Category Archives: Reviews

Review: CLIF Cereals (x4!)

New Clif Bar Cereal Review

What’s your number?

No, I’m not asking for your phone digits, height & weight, or preferred prophetic angel number. Rather, what’s the most you’d be willing to pay for a new cereal? Depending on where you live, your typical breakfast boxful probably costs around $3-$4, or a little more for a family-sized brick of the stuff. Tipping the scales on the other end are indie/healthy cereals like Three Wishes and luxury products like Morning Summit, which seems to use its premium price point solely to earn PR—not unlike that silly I Am Rich app from the early iOS days.

Falling somewhere between average and exorbitant are premium cereals like LaraBar Cereal, KIND Bar Cereal, and now, yes, even CLIF Bar Cereals. I’m sure it’s only coincidence that trying all these bar-inspired cereals will cost you a veritable gold bar, but regardless, since they each cost about $7 a box, this is a morning investment worth researching first.

Thankfully, CLIF was kind enough to send me each of their four new cereal flavors, so I can tell you whether the steep price point is worth the sojourn. In other words, does the view justify the climb? Allow me to stake in my spoon and find out. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Review: New Cap’n Crunch Treats

New cereal pickings are getting slim here at Cerealously HQ. Guess I better go grocery aisle huntin’. Be back soon!

 

Review: Cocoa Puffs Oatmeal

New Cocoa Puffs Oatmeal Review Box

Extra, extra, cold cereal-flavored hot cereal! Get your cold cereal-flavored hot cereal here! Hot off the cold milk-inspired presses!

Sorry, I just think it’s really funny that oatmeal, despite being a hot cereal by definition, rarely gets treated like one. Sure, I’m partially to blame, since I rarely review oatmeal despite considering it part of my blog’s oeuvre. Why is that? Well, partly because new oatmeals don’t often generate enough buzz or PR for me to notice them, partly because oatmeal is miserably hard to photograph in an attractive light, and partly, honestly, because I tend to be really bad at making it without the whole bowl getting runnier than an Oregon Trail marathon.

That said, General Mills’ new line of oatmeals inspired by some of their most iconic cereals is far too exciting to ignore. Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs are all getting the hot mush treatment, but so far I’ve only been able to try the last of these. So for now, sit back as I go spoon deep in Sonny’s finest bowl of sweetly swollen oats. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Reviews: Team Cheerios, Kellogg’s Mashups, & Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Churros

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I couldn’t think of nearly that many to say about these three new, but mostly predictable, cereals.

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolate Caramel Crunch

New Cap'n Crunch's Chocolate Caramel Crunch Review - Cereal Box

See this?

*gestures vaguely at each pixel of my blog*

Everything your backlit screen touches is his.

Cap’n Crunch’s, that is.

Sure, Cerealously was inspired by my lifelong love of breakfast cereal, but no other figure encapsulates the imaginative id of cereal culture quite like Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch. Maybe it’s because—unlike General Mills and Kellogg’s who have entire cinematic universes of familiar, oft-interacting mascots and the cereals they hawk—Quaker really only has the Cap’n’s self-contained, yet expansive, milky mythology (Life and the like don’t count to me because they aren’t character fronted, but full due respect to the based grain that is Quaker Oatmeal Squares).

Kooky characters like Wilma the Winsome White Whale, Chockle the Blob, and Crunch Berry Beast aside, Cap’n Crunch has also debuted an impressive arsenal of epic flavors across his many decades in the biz that’ve helped fuel his nostalgic legacy. You’ve got Oops! All Berries, sure—arguably the single most iconic definition of a hallucinogenically artificial cereal flavor—but I could go on and on honoring the Cap’ns service to tastebuds everywhere, from Choco Donuts and Sprinkled Donuts to Punch Crunch and my personal favorite, Orange Creampop Crunch.

Long history short, other cereals are appetizing, but only one is Crunchatizing, so I’m always excited to taste the Cap’n’s latest. But is Chocolate Caramel Crunch his greatest? Let’s break-fast it down. Continue reading

Review: New Fruity Pop-Tarts (Peach Cobbler, Banana Creme Pie & Lemon Creme Pie!)

New Peach Cobbler, Banana Creme Pie, and Lemon Creme Pie Pop-Tart Boxes

Picture it: somewhere, just at the fringes of your imagination, in the middling space between reality and the dreamworld, lies a shimmering castle made from pastry crust. And it is in this prismatic palace—where the lucid may not set foot, lest they wish to be toasted into this kingdom’s very foundations—that a great and powerful sorcerer distills the divine will of some great cosmic breakfast entity into new Pop-Tart flavors.

I mean, sure, it sounds farfetched, but how else do you explain the sheer lunacy of all these new Pop-Tarts?

Pshh, like some buttoned-up bozos in a boardroom could dream up Banana Creme Pie Pop-Tarts. Don’t make me laugh. We all know the toaster pastries I’m about to try stem from just three of Frosted Lord Convectia’s many holy appendages.

Now, allow me to pay Him his due respects, by gorging myself on a bacchanal buffet of processed fruit rectangles. Continue reading

Review: Lucky Charms Marshmallow Clusters

New Lucky Charms Marshmallow Clusters Review Box

There are at least two-dozen frowning emojis, but even all twenty-four of ’em wallowing at once wouldn’t be enough to express my grave displeasure with Lucky Charms Marshmallow Clusters cereal. This is a disappointment two years in the making, and despite my usually charitable attitude toward reviewing cereals, I’m fully prepared to tear into this cereal with the unrestrained vigor of a three-drinks-deep Comedy Central Roastmaster.

Yeah, you heard me: no more Mr. Rice Guy.

Because that’s the core problem with these Lucky Charms, after all. “Lucky Charms Crispy Rice Clusters” was first rumored in 2019, and it seemed like an auspicious rainbow sent from above. See, not long before this 2019 leak, Kellogg’s changed the recipe for Rice Krispies Treats Cereal from its beloved crispy rice clusters into a sad facsimile of Frosted Krispies and marbits. Lucky Charms Crispy Rice Clusters appeared to restore this lost glory, but sometime during the two years that followed, this shooting star of hope fizzled into a star-crossed flub.

What was once a clustered-rice cereal concept has debuted as the bizarre mishmash of puffed corn and rice I’m reviewing today. With its tragic origin story out of the way, it’s time for me to dissect Lucky Charms Marshmallow Clusters with a particularly pointed spoon. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Review: Apple Cinnamon Chex & Galactic Lucky Charms

Still breaking down my breakfast backlog!