How do you think big cereal companies choose to reintroduce old cereals? Do they do something logical, like hold a focus group of common cereal consumers and wise cerealheads alike, or perhaps mail out surveys?
Or do they just go to Mr. Breakfast’s cereal archive, rip a fat scroll off the mouse wheel, and throw a dart at the computer screen (blindfolded)?
Because it really seems like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops, a 2007 Kellogg’s cereal apparently best known for including a “send-away offer for an Adidas Sports Top,” must have gotten lucky to win out in the re-continuation race—or at least swapped coffins with Tony’s Cinnamon Krunchers right before Kellogg’s’s undertook their dead cereal exhumation. It’s also entirely possible someone at Kellogg’s thought of this without even remembering the 2007 version, because the only geologic record remaining of it is deep in the Kellogg’s archives, sandwiched between Puffa Puffa Rice and Bart Simpson’s No ProblemO’s’s bordering strata.
Whatever its second genesis, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops trades its ancestor’s flavored spheres (i.e. bootleg Reese’s Puffs) for the half-deflated popcorn pieces of Corn Pops proper. The wilted kernels have an incomparably unique texture, one that hasn’t been replicated—and possibly for good reason, because the idea of milky buttered popcorn is no-doubt a daring and dairily divisive philosophy. But will it be conducive to caked on gobs of flav-o-dust?
Let’s all go to the lobby and find out!
Short answer: yes.
Anything longer than short answer: ugh, no, not really.
By this I mean Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops are good, but the half-life of that goodness is about a chew-point-two. On first taste, CPBP greet the palate with the familiar sweet, seamlessly-blended choco-PB sensation of Reese’s Puffs. In fact, it feels even more explosively punchy in its powdered enthusiasm. But if you’ve ever tasted unmixed powdered peanut butter (or better yet, powdered chocolate peanut butter), what happens next might be familiar: the initial lightly oiled, mostly sweet honeymoon period quickly gives way to Dry Dry Desert-level dry mouth and dessert desertion.
Just past that second Choco-PB Pop chew, the pieces are reduced to bland corn(husk)meal. And what’s worse? Since these things are so pliable, you’ve still got three chews of unbuttered packing peanut butter to go.
In other words: this is what it’s like to chew -5 Gum.
But surely milk must be able to salvage these leaky dodgeballs, right? If only.
By some dastardly spell of flavor-filtering magic, milk nullifies much of what very little made Chocolate Peanut Pops appealing when eaten dry. Even the spare ribbons of quasi-cloying cocoa powder and thin peanut butter veneer are soured, as liquid makes them bizarrely oaky—and even more ephemeral. If there’s one tarnished silver lining to milky CPBP, it’s that the endmilk is perfect for anyone itching for all the joy of fresh-shucked starch milk with the added delectability of crushed peanut shells.
I wanted to like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops so bad, but their embarrassing in-mouth stamina simply can’t keep up with the everyday muncher’s masticatory velocity. Whether you call it Reese’s Puffs That Got In A Bar Brawl or Licking The Bottom Of A Real Reese’s Wrapper Long Past The Moment You’ve Lapped It All Up Like A Wistfully Optimistic Puppy, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops are a hard pass in a cereal aisle niche already comfortably populated by General Mills’ ol’ reliable balls, the comparative wholesomeness of Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios, and the unrivaled intensity lurking in every Love Crunch box.
Buy yourself a new laptop, Kellogg’s flavor scientists, and try again. In lieu of a dart, I’ve got a Crunchy Logg gnawed to a fine point you can use.
The Bowl: Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops Cereal
The Breakdown: It’s 10% dust, 20% unthrilled, 15% concentrated power of mid-bowl persistence. 5% pleasure, 50% grain and 100% reason to set squares 2-4 aflame.
The Bottom Line: 3.5 haunted Night at the Cereal Museum exhibits out of 10
*Note: from what I’ve learned on social media since posting this, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops are a very polarizing cereal. So whether you loved them or hated them, please keep all comments civil. It is just breakfast, after all.
Thanks for the review. I’m came to check after I was disappointed in my bowl to make sure I didn’t just have a stale box.
The first thing I did was check the expiration date. I thought they were super stale 😂.
Not found in Arizona
Do you think the racist Corn Pops box was a marketing precursor to CPB Pops?
Love the blog btw
Fantastic Fort Minor reference! 👌
Hey I was reading some comments about how people don’t like your colorful language. Your reviews are just like chocolate peanut butter pops; polarizing but minus the after-bite staleness. Even I was turned off at firs. But I have to admit these reviews are a fun read because of your zany descriptions. Please don’t change for these people. If they want a straightforward review, they’ll find it on another site.
These were trash, I’d give it a 1. Stale texture, muted flavor dry, totally flavorless in milk.
So funny to see the different responses; I read this solely for the metaphors. