How long before seasonal cereal rotations become literal?
Someday I anticipate we’ll reach a cereal singularity. When all the ideas have been made already, it will become most economically viable to print Count Chocula and S’Mores Oops! No Graham Crackers! Cereal on respective sides of the same box. Then some grocery stocker need only flip the boxes around come October and brainwash anyone who brainwash customers into believing it never happened.
No need to read that box back, humble shopper. Just chew on that cocoa corn, because we’ve always been at war with Boo Berry.
But until that dark chocolate day arises, we must remain hesitant about letting seemingly carbon-copied cereals get away with döppelganging up against us brave breakfast lovers. That’s why when I first heard General Mills was releasing Fruity Lucky Charms, I immediately saw it as a 10-month early reanimation of Franken Berry under a different name: perhaps out of creative laziness, perhaps to use up a few thousand quarts of near-expired strawberry syrup.
So I’ll try the stuff, for sure, but don’t think I won’t be swapping my spoon for a pitchspork, just in case I need to incite a little bedlam.
Thankfully, Fruity Lucky Charms isn’t a clear Franken Berry rip-off. Despite their questionable jump to corn construction in light of Lucky Charms’ iconic oat formula, these pastel scarlet cereal pieces have a more fruit-forward flavor. The ghosts of Frank’s candied strawberry are there, but they’re joined by enough other ambiguous red berries to make the total flavor inoffensively homogenous.
It’s hard to split hairs between the imagined cherry and raspberry notes—though I will split hares and assure you the Trix Rabbit’s diverse collection of grapes and citrus is superior—but the overall burst of artificial fruit is pleasant in a no frills, yet generically forgettable way.
But while Fruity Loki Parm—wait, wait, that’s not it: sorry, slipped my mind—is just another unassuming fruit cereal at its forefront, I have to be honest: the aftertaste practically ruins the entire experience, to the point where the seemingly over-generous supply of colorful marbits can’t mask it. Beyond the tooth-tickling pops of creamy sugar lies a strangely acrid bite of stale plastic. Combine it with the lingering texture of mass marshmallowing, and you’ve got a cereal that leaves your mouth as unsettlingly grainy as a decaying Chalkzone VHS.
I hoped a little milk dousing could erase this bittersweet twist, but that’s when the Frankish flare-ups really begin. Like submarines made of coffee filters, the corn Charms simply cannot take a liquid licking and keep on tastefully ticking. Their craterous pores drink milk faster than human lips ever could, turning their texture soggy sooner and their various flavors into a mushed-up mess of a curdled smoothie.
You know, like the deceitful kind kind they sneak kale (or maybe seaweed) into without telling you.
I admit I’m exaggerating a bit. Cereal lovers not seeking the outlandish may find security in this stuff’s basic berry blend, but I couldn’t help but hope for more out of the Lucky Charms brand. I love the original and will continue to, but my familiarized palate still refuses to accept this trend of cost-based cornification, especially when it suggests some of the corn was swapped for corn-glazed styrofoam.
It’s telling when the best part of a cereal is the marshmallows, and in this case, Fruity Lucky Charms’ only chance of having its family-sized box finished is if a pink unicorn presents me one of those ‘full bottle of wine’ glasses full of freshly churned strawberry yogurt.
The Bowl: Fruity Lucky Charms Cereal
The Breakdown: While the fore-taste is a tried and true fruit formula, this cereal’s strangely sour aftertaste and milky muck brings it beyond the point of marshmallowy resuscitation. Berry Lucky Charms this is not.
The Bottom Line: 4 boxes of Whoops! Just Campfire cereal out of 10
this is the most disgusting cereal in all time.
I got 13 people to try them, and all 13 hated them.
Not only do they taste like air freshner, they have a horrible aftertaste.
The marshmallows arent even decent becuase the fumes of the cereal sinks into them.
They arent worth it…
Try it with friends tho if you want a laugh!
I just found this cereal and I’m in love with it. I don’t eat cereal with milk, I eat it dry. But I love the fruity pebble taste and the big marshmallows. My 19yr old daughter is hooked on it too
It taste like Trix cereal but it just has the marshmallows from lucky charms. It’s actually not that bad.
My boss threw up after eating a bowl of this 🙁
I bought it by mistake thinking it was regular Lucky Charms ( which I love). I tried it, thinking how bad could it be? It’s bad. I love cereal but I don’t think I can eat any more Fruity Lucky Charms. It even has an aftertaste. Yuck!
I’ve been listening to The Empty Bowl, and it actually got me to buy a box of cereal – something I haven’t done in a long time. And this is the one I bought. Imagine my chagrin.
Anyway, love what you’re doing here Dan. 🙂
It’s totally kaboom remastered
These were the absolute worst cereal I’ve ever had worse than Raisin Bran but I couldn’t stop myself from pouring bowl after bowl
I bought the cereal by mistake for my little girl, but I figured I’d go ahead and give it a try! I absolutely love this cereal! Please do not discontinue it! I don’t eat a lot of cereal, but this one here I eat every day!!!!
Hey, call me a classless cretin, but I love this one. It takes the taste of Fruity Pebbles out of their gravel form and give them a better delivery system that’s accompanied by marshmallows.
I just tried this and it tasted like medicine and chemicals.. My tongue is tingling. Truly disturbing and disgusting. (And I love cereal, fruity pebbles, Captain, fruit loops.. All kinds.. So this was shocking)
I’m glad you posted this. I just ate a bowlful and my tongue is numb! I thought it was me!
this bullshit tastes like Trix cereal. no type of originaly
It definitely would’ve been better as an Oat based cereal, but I think the corn pieces taste a lot like Trix cereal. More fruity flavored with a citrus taste than I would’ve guessed.
Dang, I was looking forward to a strawberry-flavored, oat-based cereal, but so much for that. Ugh. Considering how gross the corn-based Frankberry tastes, I’ll be skipping Frucky Charms.
As expected, General Mills is trying to use Lucky Charms’ cred to peddle higher profit, oat free cereal. I still have a box I am waiting on trying though, I couldn’t help myself. Will likely end up feeding the critters in the backyard with it.
Also Dan, should be “accept” not “except.” Sorry to harp on your grammar.
i’m my own worst proofreader, thanks! actually had the version of the word i intended but the following sentence was not clear, lol