Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts

Listen, when the slogan tells you to “save big money at Menards,” there’s an invisible asterisk attached that reads “if you’re willing to wait two full months per 60¢ saved.”

For those confused by most of that (rather than just some of it): Menards is a midwestern hardware store comparable to Home Depot or Lowe’s—if you add a twang of ope-fulness. When news of Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts broke in mid-May, I immediately started looking for a place to buy them. You know, so I could get them in time for Independence Day.

Both wonderfully and strangely, the only place I could find them was on Menards’ website—what’s more patriotic than discount lumber, I guess?—and with a 60¢ mail-in rebate to make the box cost me under $1.50. Sounds like an American Dream come true, right?

Well, 48 automated Menards customer service emails later, I learned that not only were the Pop-Tarts on a seemingly infinite backorder, but I’m also probably the only person to buy them from the site. The page where I bought them has been deleted, and they finally arrived conspicuously in a package better secured than Fort Knox’s solid-gold diary.

So while the actual Fourth of July is weeks behind us, perhaps we can rechristen this occasion: Happy Menardian Solstice, everyone! Who wants fireworks? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, blueberry, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 2 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: Vanilla Almond Raisin Bran Crunch

The more time passes, I think the more our society is not just normalizing raisin bran, but celebrating it. Gone are the days of clumsy bathroom humor. Gone is the Seinfeldian slander. And gone are the chronic misinterpretations of the stuff’s sugar content (the servings are heavier. heavier I tell you!)

Now, I like to believe that we as a culture can appreciate and thank our sun-dried stewards of more nutritionally substantive sweetness.

Even in our darkest hours, we’ve learned to praise the sun.

To evidence this, I’d point to the wealth of limited edition Kellogg’s Raisin Bran varieties we’ve seen lately, all of which have been arguably effective evolutions of the twice-scooped formula. Apple Strawberry hit us with an unexpectedly creative haymaker, while RB + Bananas boldly did what no lazy breakfaster has done before: acted on the diced-fruit “serving suggestion” seen on cereal boxes everywhere.

Vanilla Almond Raisin Bran continues that curiosity-driven tradition with a flavor pairing that’s more familiar, but perhaps more fitting. Rather than overtly fruity, V.A. takes R.B. back to some earthier thematic roots.

But enough mumblings about motif: let’s munch!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, almond, kellogg's, raisin bran, vanilla. Leave a comment

Jul. ’19

News: Hostess Twinkies Cereal is Coming Soon!

Nope, I’m not Kid-ding: the mild, mild spongecake west’s fastest creamslinger is having a litter of amoebic children!

Thanks to /r/YukiHase on Reddit, we now know that Twinkies will be the next titan of the gas station snack aisle to become a Post-produced Hostess Cereal. Twinkies would arguably have been the more obvious choice for the first wave—not to discredit the fine, fine work of our nation’s honorably Honeyed Buns and elite corps of Powderiest Donettes. But better late than never, I suppose—though the pressure is now squarely on this cylindrical Twinkies Cereal to live up to the high standards set by its caked contemporaries.

All we know about Twinkies Cereal thus far is a) they look like undusted Cheetos Puffs and b) they probably aren’t creme-filled, as they should be, and c) Twinkie the Kid is worryingly absent from the whole affair. I get that many Hostess mascots have crossed the Rainbow Funfetti Bridge, but T the K has been Hostess’ ride or die frontman, even through the bakery’s brief sabbatical in bankrupt purgatory.

(I hear, in limbo, they suck the soulcream straight outta the three holes in your back!)

As Twinkies do, they’ve taken me deliriously off track. Unfortunately there’s not much else to say about Twinkies Cereal just yet—unless we’re guessing which cake comes next.

Cupcake? Too obvious. Snowballs? Too controversial. No, I hope it’s Peanut Butter Ho Hos or White Fudge Ding Dongs….or both, monstrously spliced together.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: Hostess, post. 3 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: FYE Blue-Eyes White Dragon Berry Blast Cereal

The year is 2004, or something.

I spent the morning carefully curating and collating the best possible Yu-Gi-Oh! deck from a jumbo tupperware’s worth of monster-fronted cardboard rectangles.

I go to my local Meijer grocery store, which, for some reason, was hosting a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament (an in-store event that, for some even worse reason, never happens these days).

Using my incredibly overpowered Wave-Motion Cannon, I obliterate another plucky young fellow, who proceeded to yell at me for “not telling him what the card did.” To which I replied, “Well you never asked…”

Needless to say, I lost the next match and got grifted by some older dude who coerced me into trading a good card for a ruddy one.

(I promise you, I am only haunted by this story bidaily, at most.)

