Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Strawberry Shortcake Crunch

“Let them eat cake.” — Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch

Well, probably. The origin of that quote is disputed by historians, biographers, and cereal box scribes, so it may very well have been everyone’s favorite breakfast boatman. After all, the never-aging Cap’n appears to be forever sailing in some timeless sea or milky non-place, so an 1843 quotation would feel like yesterday to such a mustachioed morning mainstay.

I’ve been analyzing Crunchian flavor trends already, but Cap’n “Deliciousness of the Endless” Crunch seems to have a growing fixation on cakes. After all, doughnuts are pretty much fried cakes—as are pancakes—so his latest variety may suggest more crunchy cakes in the future.

It’s called Strawberry Shortcake Crunch, and whatever mild conceptual surprise it brings is compounded by its genuinely interesting choice to pair Crunch Berry pieces with loops instead of classic Cap’n chests. Was this done to simply mimic a round, puffed pastry? To make it easier to squelch whipped cream into every piece? Or perhaps to nefariously lure Sonic the Hedgehog into his watery grave?

Because I don’t know about you, but I can’t rule out that Cap’n Crunch is just Dr. Eggman in disguise.

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, quaker, strawberry. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Frosted Crisp Apple Pop-Tarts

Wait, what the heck are these big flat things?

Steamrolled Pop-Tarts Bites? Stretch Armstrong-ed Pop-Tarts Crisps? The assimilated sentience of several dozen Pop-Tarts Cereal pieces?

Oh, right: I remember those retro rectangles now. Original Pop-Tarts—or OG PTs, as the kids may very well say—were what Kellogg’s used to make way back in 2018, before they seemingly decided to infuse essential Pop-Tart oils into every other snack product imaginable.

But after three spin-offs (that are really re-educated old school products), Pop-Tarts has finally released a new full-sized pastry, too (even if it’s really the latest in a long, long line of its kind). It’s called Crisp Apple, and it foregoes much of the flamboyant detailing of its apple’d ancestors in favor of a simplistic sauce blanche, almost exactly like that seen on Apple Blast Pop-Tarts—a flavor available in the U.K. since 2014.

But will this version be as American as apple handpies, or will its apple fall a few furlongs too far from its frosted family tree? Let me untwist my tongue and put it to work.

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, apple, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal Peanut Butter Cookie Bites

Look, I don’t know much about sacred geometry, but I’m still going to thank it. Whatever Euclidian miracle is allowing my long-lost (or so it feels) Waffle Crisp to live on in spirit post-discontinuation deserves my praise. And Waffle Crisp’s memory isn’t being preserved in just one cereal analogue, either: Chicken & Waffles Cereal, which I’m ashamed to have just casually typed, is be bringing back the real, bite-sized Belgian thing; but Honey Bun Cereal presented an interesting, if not geometrically adjacent, twist on the concept.

The most important similarity is their source: Waffle Crisp and its latest subspecies are all made by Post. Post just happens to own Malt-O-Meal, making the economically bagged and bulging cereal company’s new Peanut Butter Cookie Bites a technical tangential relative of Waffle crisp, too. Though these PB pieces are round, I simply can’t disown them from my mental retcon of Waffle Crisp genealogy, as they have their father’s tic-tac-toed belly.

But will Malt-O-Meal’s Peanut Butter Cookie Bites live up to its nostalgically syruped parentage, or am I simply using this long-winded introduction to cope with Waffle Crisp’s disappearance? Better try coping calorically to compare. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, malt-o-meal, peanut butter. 6 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch

To paraphrase a notable shrimp entrepreneur, “Valentine’s Day is like a box of Crunch Berries: you always know what you’re gonna get.”

And this made-up quote from a made-up character is right: February 14th inevitably means the same parade of uneaten Conversation Hearts, shamefully scarfed Reese’s Hearts, and tentatively nibbled (but ultimately abandoned) coconut chocolate-box rejects. For a Hallmark holiday, it seems to lack inspiration.

The company ought to call Yami Yugi, as it appears to have ignored the Heart of the Cards. Or maybe just shoot a text to Cap’n Crunch.

See, like Valentine’s Day, Cap’n Crunch’s infinitely iterated Crunch Berries cereals seasonally remix the geometry and color psychology of each, without touching the tried-and-true flavor formula. That is, until now, as H.M. Crunch’s Valentine-adjacent Chocolatey Berry Crunch brings chocolate to the Cap’n’s well-oiled chests and strawberry to his lovingly processed Crunch Berries.

Which is all to say that if Cap’n Crunch is breaking tradition just to make us his Valentine, he better buy us dinner too, before we accept his invitation to this dessert of a breakfast. But will this fresh face make him look like a snack, or will his cereal’s fresh duds be just that?

There’s just one way to find out, and I hope it doesn’t involve kissing a sea-brined mustache.

