Category Archives: Specials

News: Malt-O-Meal Peanut Butter Cookie Bites is Coming Soon!

So Post, a Nutter Butter, and a hacksaw walk into a bakery…

No joke: Malt-O-Meal’s latest upcoming cereal circles look like bisected pieces of their parent company Post’s delightful 2017 Nutter Butter Cereal. And I’m all here for it.

Peanut Butter Cookies Bites was announced in typical fashion by M-O-M. By which I mean it appeared on their website with absolutely no warning or fanfare, left to be stumbled upon like a corporate Banksy piece commenting on PR hype cycles. I only found out about it with the continued help of @miss_tortellini on Instagram.

Yet the real reason I’m excited for PBCB is more than just their heritage as a legumically mutated cookie child of Chocolatey Chip Cookie Bites. More so, it’s the pragmatic potential of this cereal if it really ends up tasting just like Nutter Butter Cereal (which I’m considering a preemptive fact, solely to validate my already-sent-to-print Cereal Biology textbooks depicting these two cereals as different stages of PB mitosis).

Because where Nutter Butter Cereal had a serious spoon real estate problem, what with their big ol’ double waffles of goodness and all, I’m hoping these cookies are small enough to fit an average Christmas party treat tables’ worth of cereal in each bite.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: malt-o-meal, peanut butter, spooned & spotted. Leave a comment

Dec. ’18

Spooned & Spotted: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch

If you or a loved one has been affected by Holiday Creep, you may be entitled to flavorful compensation.

It’s an epidemic that’s only getting worse: the aggressive expediting of seasonal products to store shelves, way ahead of their culturally accepted timeframe of appearance. Can you imagine if Punxsutawney Phil popped up just before December to tell us there’d still be 21 weeks of winter?

We’d be having spiteful groundhog fillets for Thanksgiving dinner!

Despite this, we tend to make exceptions for snack foods. Because as much as we hate to think about finding Valentine’s Day dates before 2019 has even gotten the chance to mess up our paper dating habits, chocolate and strawberry is a pretty irresistible flavor combo.

That’s why I can’t be too upset that Cap’n Crunch’s latest romantic advances have already been spotted at Target. Thomas M. sent in this photo of Chocolatey Berry Crunch, an upcoming cereal that combines the familiar taste of (now discontinued) Chocolatey Crunch with red Crunch Berries. I’m just going to assume the Berries are the atomically ambiguous tropical cherry(ish) we’re used to, and not a special strawberry blend, but I hope to be surprised nevertheless.

Because this mix opens up the very real possibility of a PB&J Crunch, set to celebrate Back to School 2019…probably some time around March.

Thanks again to Thomas for the photo. If you spot an interesting cereal find, you can share the good news here, or on Twitter.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. 3 Comments

Dec. ’18

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from Cerealously!

Merry XII/XXV! I hope you unwrapped a fully milked bowl of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch.

Oh, is that just my tradition? Better not tell you what’s leaking from your stocking.

Yule drippings aside, I hope you have a warm and sweet day worth savoring. In the spirit of mirth, I want to extend the thanks that I owe all of you (for enduring my paragraph-length sentences) to another, behind-the-scenes Cerealously supporter, as well.

Who is this shimmering stalwart? Well, just look at the photo above, and allow me to explain:

Ripley the squiggled cardboard,

annoys me just a little bit.

Cause if you ever see him,

he’s probably stuck in my carpet.

~~~

All the cereal companies,

Love to pack samples with him

They seem to think ‘Why not give

bloggers just enough to swim?’

