Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Bear Naked Sweet Honey Clusters Cereal

Bears love honey, right?

That explains why Bear Naked, a granola brand, has released an inaugural breakfast cereal stuffed with flakes, oat clusters, Winnie the Pooh’s favorite sticky golden elixir of life.

But wait: this new Bear Naked Cereal line also includes Toasted Coconut Clusters and Chocolate Almond Clusters. I’m no zoologist—let alone a grizzlogist—but I don’t think animals in the Ursidae family are known for raiding palm trees or Swiss chocolatiers.

Bamboo Clusters I could understand. Alaskan Salmon Clusters? Sure. But Bear Naked’s gonna have to make a compelling case for these cereals’ accuracy to their source material.

But let’s start with the logical one, shall we? As the buzziest of the three, Sweet Honey Clusters will be the gatekeeper that determines whether I’ll buy the other two—because at roughly $3.99 a box, these bunches cost bunches. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, bear naked, honey. 3 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Despicable Me Cereal with Minion Marshmallows

With my right hand raised, I, Dan G. of Cerealously, vow to complete this review of Kellogg’s new Despicable Me Cereal without voicing any of my personal opinions about Minions, the Minion phenomenon, or the fact that Minions somehow still overpopulate my Facebook feed with sassy memes in the year 2017.

There, now that the hard part’s over, I can evaluate this cereal objectively. At first glance—once you get past those moon-sized, staring eyes—Despicable Me Cereal appears to be the latest square-shaped, marshmallow-stuffed entry in Kellogg’s cinematic cereal franchise, an anthology that includes Finding Dory Cereal, Captain America Civil War Cereal, and several others with identical flavors but laughably different source materials.

But look, look closer with your special, telescopic Minion eyes, and you’ll see that Despicable Me Cereal is actually Brown Sugar Vanilla-flavored! I feel like we need to celebrate this trend-bucking mix-up of Kellogg’s repetitive movie cereal formula.

Anyone down for a Return of the Jedi-style party with Ewoks, bonfires, and the grinning blue ghosts of several force-sensitive mentors? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, kelloggs, marshmallows, movie cereals. 3 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Apple Strawberry Raisin Bran Crunch Cereal

Leave it to Raisin Bran Crunch to bring two of America’s most contentious summer pie flavors together.

Seriously: apple pie and strawberry pie’s rivalry is the warm weather equivalent of pumpkin vs. pecan, and I bet this bitter—yet so sweet—feud is the reason we don’t see apple and strawberry flavors mix very often. I don’t know what apple did to strawberry to evoke decades of estrangement, but I can only assume it involved a pie to the face. And maybe a few clowns.

But now, thanks to the unifying power of Raisin Bran’s radiant sun, we can finally experience apple and strawberry in tandem without having to sandwich together two slices of Grandma’s Independence Day desserts. Because while it may be delicious, that’s how you end up with a Fourth New Belt Notch of July. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, apple, kelloggs, raisin bran, strawberry. 17 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch Cereal

IHOP, matey!

Whoops, that was weird. I meant to write, “Ahoy, matey!” Sorry about that. Anyway, come on and IHOP aboard my cereal review ship, and we’ll…darn, I did it again! I really must have pancakes on my mind today.

IHOPe it doesn’t happen again.

But really, how can anyone not have pancakes stuck to their brains like syrupy griddlecakes to a plate when Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch cereal is finally here? Sold in boxes taller than Paul Bunyan’s flapjack stacks, Blueberry Pancake Crunch combines fruity aquamarine and maple-flavored creme puffs (no, not that kind of cream puffs, sorry) to re-create a fascinatingly obscure breakfast in cereal form.

Personally, I would have preferred Buckwheat Pancake Crunch, but my pancake house menu choices are decidedly more octogenarian than most.

So while all you kids turn on Matlock for me and get off my darn lawn, I’ll pour a fresh bowl of spherical Johnnycakes. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, cap'n crunch, maple, quaker. 23 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts (DC Comics Villains Edition)

I think I can imagine how the supervillainous plot to release Chocolate Sugar Cookie Pop-Tarts originated:

The Joker paces back-and-forth madly in the abandoned Pop-Tart factory he and Lex Luthor are using as a haphazard base of operations. With a cackle, he has a sudden idea.

“I’ve got it, Lex,” the Joker cries. “We’ll kidnap all the world’s Pop-Tarts and smush them together into otherwise nonsensical taste combinations! Just picture it: Watermelon S’Mores Pop-Tarts. Blueberry Root Beer Pop-Tarts. Cookies & Creme PB&J Pop-Tarts. We’ll flood the streets with a hasty pastry army, causing mass confusion and hysteria!”

