Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds Cereal

Is Cinnamon Toast Crunch the new Oreo? The new pumpkin spice? The new sriracha? The new activated almonds?

Yes, like all those hip and trendy flavors (well, minus maybe the almonds: I’m just fascinated by nuts that unlock monkish hidden powers when soaked in water), Cinnamon Toast Crunch seems to be popping up more and more, not just as a cereal, but as a phenomenon. A condiment abstraction, if you will.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites! Cinnamon Toast Crunch Granola Snack! Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shake! Cinnamon Toast Crunch the Flamethrower! Quite frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch branded bread yet, made specifically for use in your Cinnamon Toast Crunch Toast Toaster.

Regardless of how long it takes to reach Cinnamon Toast Singularity, these new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds are here to cinnamon swirl us one step closer. It’s one of two new Blasted Shreds cereals, and it aims to remix boring old shredded wheat biscuits by fire-hosing it with enough flavored powder to build a sweetened sugarcastle. Or perhaps a sugarhospital.

Anyways, let’s carve a new belt notch and carve into a box!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cinnamon, general mills, toast crunch. 16 Comments

Jan. ’18

Review: Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes Cereal

I love crossovers.

Jetsons meet the Flintstones? Great. Scooby-Doo meets the Harlem Globetrotters? Awesome. Peanut butter meets jelly? Bodacious! Two different groups of my friends meet in the same bar and I respond by anxiously escaping to the bathroom? Fantas—wait, wait, no.

Okay, maybe Egon was right and some streams aren’t meant to cross. But that didn’t stop General Mills from capitalizing on Kellogg’s inability to trademark the too-vague term “Frosted Flakes,” pouncing on those two words like an enraged Tony the Tiger on a gazelle and making these Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes.

Seriously, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but this has to be a deliberate move to incite a little friendly cereal competition. I fully expect Kellogg’s to fire back with “Cinnabon Toast Munch” within the month.

But regardless of why General Mills did this, Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes are here. The lion of sugar-coated corn flakes has laid down with the technicolor sugar nugget lamb, and now our dental health’s reckoning must begin. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, general mills, lucky charms, marshmallows. 11 Comments

Jan. ’18

Review: Peanut Butter Chocolate Blasted Shreds Cereal

If you, like me, set a New Year’s Resolution to get fit, but have been set back by leftover pie, half-empty frosting cans, new cereals, and every other sweet treat whose scent lifts me off the ground like a euphoric Looney Tunes character, then I have a solution for you.

Just buy this cereal and tell people you’ve been getting Shredded at the gym every day.

But don’t tell them that you really mean you’ve been eating Peanut Butter Chocolate Blasted Shreds straight from the box in the little nook by the broken cardio machines, snarling at any post-jazzercise grandma unfortunate enough to cross your crumb-strewn path.

Not-so-secret gluttony aside, I’m stoked to review the first of General Mills’ two new Blasted Shreds cereals (the other being Cinnamon Toast Crunch). I’ve heard many good things about Peanut Butter Chocolate, with some ranking it as a last-minute dark horse in their Best Cereals of 2017 list, and others just in awe that the whole bicep-curl-friendly box weighs over a pound.

So whether you’re bench pressing the box or just doing some spoon-to-mouth deadlifts, let’s all get absolutely Shredded together. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, general mills, peanut butter. 23 Comments

Jan. ’18

Review: Kashi Cinnamon French Toast

Let’s raise a toast to 2018: a bowl of Kashi’s new Cinnamon French Toast Cereal, to be more specific.

Yes, I figured this warm ‘n’ cozy-sounding, breakfast-within-a-breakfast cereal would be a fitting first review for the year of MMXVII for two reasons: one, it’s pretty darn healthy and New Year’s friendly, at 90 calories per 3/4 cup serving with 5 grams of fiber for “spring cleaning,” and just 6 grams of sugar.

Yep, you read that right: Cinnamon French Toast barely out-sweetens Wheat Chex, a cereal I’m pretty sure can double as soy bean fertilizer.

Oh, and the second reason? Because Kashi’s bulging little toasts here adopt a “new year, new me” philosophy to deliciously remix a bunch of other cereal flavors you’ve probably already tried and shamefully binged a whole box of during while binge-watching The Office for so long that Netflix skipped asking if you were there and just asked, “Are you still okay?” Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, cinnamon, kashi, maple. 9 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats

Happy birthday, Jesus! I baked you a cake!