~~~

Then one scrap-less Christmas Eve,

dan g. came to say,

‘Ripley with your twists so light,

won’t you stuff my gifts tonight?’

~~~

Then all the mailmen loved him,

and delivered with a bow,

Ripley the squiggled cardboard,

You’re another carpet’s problem now!

See you all soon, with a flexible New Year’s Resolution’s worth of exciting new cereals to get slung in my mouth and squiggles to get stuck to my foot.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Leave a comment

Dec. ’18

Spooned & Spotted: Snickerdoodle Koo-Kies! Cereal

Consider this a gentle warning: no matter how much you like digging into a bowl of cinnamon sweetness, don’t bother digging deep into its origins.

Because as I’ve learned, you risk getting tangled in the strings of a merry marionette show starring corporate puppet brands, shrouded timelines, and eye-dehydrating confusion.

It all started when the above photo of Limited Edition Snickerdoodle Koo-Kies, produced by Bay Valley Foods, was tweeted to me by reader Fabo. It instantly caught my curiosity, and not just because of the bizarrely lifeless and questionably adorned box art (why does the penguin need a speech bubble and quotation marks to Regurgitate His Vapid Claim?).

See, those with a larger-than-penguin-sized memory will doubtlessly wonder how, why, and how dare this cereal exists when Millville and Aldi have already been making big headlines and waistlines with their Snickerdoodle Kookies cereal. Surely this doppelgänger, with its unheimlich hyphenation, must be about as authentic as a mall Santa, right?

Not content with all these questions, and particularly dissatisfied that I likely won’t get to try these Koo…pause for emphasis…Kies myself (they were found in a Pennsylvania Giant Foods), I took my journalistic wagon to the information super highway. Because if I can’t taste Snickerdoodle Koo-Kies, you’d better believe I’m still going to understand its genetic genesis.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: millville, post, spooned & spotted. 3 Comments

Nov. ’18

Spooned & Spotted: Jewel Signature Select Hot Cocoa O’s

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqqSiqyA3AP/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1vtajq7hl3p8e

You know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of fattening.

Wait, did I get that right?

Maybe I’ve got too many sugary snacks on the brain, but after seeing @dadbodsnacks‘ latest delectable discovery, Jewel’s Signature Select Hot Cocoa O’s, I can’t help but conspiracy-theorize that these really are just Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s rebranded, as they look exactly the same, right down the chubby chiclet marshmallows.

After all, it wouldn’t even be the first case of store-branded Christmastime cereal counterfeiting we’ve seen this week. Much like how on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog, in the cereal aisle, no one truly knows if you stole your idea from a Wolf or any other average Joe.

Whether or not these Hot Cocoa O’s were birthed from T. Joe’s family jewels may never be disclosed—and since there’s no Jewel store near me, I likely won’t be able to do a direct Joe-xtaposition.

Not that I would particularly want to anyway, as those who keep up on Cerealously’s power rankings will remember I thought TJ’s Hot Cocoa O’s, with their gummy texture and weirdly chewy marbits, is probably the worst holiday cereal in recent memory. The veritable coal or Krampus of the breakfast world, it’s the direct antithesis of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch.

And I suggest keeping the two far, far apart, lest we accidentally kick off some sort of artificially flavored armageddon.

So happy holidays from a distance, Jewel & Joe: I never thought I’d say this, but just send me fruit cake instead.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: holiday. 3 Comments

Nov. ’18

Spooned & Spotted: Millville Snickerdoodle Kookies Cereal

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqidYRmlsQl/

What if the Vatican City was the first country to reach the moon?

What if RC Cola proudly flowed through every soda fountain in the world?

What if Jitterbug beat Apple to the iPhone?

It’s hard to imagine the smallest underdogs in a given industry toppling the giants in terms of originality or innovation. But with the latest new holiday cereal to hit shelves, we might just see Christmas Crunch, Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, and its fellow kings of the snow hill ho-ho-hoisted from their flaky ivory towers.

Well, maybe.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: holiday. 2 Comments

Nov. ’18

The Empty Bowl Episode 5: A Different Kind of Monster Cereal

Happy Thanksgiving!

What better holiday to listen to a relaxing cereal podcast than the one dedicated to filling every gastrointestinal crevasse with carbs and assorted birds before torpedoing into the couch ’til the leftover green bean casserole beckons us to start the cycle anew?

If you’re ready for some post-stuffing cereal stuff, stuff your ears with the latest episode of The Empty Bowl! On this show, my ever-tranquil co-host Justin and I turkey trot through all of this fall’s winter-wishlist-length cereal news stories, ponder the construction of Cocoa Puffs with Marshmallows, and do a nostalgic throwback to some of our favorite dearly departed and discontinued cereals.

While you wait for the tryptophan to kick in, you can support and subscribe to the show here, and follow T.E.B. on Twitter here. Every retweet and cent is deeply appreciated, so our cereal mantras can echo farther across the Cocoa Puff-shaped globe.

Speaking of gratitude, I’m so thankful for everyone who reads this site, listens to our podcast, or interacts with Cerealously on social media. I’ve said it countless times, but the warm reception each article and episode gets is what keeps me doing this. So eat an extra dinner roll or bowl of Thanksgivingish cereal for me, and to paraphrase Justin:

Don’t forget to drink the gravy.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: empty bowl. 1 Comment

Nov. ’18

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch

There are a lot of things that separate a good cereal from a great cereal: unique flavor, creative theming, brand evolution. But there’s only one thing that separates great cereals and legendary cereals—you know, the kind of breakfast fare you need a Master Bowl to catch.

And that’s accessibility.

Yes, while you’d expect to only encounter legendary cereals on the secluded shores of the Whirl Islands, true morning myths know no borders. They aim for deliciousness for all, and now Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is joining that wanderlusting pantheon.

Once considered extinct, the Toast Crunch family member I’ve called “the greatest seasonal cereal of all time” has returned this season with full confidence and Canadian citizenship. Spotted by Junk Food Jeff (thanks Jeff!) alongside General Mills’ other, less exciting holiday 2018 release, Canadian Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch boasts exclusive box art, too.

This bluer and more frigid design seems to harken back to the cereal’s original, 2014 art, but now one of the squares wears a pair of floating mittens, frighteningly suggesting rapid mutation and evolution in the Toast Crunch species.

So enjoy Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch while you can, Canadian neighbors, because if this cereal keeps growing new limbs, it might be humankind that’s Limited Edition.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: canada, spooned & spotted, toast crunch. 4 Comments