Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If by chance you need something to float in your green beer—or at least something hearty and oaty enough to absorb out of your green-gilled gut later—you can catch a box of Lucky Charms’ storied St. Paddy’s Day stuff in both plain ol’ oat and sweet chocolate corn varieties.

Once filled only with two-toned green shamrock marshmallows, Lucky’s bowl o’ merriment has added twinkling pots of gold, as well—a good colorful addition, though I’d love to see the exiled hourglass marshmallow make a yearly prodigal return instead.

All that said, this year’s Leprechaun Trap concept, which has been appearing on every Lucky Charms variety, doesn’t really target my age demographic. Let’s hope we can see gradual innovation year by year on this concept, so in about a decade’s time we can have Mint Lucky Charms Shamrocks that turn your milk into Bailey’s.

Has the Cap’n gone loopy again?

It’s a rare case when the nautical breakfast-slinger ditches his traditional treasure chests for rounder doubloons, and when he does, it almost unanimously involves his seemingly deep-seated (emphasis on the sea) obsession with donuts.

Until now, as Instagram user @miss_tortellini has shared the world’s first glimpse at upcomimg Strawberry Shortcake Crunch. We don’t know much about the flavor breakdown of the loops and Crunch Berries yet—Will the loops be butter-fully caked? Will these be lab-spliced Straw Crunch Berries? Does this mean Chocolatey Berry Crunch is apt to be strawberry-flavored too? And did the real Strawberry Shortcake help out, or will she claim it’s an intellectual property violation?

But what we do know for certain is we’ll be able to strap the stuff on like a feedbag soon, as the cereal will hit Walmart in 34oz “Mega Bags.”

If I add straps, can I wear it like a tastelessly flavorful backpack? I’ll even one-strap it, since Cap’n Crunch seems like exactly the type of old fuddy duddy to think that’s still cool.

Thanks again to miss_tortellini for the photo. If you have any break(fast)ing news to share, feel free to hit up our Submissions page.

Crashing through the snow on a once-heaved open sigh? Thanks to the infamous irritability of Michigan winters, I too understand seasonal affective disorder.

And when even happy lamps have me feeling burnt out, I like to turn to the one ever-shining beacon of edible escapism I have on hand: cereal. Even the fibrous rays of Raisin Bran Crunch’s sun is tastefully magnificent enough to melt through the season’s sorry slush like a hot knife through raisin rum cake.

As always, cereal’s simply sweet food therapy has inspired Justin and I to return to The Empty Bowl amidst what’s apt to be a few holiday recording delays. We thank you for bearing with us and in return come bearing Episode 6’s three wise gifts: golden-baked Snickerdoodle Kookies cereal, some Frank insights on the Monster Cereals’ movie auditions, and mirthful musings about how to treat December’s Big Guy right.

Thank you all again for your continued support of the show: you can subscribe and support The Empty Bowl on Anchor, email us questions, and follow our feed of reminder mantras on Twitter.

Don’t forget to drink the milk, and from me: don’t forget to hug your nearest raisin bran.

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Man, I’m really out of my league here.

See, I’m comfortable dwelling amongst the cereal greats, sharing so many of my breakfasts with Cap’n Crunch and Toucan Sam that I’m librariously well-versed in their extended universe lore. But now that the likes of Lucio and Deadpool—two characters whose narratives I can’t keep up with—start invading the cereal aisle?

Well then I feel like less of a cereal blogger and more of a cereal Facebook user’s grandma.

So I’ll happily tell you that the apparently much-desired Lucio Oh’s cereal will be coming soon in Sonic Vanilla flavor, but I can’t make any winking jokes or references about it—I’d try Googling it, but I don’t want to waste precious brain real estate currently occupied by Season 4 Simpsons quotes and obscure GameCube game memories.

Cubivore is at stake here!

While I predicted this would be an FYE cereal, even after researching Junk Food Aisle’s news, I couldn’t find any store news. The branding indicates Kellogg’s ownership, so perhaps it may hit wider store releases soon.