Well, okay, no I didn’t. I barely have enough culinary talent to make Chex Mix without my kitchen turning into an inferno of exploding pretzel kindling. I’m sure you could bake your own cake easily enough anyway—you won’t even need yeast, since you know so much about rising again.

But I did get you these new Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats, which are studded with fun rainbow sprinkles and all kinds of icing. I know loaves and fishes are more your thing, but hey: I think I’ve got some Wonder Bread and Parmesan Goldfish in the back.

So regardless of whether you reading this celebrate Christmas or not, let’s break out the wine and Krispies Treats and have a holly jolly day. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, birthday cake, kelloggs, non cereal, rice krispies. 1 Comment

Dec. ’17

Review: Cookies ‘N’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats

It’s about time those backstabbing cookies held up their end of the bargain.

See, during a publicized black market trade deal back in 2014, Snap, Crackle, and Pop sold off their DNA to Nabisco, so those cookie-smiths could craft their groundbreaking Marshmallow Crispy Oreos. But the trio of pixies only did it on one condition: in return, Nabisco would have to send over strands of unadulterated sandwich cookie DNA, so Kellogg’s could make an Oreo Rice Krispies Treat.

But they never did. Ever wonder why Nabisco so conveniently moved production operations to Mexico shortly after? It was to avoid a crackling vendetta.

But their relentless mascot mafia, with the help of the Keebler Elf yakuza, finally tracked down the Oreo formula they sought, and now we have these new Cookies ‘N’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats. It’s been a long snack snafu*, and many were left sleeping with the Flavor-Blasted Goldfish, but now I can finally stop painstakingly mixing my Rice Krispies and Oreo O’s.

*Note, none of the above is true, but it would make a killer graphic novel, wouldn’t it? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, chocolate, kelloggs, non cereal, oreo, rice krispies. 2 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Nutter Butter Cereal from Post

“What’s the best peanut butter cereal?” is perhaps one of breakfast’s most divisive questions—right up there with “is cereal a soup?”

(No, it’s not: soup is a concept, not a thing defined by its components. Please stop asking me.)

There are many who ardently support Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch. There are others who swear by Reese’s Puffs or new Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios (or at least, 50% of them). Some weirdos (like me) prefer the salted intricacies of Peanut Butter Puffins. And there are still others (me again) who desperately long for the return of JIF Cereal, going so far as to rally a posse of choosy moms to voice their cause.

But while peanut butter cereal has long been a small, yet hotly contested category, there’s a new contender in town, one with a long legacy of peanut butter snack cookie domination.

Yes, Nutter Butter Cereal is real, and it is debuting alongside Chips Ahoy! cereal to close a trilogy of “cerealized grade school cafeteria treat your mom used to carefully ration out in Ziploc bags, like seriously Ma, only two?”, a divine cereal lineage pioneered by the great creator: Oreo O’s.

Nutter Butter cookies have always been an aggressively peanut buttery cookie to me. So I’m not saying I want this cereal to gum my tongue to the roof of my mouth like tasty rubber cement, but if I’m left smacking my lips like a confused dog, I wouldn’t be upset. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, peanut butter, post. 25 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s

Joe, Joe, Joe! Merry Christmas!

I know, I know, it’s crazy: even after a devilishly creative line like that, Trader Joe’s corporate still won’t hire me to write their Fearless Flyer. Well buckle, up, Josè, Joey, and Joseph, because your nativity-era copywriting ain’t getting any better than that!

In fact, I ‘d like to try writing a Fearless Flyer entry for the store’s newest cereal, Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s, before diving into the review. Let me just clear my keyboard—*ahem*:

It’s all fun and reindeer games until someone skips breakfast. So click-click-click on over to the cereal aisle to kick-kick-kick-off a merry day of snowball fighting and cookie dough munching in true winter style, as we turned a classic Yuletide flavor into a box of ho ho hoops and marshmallows. It narrowly beat out our second idea: Fruitcake-Frosted Coal Flakes.

Not bad, eh? Hopefully we can say the same for the cereal. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, chocolate, holiday, trader joe's. 8 Comments