Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts

Halloween is about the little things.

Ask any full-blooded (or at least fake-blood-slathered) Halloween lover, and I’m sure most will agree. While haunted houses, parties, and handing out candy on The Big XXXI Day itself are the holiday’s main events, savoring little spooky moments is the key to feeling merrily macabre from the start of back-to-school season ’til the end of back-to-the-cardboard-box-ghouls-in my basement season.

These bite-sized boos can be anything—or anywhere. Glimpsing a well-loved plastic goblin in a thrift store. Marathoning all the Halloween movies and spending the next week fearing any mention of William Shatner. Camping out in a Spirit Halloween with an industrial carton of Whoppers and flipping through old Goosebumps books until the staff gets scared of you.

Or maybe it’s just eating one (or thirty one) of Kellogg’s “new” Halloween Chocolate Fudge Printed Fun Pop-Tarts. It’s long been a Pop-Tartian tradition to adorn their Chocolate Fudge flavor with full Hallo-regalia (why Chocolate Fudge, I don’t know—maybe because it’s pretty much a king-sized candy bar that’s socially acceptable to eat for breakfast?), but previous years have only seen this ghost-er pastry wearing orange frosting and crunchy sprinkle shapes.

But now Kellogg’s has beautifully spurned their sprinkled tradition in favor of something somehow even better: printed scary shapes on every neon orange-blasted, baked fudge rectangle! Drink that box art in for a minute while I grab the plates, glasses of milk, and altars to worship that top cartoon ghost at.

He looks like a spectral Pikachu tail. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, halloween, kelloggs, non cereal, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Quaker Corn Crunch Cereal

There are some cereals you’d never expect to have a cult following. Honeycomb and Alpha-Bits are good examples. They’re classics sure, but unlike Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s sect of cinnamon sugar swirlers or Cap’n Crunch’s church of masochistic roof-of-mouth manglers, you never really hear people say Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits are their favorite cereals.

That is, until Post changes those cereals’ formulas, and I get gobsmacked by hundreds of torched and pitchforked comments from angry breakfast lovers blaming me for ruining their childhood memories.

Sorry, Bertha from North Dakota. I swear I just make dumb cereal jokes, not actual cereal.

Honeycomb rants aside, another cereal with a shockingly devoted fandom is Quaker’s Corn Bran Crunch. As one of those closet Corn Bran Crunch geeks, I wrote up a glowing tribute review to the stuff a while back, and the article’s popularity revealed that many share my niche passion for fibrous corn cuboids.

As comments kept rolling in, my fellow quirky Quaker-ers kept me posted on a developing narrative for our beloved Corn Bran Crunch. Tragically, the stuff disappeared for a while, and inquiring fans were told that a production error had put Corn Bran Crunch had put the cereal on hiatus.

But then it returned, and after the initial glorious hysteria wore off, something was very clearly different. The Bran had ran away somewhere down the line, leaving behind Corn Crunch, which, despite its alliterative name, allegedly tasted far different.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, quaker. 9 Comments

Aug. ’17

Review: International Delight Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Creamer

If you’re like me, coffee is as much a cornerstone of every balanced breakfast as a bowl of cereal—and the two pair perfectly like yin and yang. Seriously: just picture a yin yang, with one half being coffee with a dab of cream and the other being milk with a single Cocoa Puff.

My love affair with bitter coffee and sweet cereal is pervasive, so much so that I couldn’t resist reviewing a buzz-worthy new coffee product that brings all the whimsical childhood spirit of a breakfast cereal into the comparatively adult territory of caffeinated beverage flavor-enhancing agents: International Delight’s new Reese’s Cup Coffee Creamer.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not reviewing an overtly cereal-related product on this blog—though I promise this post will end in me pouring the stuff on cereal—but I’ve been meaning to branch my content topics into other breakfast staples, too. If you hate this idea, let me know in the comments. Or if you love this idea and want me to tackle Eggo waffles, scrambled eggs, or scrambled egg-stuffed Eggo waffles next, let me know that, too.

But while you gather your spoons and pitchforks, let’s revel in some socially acceptable liquid candy! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, non cereal, peanut butter. 7 Comments

Aug. ’17

Review: Quaker Multigrain Flakes Cereal – Honey Vanilla

Can you feel it, fellow breakfast clubbers?

We’re at the epicenter of a Quakerquake.

Much like the seismic phenomenon from which it draws its name, a Quakerquake is a tough to predict event that really shakes up the norm. It occurs when Quaker, on a whim, decides to release an onslaught of new products—often of shaky quality—to flood the breakfast aisle with various tan boxes that look identical to the company’s other thousand oatmeal receptacles. This is why aftershocks of a Quakerquake will often be felt months later: they leave the “NEW” label on their flavors so long, you won’t know whether the antioxidant-rich. steel-cut. all-natural apple cinnamon oatmeal came before or after the gluten-free, sugar-free, enjoyment-free apple cinnamon.

I guess with babies (and suckers) born every day, oatmeal is always bound to be new to someone.