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, chocolate, quaker. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Chocolate Toast Crunch (2019)

What cosmic breakfastian powers command the scales of cereal justice? Which ancient grain gods and granulated goddesses hold court over the eternal fates of discontinued cereal souls, reanimating some amd leaving others in cultically revered purgatory?

Well whoever they are, they’ve got some explaining to do: it’s been nearly half a decade since the heyday (and collapse) of the 2000s’ Toast Crunch empire, and the General Millsian pantheon has only just now resurrected a second member of that power trilogy.

Let me explain—I firmly believe the first of the Toast Crunch’s Y2K success stories to return was not reborn directly. No, Frosted Toast Crunch (2012-2015) must have had its powdered sugar-dusted soul reincarnated in the form of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch. By binding Frosted Toast Crunch’s might to a seasonally limited plane, this ho-ho-glow up made its predecessor frostier, butterier, and infinitely more loveable.

So now that we’re seeing the total return of the youngest Gen Z Toast Crunch, Chocolate (2013-2016), it begs an eternal question: where is the first among them? Where is my beloved Peanut Butter Toast Crunch? It debuted in 2004 to wide acclaim, even making a brief 2013 re-appearance after its first 2006 retirement. So while I’m ready to dive into these Chocolate Toast Crunch squares with cocoa gusto, it will inevitably leave me hoping for another spiritual successor to PB…

…one that merges its ghostly life energy with that of recently departed Strawberry Toast Crunch.

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, general mills, toast crunch. 9 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Banana Creme Frosted Flakes

Cult classic cereals are fascinating.

The Rocky Horrors of the breakfast world, this ragtag bunch of sweethearts from across time and space have won the lifelong loyalty of a select few weirdos (meant in the most loving way) who may have only had them a few times, but would risk life, limb, and even liver to taste them again.

For me, it’s Neopets Islandberry Crunch. Fellow cereal pundit Gabe Fonseca has a proclivity for Sprinkle Spangles. And for a whole bunch of others, including Marvo of The Impulsive Buy, Banana Frosted Flakes has kept their eyes peeled for a suitable substitute since the early ’80s.

Though I’m left unripely green with envy that I never got to try Tony’s classic Banana Flakes, I’m hoping Kellogg’s new Banana Creme Frosted Flakes will fulfill its forefather’s lingering hype. More so, I hope it successfully charts a whole new niche for an already undersung fruit flavor. For the past few years have seen Banana Berry, Banana Bread, Banana Split, and Banana Pudding cereals, but our mom’s favorite banana dessert has stayed mum.

Until now, that is. So go ahead, Anthony T. Tiger: pie me in the face. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, banana, kellogg's. 5 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Fruity Lucky Charms Cereal

How long before seasonal cereal rotations become literal?

Someday I anticipate we’ll reach a cereal singularity. When all the ideas have been made already, it will become most economically viable to print Count Chocula and S’Mores Oops! No Graham Crackers! Cereal on respective sides of the same box. Then some grocery stocker need only flip the boxes around come October and brainwash anyone who brainwash customers into believing it never happened.

No need to read that box back, humble shopper. Just chew on that cocoa corn, because we’ve always been at war with Boo Berry.

But until that dark chocolate day arises, we must remain hesitant about letting seemingly carbon-copied cereals get away with döppelganging up against us brave breakfast lovers. That’s why when I first heard General Mills was releasing Fruity Lucky Charms, I immediately saw it as a 10-month early reanimation of Franken Berry under a different name: perhaps out of creative laziness, perhaps to use up a few thousand quarts of near-expired strawberry syrup.

So I’ll try the stuff, for sure, but don’t think I won’t be swapping my spoon for a pitchspork, just in case I need to incite a little bedlam.

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, berry, general mills, lucky charms. 17 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review (x2): Hostess Honey Bun Cereal & Hostess Powdered Donettes Cereal

To me, snack cakes are near-sacred totems. Arcane talismans that exude nostalgic simplicity and forbidden sweetness so concentrated that it can be hard to process for an adult stomach.

Ironic, since they’re so processed.

In more innocent times I gobbled Twinkies and Zebra Cakes with reckless abandon—I notoriously once went so far as to fit a whole Ho-Ho in my mouth on a self-administered dare. But now I merely visit them, usually in the convenience stores I consider their most fitting temples, gazing upon how impressively unchanged they are in a more health-conscious world that’s largely moved on without them.

So while I rarely partake in glazed glee any more, I’m excited that Hostess has teamed up with Post to turn two of its standout snacks into chibi cereal cakes. Granted, neither Honey Bun Cereal nor Powdered Donettes Cereal seem like obvious choices for the brand, but in a way, I’m glad: throwing chocolate and vanilla rings in a bag with marshmallows and calling ’em Cupcakes & Twinkies would’ve been too easy.

Geometric precedents aside, let’s return to the world of swirled cereal buns and curvaceous donuts. Dare me to shove a whole box in my mouth?

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Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 10 rating, 9 rating, donut, honey, post. 11 Comments