“But why?” Lex replies.

The Joker chuckles maniacally: “Some men just want to watch the world yearn…for obscurely flavored, impulsively purchased breakfast treats!”

And thus, Chocolate Sugar Cookies Pop-Tarts were born. This flavor combo isn’t really that strange, but when’s the last time you had an actual chocolate sugar cookie? Maybe my cheeks are too stuffed with gingerbread men during December to notice, but compared to snickerdoodles or fruitcake, chocolate sugar cookies seem more like the shiny Pokémon of holiday dessert platters. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, kelloggs, non cereal, pop-tarts. 4 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: General Mills Girl Scouts Thin Mints Cereal

I’ve always wanted to be a Girl Scout.

No, not because of the cool turquoise sash or the fact that people would call me a “Brownie.” People already called me that growing up, although it was probably because of my fudgy dessert-based diet.

I wanted to be a Girl Scout because I think I would’ve been a darn good cookie salesman. Imagine a young me—cute as a button instead of pudgy and brownie-stuffed—rolling up to your house and telling you in great detail about “the tempting allure of a decadent, dark chocolate moon, so packed with refreshing swirls of cocoa and mint that when you taste it, you won’t know whether you bit the cookie or whether the cookie bit you back with a coy, romantic nibble.” No one would be able to resist that pitch.

But alas, this whole “Y chromosome” thing has kept me out of the baked good-hawking game, while my fear of dirt and complex knots has kept me out of the Boy Scouts. Now I just order tons of Tagalongs and tell the Girl Scouts helpful adjectives they can use to win over the next sap.

Now we’ve come full circle, as my cereal blog full of outlandish flavor descriptions now gets the chance to review General Mills’s new Girl Scouts Thin Mints cereal. As a partnership with the Girl Scouts, General Mills released this cereal alongside the Samoa-flavored Caramel Crunch, choosing to breakfast-ify the Scouts’s two most popular cookies instead of the tragically neglected Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos.

And yes, I’m sure there’s probably one guy out there who’s really, really upset there’s no Trefoil Cereal. One guy.
Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, general mills, girl scouts. 17 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Malt-O-Meal Cookies & Cream Cereal

Oreo O’s are (kind of) back in America! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Wait, you mean that was almost three weeks ago?

Okay: it’s a New Year’s miracle!

Oh, it’s already January 11th?

Uh, fine: it’s a…German Apples Day miracle?

Let’s go with that. Whether it’s trees bearing deutschen apfels or the good people at Malt-O-Meal, someone deserves praise for bringing cream-speckled chocolate rings back to American breakfast aisles. Cookies & Cream obviously isn’t Oreo O’s—it doesn’t even have a jazzy blob mascot with sunglasses and a creamy quiff hairdo—but it should definitely be considered a spiritual successor.

See, Post Foods lost the right to produce Oreo O’s in a confusing business acquisition snafu between Kraft, General Foods, and Dongsuh Foods, leading to the beloved cookie cereal’s 2005 discontinuation in the U.S. But Post also bought Malt-O-Meal last year. And they must’ve still had their old cream-filling infusion machine laying around somewhere gathering dust, because those recognizable, glittering white and brown cocoa rings we all spent large sums of money importing from Korea are now back on native soil.

Okay, I might have been the only one sinking significant funds into trans-Pacific breakfast shipments, but that’s beside the point. What matters is that, after all they’ve been through, Oreo O’s are (pretty much) home free again under a different name. I like to think they’re just in the witness protection program for witnessing whatever top-secret process turns Oreo cookies into pure cereal magic.

I imagine it involves divine intervention and no fewer than a dozen wizards. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, malt-o-meal, oreo o's. 24 Comments

Jan. ’17

Review: Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cinnamon Squares Cereal

Is 2017 poised to be the Year of Cinnamon?

Cinnamon Pebbles hit shelves just as the new year did. Cinnamon Frosted Flakes will be making its full, nationwide debut this month. And now, with the release of these Crunchy Cinnamon Squares, Trader Joe is eyeing the cereal aisle’s “Sugar-Swirled Cinnamon” throne. His cookie butter-colored irises watch deviously as Cinnamon Toast Crunch sits squarely on that very same seat.

“Soon,” he whispers.

But will Trader Joe’s newest cereal be tasty enough to overthrow a 22-year old cinnamon dynasty? The side of its box claims that, “after one bite you may want to eat these Crunchy Cinnamon Squares for every meal,” but the front doesn’t even feature any grandfatherly bakers or cannibalistic quadrilaterals: just the same calm blue color scheme of Andy’s wallpaper in Toy Story. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cinnamon, trader joe's. 12 Comments