Unlike Nutter Butters or Nilla Wafers, Chips Ahoy! has always been on my bad side.
No, not because of the cookie brand’s taste, its perpetual civil war between chewy and crunchy (chewy all the way), or its retiring of one my favorite snack mascots: the Cookie Guy.
I’m upset at Chips Ahoy! for its brazen, borderline offensive abuse of the exclamation point. It’s part of the trademark, meaning it has to be included even in the middle of sentences, eternally pissing off writers, word processors, and autocorrects. It’s kinda like how “Oreos,” isn’t the correct pluralization of Oreo cookies, but this one has 100x more thrown phones.
So sorry, geeks, dweebs, poindexters and pedants, but I’m not using the exclamation point anymore in my review of Post’s new Chips Ahoy Cereal, the companion of Nutter Butter Cereal—both of which hit Walmart at the end of December and stores everywhere April 2018.
Now that I’ve vented about punctuation and mourned the loss of an anthropomorphized foodstuff, the only thing left on my pre-review checklist is “wonder about something pointless.”
I wonder if in Spanish-speaking countries, they stylize it as ¡Chips Ahoy!
First impression: don’t smell the bag before you taste the cereal. Maybe it was just my industrial-jumbo-Godzilla-family-sized box, but it emitted the musky odor of a burnt-down Famous Amos factory.
The taste is better, and for those of you concerned this is just a Cookie Crisp clone, fear not: it’s actually a Malt-O-Meal Chocolatey Chip Cookie Bites clone. Yes, Post strikes again here: just like how Oreo O’s are slightly creamier Cookies & Cream Cereal and how Honey Maid S’Mores are just, well, S’Mores, Chips Ahoy Cereal is a palette-swapped Cookie Bites with just enough flavor difference to give them a “Mario & Luigi”-esque brotherhood (Cookie Bites seem brown sugarier).
The most shocking thing is that Chips Ahoy Cereal isn’t even that chocolatey. Despite the copious chips studded in each tiny baked oval, the cereal only has mild ribbons of standard-issue milk chocolate sweetness—forget the cocoa butteriness or fudginess of other artisan chocolate cereals: this is Tollhouse Lite.
I’m imagining the food scientist behind these mini chips proudly holding a pie chart that’s 50% milk, 49% chocolate, and 1% “the space between the words milk and chocolate.”
No, the real pronounced flavor here is Chips Ahoy Cereal’s oat base. Unlike the “corn masquerading as cookie dough” flavor of General Mills’ Cookie Crisp, Chips Ahoy Cereal is more like cookie brittle or shortbread: aerated, toasty, and heavily floured, with a light glaze of sugar and browned butter.
Altogether, it’s a rather unbalanced flavor palette that leaves me reaching for the Hershey’s Syrup to apply a manual drizzle. To use a proper processed cookie analogy: imagine a Girl Scout Trefoil that hasn’t quite transitioned into a Thanks-A-Lot.
Milk has a redemptive factor, moistening the otherwise dry and floury cookies into something pleasantly doughier, but it doesn’t do much to make the chocolate chips pop any more richly. I recommend milk to better emulate the Chips Ahoy-eating experience, but try as it might, this cereal is several light years and a few grocery aisles away from doing justice to its namesake brand—especially disappointing after the ecstatic accuracy found in Nutter Butter Cereal.
With an airily addictive biscuit sweetness, Chips Ahoy Cereal is an acceptably mindless munch, but for lacking that mouthwatering fudge factor, the massive pantry real estate occupied by this box is better off saved for Nutter Butter Cereal, stacked packages of actual (Chewy) Chips Ahoy cookies, or perhaps a small nature preserve.
You know, the kind of place where undomesticated Cookie Guys can graze, wild and free.
The Bowl: Post Chips Ahoy! Cereal
The Breakdown: Less corny than Cookie Crisp, but also less chocolatey, this cereal’s shortbread sweetness is far from a recognizable chocolate chip cookie taste.
The Bottom Line: 5.5 Girl Scout “No-Thank-You” cookies out of 10
General Mills changed Cookie Crisp from oat flour to corn after they purchased the rights from Ralston in 1992. Post Chips Ahoy is made with oat flour and it identical to the original Ralston version of Cookie Crisp. Chips Ahoy is way better than General Mills version of Cookie Crisp.
Is it just me? Or does this taste like the original cookie crisp i ate in the 80s? There was a definite change in the taste when i picked up a box of cookie crisp as an adult. And it was not for the better. So after never buying cookie crisp again because it didnt taste like i remember, i decided to try this. And BAM instant nostalgia fulfilled. This is 10x better than cookie crisp. Sweeter and crunchier. I hope this cereal stays a while.
No it’s not just you because I noticed the taste as well! I used to love me some cookie crisp as a child because of the great taste. As an adult I see that they have changed the taste so no I do not buy it anymore. The chips ahoy has that same great taste that cookie crisp use to have so that’s the one I always purchase. I really don’t know what drove them to change the taste anyway. My kids are grown now and do not like the new cookie crisp. Well chips ahoy cereal it is!
Have to say I have been wanting to try the chips ahoy cookie cereal so I buy some got the munchies tonight so I opened them n almost passed out. Smell is overpowering n taste like cardboard the whole box will be going back to Walmart I’m not paying 4 dollars for this crap. Post should be ashamed n embarrassed to put their name on this box Lin
I bought this by mistake for my teenage kids (they wanted Cookie Crisp) but how different can it be?OMG. The reviewer is spot on – the smell emitting from the freshly opened bag quickly turned the ‘surprise – I’m the best mom in the world bc I finally bought you sugary cereal’ to “I DARE YOU to eat a piece.”
Literally.
Not even my teenage son who is known to eat pretty much anything not nailed down gave it a hard pass.
Being a ‘lead by example’ type person I decided (against better judgement) to eat a couple of pieces…dry.
Have you ever licked bark? Or taken a bite out of a 1970’s Bonnie Bell Dr Pepper Smackers? Have you imagined what cardboard mixed with a maple scented Yankee Candle tastes like? If so, then you’ve basically tasted Chips Ahoy cereal.
It’s not for the faint of heart. Or anyone with taste buds.
I wanted to see the the difference of the nutrient rich food choice. fat.
The smell of this cereal reminds me of a bottle of cookie dough flavored vodka I once purchased and could not finish. Otherwise, the texture and flavor is nearly identical to Cookie Crisp, but with a slight cookie dough vodka aftertaste. Do yourself a favor and buy Cookie Crisp instead.
It’s people like you who cause everything Oi love to get discontinued all the time. Yet nasty Cookie Crisp lives on yuck
It smells and taste like maple syrup!! Has smelled up my whole office. I can’t eat it.
Whatever you do, do NOT smell the bag🤢 I couldn’t even eat because the bag smelled horrible…
I LOVE how the bag smells mmm like burned sugar alcohol yummy
I have eaten cookie crisp cereal all my life I recently just found out about chips away and sad to say I must say I am now a new chips ahoy fan
I feel the same way. Cookie Crisp just tastes weird to me now.
So it’s safe to say Cookie Crisp tastes better? Lol
Cookie Crisp is crap nowadays it used to be good, in the 90 s. This cereal is SO good and I dislike chocolate, this is close to tollhoise without the chips taste which I adore! I make Toll house dough and leave out the chocolate or put buttscotch in instead. It does have chocolate just not a ton, it’s perfection for me! If you like the cookie part of a cookie you’ll love these!
Tbh it’s terrible. It’s way to sweet and gave me a headache. This is the first time I’ve thrown a full cereal box in the trash.
Team chewy all day!