So yes, while I was very into the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters trading card game ~15 years ago, I never expected to sit eye-to-blue-eyes with a Yu-Gi-Oh! cereal in the year 2019. FYE’s Blue-Eyes White Dragon Cereal isn’t the first YGO! cereal, either: the first, 2003 version boasted more thematically interesting Millennium Puzzle pieces, and back-of-the-box art that’s way more interesting than Blue-Eyes’ so-last-millennium word puzzle:

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, fye, trix. 2 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal Snickerdoodle Cookie Bites

Though they share a mother in milk, there are perhaps no other food pairings quite as harmonious and simultaneously anachronistic as cereal and cookies. One carries an entire nation’s breakfast connotations on its sugared back, while the other cloaks its doughy balls in the sinful jar of night. And yet, I can’t think of any one prepared treat that has inspired more cereals than the cookie, with its manifold masquerade of infinite options:

Oreo cereal. Nilla cereal. Even a modern holiday classic. I’ll admit this is a hollow victory, since the cookie clan certainly has such a broad definition. But hey, there are a ton of ice cream flavors out there, and with a few exceptions, cereals flavored like those suckers/lickers keep striking out.

Post & Malt-O-Meal (essentially creative twins, but one more literally thinks outside the box) are continuing the cookie’s never-crumbling reign by expanding their line of Cookie Bites even further. What started as a clear chip off the ol’ Cookie Crisp became Nutter Butter Cereal’s better half earlier this year. Now, it’s taking aim at the holiday season…a whole five months early?

I won’t question the business strategy behind dropping a snickerdoodle cereal in the summer, but all I’m saying is that if a cereal’s gonna celebrate Christmas in July, it better be offering me a steal of a deal on a used Kia Sorento. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, malt-o-meal. 4 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: South Korean Oreo O’s RED & Peanut Butter O’s!

What better way to celebrate a special day than with two special cereals?

Or to be more sentimentally apt, what better way to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Cerealously.net than with a new variant of this blogger’s all-time favorite cereal?

Yes, it feels like I’ve preached the virtues of South Korean Oreo O’s so many times in the past four years that it borders on trite fanboyism at this point. But guess what? It’s my party, and I can gush about longitudinal variances in cocoa and marbit potency if I want to.

Especially since this occasion’s significance surpasses any individual’s milky milestone. Despite being voted the best Oreo O’s in their class by D.G. Power & Associates for the past half decade, South Korean Oreo O’s have never gotten a new flavor variant—a tragedy when we see just how lame America’s rebooted OO’s cinematic universe turned out.

Technically, there were Honey O’s bearing the aqueous mascot of Oreo O’s—a crossover we’ll see again later in the this article—but now the Oreo name and implied legacy officially endorse Oreo O’s RED, which is a Chocolate–Strawberry combo far more interesting than Golden or Mega Marbit Stuf’d.

In honor of Cerealously 4th birthday, I will humbly endure the jolly good burden of eating four bowls.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, 9 rating, cerealously, international, oreo o's, peanut butter, strawberry. 3 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: Toy Story 4 Carnival Berry Cereal

I’ll be honest, even though it’s been out for over a week, Toy Story 4 has not yet graced my ideas. It’s not (entirely) about it being an unnecessary sequel, and more about how I have to pee so often during movies that it leaves massive plot holes in my memory if the staff refuse to pause it for me.

And yes, I did once try to slip out to the restroom during The Last Jedi, accidentally opened the door to outside, and bathed the theater in an embarrassing flood of blinding hyperspace.

But here in the comfort of my own home, I can find cinematic relief through open relieving—all while eating cheap cereal instead of $11 kids’ snack boxes (the gummies are just so good!). So as I crack open a box of Toy Story 4 Carnival Berry Cereal, I’m forced to interpret the plot based entirely on this sensory breakfast experience.

So far all I’ve garnered is that during the film, the toys are blessed (or cursed?) with the ability to sprint across empty air—even in a five-alarm red void. Let’s hope the taste features more character development…

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 2 rating, kellogg's, movie cereals. 1 Comment

Jun. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal & Cold Stone Creamery’s Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some?

Look, I’m all for cool (especially the literally cool) cereal collaborations, but I’m sensing an ulterior motive with this one.

Malt-O-Meal & Cold Stone Creamery’s Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some? is the latest in their ice cream cereal series, after Birthday Cake Remix and Our Strawberry Blonde. And it has to be a secret social experiment by Post (M-O-M’s parent company) to see just how long they can make a cereal’s full, legal name before they drive snacky journalists wacky.

Well to that I say, nice try, but I’ll just turn it into an ugly acronym that actually takes more exertion to craft than typing it out.

So I know I really buried the lead here, but M-O-M&CSCCDYWS? is making a bold statement by claiming it contains cereal pieces actually flavored like cookie dough (while pairing them with marshmallows, but I doubt anyone in today’s marbit-fatigued zeitgeist really cares about that). There’s been little creativity in the chocolate chip cookie cereal scene as of late, ever since Keebler Cereal and its tragically puff-smothered cookie bits keeled over. That’s why there’s a lot riding on Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some? to be more than just another Cookie Crisp chaser.

Now that I’ve told my spellcheck’s autocapitalization settings to not even bother, I can answer the in-sentence question Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some? exists to ask:

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, caramel, chocolate, ice cream, malt-o-meal. Leave a comment