Long story short, these new Quaker Honey Vanilla Multigrain Flakes are from the cereal arm of Quaker’s latest a-Quake-ening. It debuts alongside Cranberry Apple Multigrain Flakes and Oats & Honey with Vanilla & Pecan Granola. I chose to review this one first, because even though Cran-Apple is more autumnal, last week’s Shredded Wheat burnt me out on fruit, while the granola simply has too many ampersands to be trusted.

Plus, granola is barely cereal anyway. It’s like that weird cousin who ate gravel in kindergarten. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, honey, quaker, vanilla. 7 Comments

Aug. ’17

Review: Frosted Mixed Berry Shredded Wheat Cereal

Well, well, well: here we are again, Shredded Wheat.

My first experience with one of Shredded Wheat’s new trilogy of flavors, which not-so-subtly tries top compete with Frosted Mini-Wheats by, well, frosting the brand’s iconic miniature wheat biscuits and stuffing (allegedly) flavorful stuff inside, was cosmically bland. I swore I wouldn’t try another flavor. I started smashing all square and/or thatched things in my apparent. I even told people I was allergic to wheat—just the sight of it, not the taste.

But after being coerced by a trusted source to give this Mixed Berry variety a try, and after (unsurprisingly) failing to find Count Chocula when it’s still hot enough out to boil swimming pools into holy water, I find myself staring at a bowlful of vaguely mauve biscuits.

Alright, Shredded Wheat. Let’s do this. Just don’t forget: bore me once, shame on you. Bore me twice, I’m going to start crank-calling the National Wheat Foundation out of juvenile spite. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, blueberry, post, raspberry, shredded wheat, strawberry. 4 Comments

Aug. ’17

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites

Before eating Generals Mills’ new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites, you are required—by intergalactic law, I’m assuming—to listen to Yello’s ’80s hit “Oh Yeah” and mentally replace all instances of the words “Ohhh yeahhh” with “Doughhh yeahhh.” Only then may these goo-oozing (goozing for short) Cinnamon Toast Crunch-specked doughnut holes roll off your plate and directly onto your taste buds.

Okay fine, if you have poor wi-fi or are enjoying your Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites from a submarine, the Parisian Catacombs, or a coffin you were prematurely placed in—alongside your favorite microwave—I’ll give you the pass on the song. But since these microwaveable freezer aisle treats are one of the season’s most hyped-up cereal confections, they deserve some sort of ceremony.

So while you arrange the cinnamon scented candles into a doughnut shape with an effigy of Dunkin’ Donuts’ Fred the Baker in the middle, I’ll ceremoniously devour mine. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, cinnamon, general mills, non cereal, toast crunch. 1 Comment

Aug. ’17

Review: Trader Joe’s Organic Purple Maize Flakes

Ha, purple corn? Yeah, right.

What’s next? Purple carrots? Purple Doritos? Purple ketchup? That’ll be the day!

Oh, what’s that? You say all four of those things have existed before? Deep down, I knew it all along. After all, I was (and pretty much still am) that weirdo kid who would’ve happily dipped his purple Doritos in purple ketchup had the two existed concurrently.

(Staggering the releases of Heinz EZ Squirt and Doritos Rainbows by a decade and a half must’ve been a deliberate move by the junk food deities made for our protection.)

And it’s because I am such an oddball snack-loving goofball that I’m excited to try Trader Joe’s newest cereal: Organic Purple Maize Flakes. And it’s because I love the color purple so much that it took me until I got home from Trader Joe’s to realize the Hendrixian pun in this product’s name—I spent the entire car ride with visions of Grimace and Oprah all in my brain. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, trader joe's. 17 Comments

Jul. ’17

Review: Quaker Overnight Oats – Toasted Coconut & Almond Crunch

Is it just me, or has the humble coconut been having a quietly nutty couple years in the breakfast aisle?

Before 2016, we rarely saw the milk-stuffed tropical sphere appear at breakfast time—unless we watched Monty Python’s Holy Grail while eating our Saturday morning munchies—but now it seems like every Girl Scout, superfood, and massive anthropomorphized consonant is paying homage to the fruit with translucent slivers of coconutty love. I can’t say for certain just why there’s been a coconut resurgence. Perhaps it’s piggybacking off the coconut oil fad, but I like to believe it’s because Super Mario Sunshine’s 15th anniversary is next month.

Regardless, it unfortunately doesn’t feel like any recent coconut breakfast food really nails the coconut experience—Nature’s Path’s latest Love Crunch flavor comes closest, but even then, the dark chocolate is the star of the show.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh, since this is his introduction to a Toasted Coconut & Almond Crunch Overnight Oats review, that must mean this new Quaker product finally breaks the ‘weak coconut streak’ like a cracked coconut over a marooned cartoon islander’s head!”

Wrong. Sorry to break the bad news, like a cracked coconut broken over a…you know…but this second flavor of Quaker Overnight Oats I’ve tried (after the borderline heavenly Raisin Walnut & Honey Heaven) doesn’t get coconut right, either. But what it does get right is that other nut in its name. Boy, does it ever. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, almond, coconut, non cereal, oatmeal, quaker. 4 Comments