Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Kellogg’s Baby Shark Cereal

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Baby Shark the song is infinitely more interesting than Baby Shark Cereal.

I’ll admit, I have an ongoing aural embargo against the tune. My grubby brain is nematodally susceptible to earworms, so out of fear for my undisturbed dreamscapes, I’ve not only never listened to Baby Shark, but I’ve also never taken time to appreciate the sheer breadth and insanity of the infant man-eater’s history.

I might sound dumb for not knowing this, but apparently Baby Shark is originally a campfire chant dating back hundred of years, if not more, from a time where” YouTubers” were in the business of potatoes. The original version, however, is far more violent than the brine-washed version popular amongst children. Many versions involve a swimmer who not only loses an arm to a hungry sharkling, but a leg and sometimes a blood-gushing head, too. Other variants involve grueling and unsuccessful attempts at resuscitation, as well as philosophical inquiries on whether shark victims go to heaven, and what kind of god would continue to spawn such deceptively cute sea demons.

Then there are ongoing copyright claims surrounding the song, controversial political affiliations, and cruel attempts by law enforcement to use the track for repelling homeless people.

This is all to say that it’s kind of a shame how a bizarro slice of life like Baby Shark got such a soul-deadening cereal. If you read my Birthday Cake Froot Loops review, you know that not only did I voice a searing distaste for lazy sugar ring cereals, but I also spewed so much linguistic vitriol that it’d probably be bad for my blood pressure to do it again.

But does Baby Shark Cereal really deserve the same hate as Toucan Sam’s pathetic chemical droppings? And when I’m finished eating it, will it go to heaven? These are the questions I was, with great pains, born to answer. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, kellogg's. 3 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Birthday Cake Froot Loops Cereal

Oof.

Ugh.

Yeugh, even.

Can I be real for a second? Wholly honest? I am sick of this sugar ring cereal “trend.” It’s lazy, it’s cheap, it’s boring, and it’s downright disrespectful to cereal fans excited for creative new spins on breakfast favorites. Kellogg’s is the primary offender here, spreading a plague of plodding fruity-ish riffs on the same vapid formula. It seems that ever since they got the cloyingly-hooped formula right with Pink Donut Cereal, they’ve been letting the idea decay and fester, with each imitative iteration outdoing its predecessor by dulling my taste buds even more—to the point where my sweet tooth has devolved into a salty tooth.

So even though Canada’s interpretation of Birthday Cake Froot Loops was pretty solid, every single American take on birthday cake for breakfast has flopped with the grace of a flip-flop stomping on Cookie Puss. So I had no excitement going into Kellogg’s stateside rendition of Birthday Cake Froot Loops—hence why I saved it for last out of all the new Kellogg’s Cereals.

Well, except for Baby Shark Cereal, whose upcoming review will likely be the same as this one, just simplified with epithets even a YouTube-loving child could understand. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 1 rating, birthday cake, froot loops. 10 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: 7-Eleven Cereal Sweets – “Fruity Hoops Cereal in Pink Confection”

Ugh, is there anything in the world less appealing than Pink Confection?

…oh, wait, we’re not talking about McDonald’s nugget slurry? Allow me to revise:

Uhh, is there anything in the world that sounds less appealing than Pink Confection?

Sure, I’m aware of confections and the color pink, but I’m unsure I’ve ever seen those two words in tandem—not even on bags of Frosted Animal Cookies. Even a Google search of “Pink Confection” only turns up results for 7-Eleven’s Detective Pikachu candy bars, which lead us to believe the stuff is made from 100% All-American Angus Snubbull.

Oh, and there’s this tremendous articulation of the English language, as found in a 1962 issue of The New York Times:

Pink Confection Is Appealing Token of Love; Real Roses Adorn Light Cake for a Valentine Can Be Frozen

Well doesn’t that just tell us everything we need to know about the Froot Loopiest of 7-Eleven’s 7-Select Cereal Sweets bars?

These real-cereal-infused bars also come in not-Cinnamon Toast Crunch (in milk chocolate) and fake Fruity Pebbles (in an equally dubious White Confection), but I chose the one bearing “Fruity Hoops,” partly because the cinnamon one seemed too ‘safe,’ and partly because I love rosy hues, even when they’re in something that sounds like it’s been perfectly processed through an android unicorn colon.

Alright, I’ve roasted pink confection enough. Let’s give this bar a break!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, froot loops, non cereal. 1 Comment

Aug. ’19

Review: Strawberry Crunch Krave

If you’re reading this, my mission was a success: I’ve hacked the Kelloggian satellite array and beamed my desperate plea directly into the heads of the cereal company’s board of directors. Now that I have the c-suite’s attention, I only have one request:

Please, please make a Peanut Butter Crunch Krave.

It’s true: while eating this new Strawberry Crunch Krave, I couldn’t help but think, yearn, and mentally mewl for a crunchy companion worth combining into my favorite (also crunchy…or creamy) elementary school sandwich. This urge was so strong that I even wished Cinnamon Crunch Krave, which I already enjoyed, could be sacrificed to whatever shadowy cabal of choco-vores hold the cosmic power to make my dream a reality.

While it may sound like I’m deflecting, this is the best compliment I can give Strawberry Crunch Krave. Because it’s good. So good, in fact, that I could eat it pureed and spread onto toast. Allow me to elaborate—oh, and if the Kellogg’s execs are still reading this, PayPal-ing me a dowry for my courageous Kravery wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

How’s about a few bucks and an ivory steed?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, kellogg's, krave. 9 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Cinnamon Crunch Krave

Quick: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? Because that may be the key to understanding which pillow—and corresponding cinnamon pillow cereal is right for you.

