Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Monster Mash Cereal

New Monster Mash Cereal Review – Box

For fifty years now, the General Mills Monster Cereals have been harbingers of Halloweentime. When they start popping up on shelves around late-August, a vortex of orange and black seems to seems to swirl outwardly around them. July 4th fireworks become Pop Rocks, watermelons become pumpkins, campfire roasters become big plastic devil pitchforks, and you can feel a palpable chill in the air—probably from Target turning up the AC because, y’know, it’s August, but still.

One might even call the Monsters the Five Horsemen of the Halloween Season, though I’m not sure how I’d assign them apocalyptic analogues. Chocula is definitely Conquest, since he’s the ringleader. Towering powerhouse Franken Berry feels built for War, while Boo Berry is Death because ohhh, you know how ghosts are. I guess we can say Frute Brute is Famine, since he’s the biggest cult favorite fans have hungered for, while Yummy Mummy represents Pestilence in the form of some ancient Egyptian plague unleashed when someone drank sarcophagus juice like it was Ghoul-Aid.

Anyway, now that we’ve picked a group Halloween costume for this crunchy quintet, let’s talk about their 50th anniversary mega-cereal: Monster Mash. Hotly anticipated for months now—I swear, people get more excited about Monster Cereals than 1,031 new Toast Crunches—Monster Mash Cereal, debuting on store shelves everywhere this month, brings all five Monsters together in one box, for the first time. But on a scale of “eerie sight” to “graveyard smash,” just how good is it? Well allow me to grab my finest aged sarcophagus milk and find out. Continue reading

Review: Fruity Cereal Kit-Kat Bars

Fruity Cereal Kit-Kat Review - Wrapper

Aw, Fruity Cereal Kit-Kats? Gimme a break…

…fast! Because my sheer carnal desire to fangoriously devour more of these rosy rectangular prisms will require a total break from adult responsibility—nay, from reality altogether. Before even getting into it, yes: Fruity Cereal Kit-Kats are really good. I finally found them at Walmart, sold by the phat stack:

Sadly, these aren’t literal yard-stick length Kit-Kats, but are instead 12 snack-sized Fruity Cereal Kit-Kats lined up. Drat, right? Now when buying these there’s more impetus to share your bite-sized booty instead of just wielding one like a Kit-Kutlass.

But aye—I say, as this sudden spirit of swashbuckling similes washes over me—I shall delay this review no longer: it’s time to tell you why Fruity Cereal Kit-Kats have me hooked. Continue reading

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