But what is coming to FYE? Almost definitely the first outwardly profane cereal—I hear the Cap’n swears like a soggy/groggy sailor, but that doesn’t count.

Deadpool $&!#% Flakes, which I can only assume totally translates to Deadpool Super Flakes, or perhaps Deadpool Shrek Flakes.

Farquad does sound explicit, after all.

Deadpool’s [PARENTAL ADVISORY] Flakes are already available on FYE’s site for a $&!#%-worthy price of $12.99. Suffice to say that as a non-fan who suspects these will just be sugary corn flakes—as is the FYE tradition of high art, low flavor collectible production—I may save my $12.99 for a binge buy of Pop-Tarts Bites.

Trust me, when I eat a bowl of them with milk, we’ll all get our money’s worth.

Trix is a cereal that’s changed more times than a Lady Gaga tribute to David Bowie.

Yes, while the likes of Cocoa Puffs has stayed perfectly rotund & football brown since their inception, Trix’s bite-sized cereal fruit salad started as warm-toned puffed corn spheres (sugar-coated Kix, actually) in 1954, before adopting their iconically unique fruit shapes in 1991. These shapes had an impressive two decade tenure, cementing themselves into the ’90s mythos before they were humiliatingly shrunk into Mini Trix and drained of their artificial colors and tastes altogether.

As we all know by now, this bleak, desaturated nightmare had a happy ending, as General Mills brought back the classic, artificially born & bred Trix flavors. It seemed like only a matter of time before nostalgia’s magnetic will would pull the fruit shapes back to us, and now here we are. As the euphoric Trix Rabbit’s visage proclaims:

FRUITY SHAPES ARE BACK!

The cereal hits stores later this month, but I was lucky enough to receive an early taste of fruit-shaped Trix. So while the rest of the world cognitively contorts our spherical planet into a crude raspberry out of sheer anticipation, I’m here to see if it lives up to a younger me’s memory.

I was eating Reese’s Cups with the paper still on at that point, so I wouldn’t be worried about high expectations—gimme a break, the brown layer blends right in!

Continue reading →

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(Update: We reviewed both flavors!)

In the year 20 C.G.E (Crazy Good Era), humans can enjoy a Pop-Tart whenever they want, however they want.

Unlike the clunky “into face” interface of the iTart and the borderline septic seepage of Pop-Tarts’ “Pop-Up Fuel Nozzlez,” current Pop-Tarchitecture is able to seamless transmit Pop-Tarts flavor activators right to the taste buds via uvular implant. So with the push of a button, we can—and do, all day long in fact—taste Crazy Good molecules!

It’s a bleak future, I know, but at Kellogg’s current rate of developments in Pop-Tart portability, we’ll all be wearing Pop-Tart Duel Disks by New Year’s. Just weeks ago, we learned of the impending return of Pop-Tarts Cereal (née Crunch), and now serial snack journalist Candy Hunting brings news of Pop-Tarts Bites, which appears to be a bionically reassembled hybrid of Kellogg’s other three up-til-now-discontinued horseman of Pop-Tarts convenience: 2002’s snub Snak-Stix, 2006’s hot dog-sized Go-Tarts and 2011’s cracker-esque Mini Crisps.

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I’m not at all upset about this reintroduction, which Candy Hunting along with The Junk Food Aisle assert will return in both Strawberry and Brown Sugar Cinnamon (it seems fan favorite S’Mores is toast again), because I have a long history of fangoriously devouring gelatinous pastries—especially in multiple quadrilateral dimensions. But when we see these hit shelves, likely in early 2019 alongside its mother-flagship cereal, don’t be surprised if the prize in side is a sweepstakes to “explore” the Pop-Tarts Innovation Laboratory.

But hey, maybe you’ll get to try a cryogenically frozen Pop-Tart. I hear that’s the coolest way. Thanks again to our Insta-friends for their discoveries!