I’ll leave you to chew on that while I do a proper review intro.

So what’s the deal with chocolate and cinnamon? Though it has a place in many Mexican chocolates and specialty cinnamon buns, this spicy–sweet combo is uncommon when compared to chocolate and peanut butter, strawberry, or caramel. The only cereals I’ve known to try it are a ho-hum Kashi Shredded Wheat and Chocolate Toast Crunch—which is much heavier on the Choco-love than the Cinna-mania.

Yet here’s Krave (a cereal that, by right of its apparent divisiveness, very rarely gets limited edition variants) bringing that bold duo to the breakfast aisle’s forefront. I’ve long been an ardent defender of Krave’s honor—the folks who say it tastes like dog food change their tune real fast when you offer to square up in the alley behind PetSmart—but after S’Mores’ lackluster performance, but if Cinnamon Crunch blows up in my face, I may have to flip to Pop-Tarts Cereal’s cooler side of the stuffed pillow. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, cinnamon, kellogg's, krave. 3 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Cookies & Crème Pop-Tarts Cereal

Look, I know, deep down, that I am but a flake fragment stuck between two cogs within the grand corporate cereal machine, but can’t a crumb dream of being a marbit?

By this I mean: I seriously doubt anything I’ve written on this website has ever influenced a cerealsmith’s grand designs—though if Blueberry Muffin Toasters hits shelves, I will claim peripheral clout by right of Justinian association. But in my imagination, I like to pretend that something like Cookies & Crème Pop-Tarts Cereal was made with a picture of me on an easel, connected with string to a bran map of all my favorite flavor descriptors.

Yes, that sounds narcissistic, but my birthday is next week, so give me a break.
And yes, I know, unsubtly mentioning my upcoming birthday isn’t much better.

C’mon though, a merger of Oreo O’s and Pop-Tarts? Sure, they could’ve picked any of my more-obscure, all-time favorite Pop-Tarts (Milk Chocolate Graham, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, or Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal Delight), but the only cereals more quintessentially dan g. would be a PB&J Waffle Crisp or Gingerbread Golden Grahams!

Ahem, Post and General Mills? Next week, remember? You’re not invited to my all-night laser tag lock-in without presents.

Okay, enough about me: let’s write about these little sandwich cookie pillows entirely in the second and third persons. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, cookies and cream, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 4 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Corn Pops Cereal

How do you think big cereal companies choose to reintroduce old cereals? Do they do something logical, like hold a focus group of common cereal consumers and wise cerealheads alike, or perhaps mail out surveys?

Or do they just go to Mr. Breakfast’s cereal archive, rip a fat scroll off the mouse wheel, and throw a dart at the computer screen (blindfolded)?

Because it really seems like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops, a 2007 Kellogg’s cereal apparently best known for including a “send-away offer for an Adidas Sports Top,” must have gotten lucky to win out in the re-continuation race—or at least swapped coffins with Tony’s Cinnamon Krunchers right before Kellogg’s’s undertook their dead cereal exhumation. It’s also entirely possible someone at Kellogg’s thought of this without even remembering the 2007 version, because the only geologic record remaining of it is deep in the Kellogg’s archives, sandwiched between Puffa Puffa Rice and Bart Simpson’s No ProblemO’s’s bordering strata.

Whatever its second genesis, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops trades its ancestor’s flavored spheres (i.e. bootleg Reese’s Puffs) for the half-deflated popcorn pieces of Corn Pops proper. The wilted kernels have an incomparably unique texture, one that hasn’t been replicated—and possibly for good reason, because the idea of milky buttered popcorn is no-doubt a daring and dairily divisive philosophy. But will it be conducive to caked on gobs of flav-o-dust?

Let’s all go to the lobby and find out! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, chocolate, corn pops, kellogg's, peanut butter. 28 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Mermaid Cereals (General Mills and Kellogg’s Froot Loops!)

Finally, after decades of alpha-male tigers, geriatric cinnamon-toast bakers and the fiery testosterone of the sky’s giant Raisin Bran-loving plasma ball, we’re getting a cereal mascot who’s a strong female role mod—aw wait…she’s only half human, isn’t she? Do we really want the world’s daughters looking up to someone who craps in the ocean?

Sorry fishladies, didn’t mean to slander you. I’m sure there are plenty of sophisticated mermaidens out there who use seafoam bidets, and you’re all way classier than those treacherous sirens. All I wanted to do was hear them cover Chocolate Rain, but I did not stay dry and I certainly felt the pain.

Oceanic etiquette aside, I find the food world’s mermaid trend intriguing. It seems these Ms. Thological creatures have eclipsed unicorns as young kids’ cryptids of fixation, as mermaids are apparently popular enough to warrant two cereals, from two different companies, released at roughly the same time in two different hemispheres. While General Mills was kind enough to hook me up with several (several) boxes worth of their new Mermaid Cereal, the Aussies of the Yeah, G’Day! podcast were kind enough to send me Kellogg’s Mermaid Froot Loops from the land down-underwater.

So which continent will emerge as ~~king~~ queen of breakfast’s aquamarina? Let’s dive in. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, 8 rating, general mills, international, kellogg's. 1 Comment