeze-dried nougat.

But I get it: General Mills is clearly trying to get the most money possible out of their Hershey brand partnership. And even though competitor Kellogg’s is probably chuckling with knowing condescension at General Mills for picking up a brand that produced one of the worst Pop-Tarts crossovers, here I sit with a box of Jolly Rancher Cereal regardless.

Clearly trying to ride the tattered coattails of one Sour Patch Kids Cereal—who left in its Warhead-impacted wake a sense of sour delirium surrounding tarter cereals. But does Jolly Rancher Cereal deserve the same sort of hype-worthy hysteria? I’ve got mistletoe on hand, so it’s time to pucker up. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: apple, general mills. 11 Comments

Dec. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Muffin Toasters

Lucky Charms? Frosted Flakes? Honey Bunches of Oats?

Sure, they’re classic cereals, but are they legends? You can’t have a myth without the mythology, nor a hero without an origin story. And I’m not talking about internally manufactured lore—no matter how good the Cap’n Crunch Extended Universe is. No, the cereals whose legacies will endure the eventual expiration of every earthly trademark will be the ones who moved people. The cereals that collided with culture without significant marketing spin.

I’m talkin’ Oreo O’s, which endured an enigmatic purgatory of legalese by seeking refuge in South Korea.

I’m talkin’ Honeycomb, whose formula change revealed that not only do people not want all-natural flavoring in classic cereals, but they don’t want it so hard that they’ll rally with the vitriol of a bloodlusted Crazy Craving.

And I’m talkin’ Blueberry Muffin Tops, a cereal that launched an outlandish, fan-driven convention spectacle. At that time, Blueberry Muffin Tops was at the cult-favorite cusp between its 2004 introduction and 2016ish disappearance. Back then, before it was bought out by Post, Malt-O-Meal had a much harsher (thought largely unfounded) reputation for selling cheap cereal bootlegs in bulk without a granule of originality. But Blueberry Muffin Tops was a breath of freshly Ziploc’d air. We’re spoiled for choice now, but years ago a craving for blueberry breakfast cereals forced a choice between Blueberry Mini-Wheats (boring), waiting ’til October for Boo Berry (boo-ring), and Post’s Blueberry Morning—which, to be fair, is pretty great, but without word-of-mouth recommendation it just looks like another boring ‘healthy’ cereal.

Blueberry Muffin Tops solved that crisis with its unrestrained, shameless sugary goodness. And while it was discontinued due to a lack of consumer demand, BMT’s everlasting appeal has resurged to the point that Malt-O-Meal, no doubt buoyed by Post’s greater capacity for potential failure, is rebirthing them as Blueberry Muffin Toasters, most likely to make them gel with their larger line of Toast Crunch taste-alikes, but also hopefully because M-O-M doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea about bringing back low-rise jeans.

May they be lowered to the deepest drop-crotch of hell. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: blueberry, malt-o-meal. 8 Comments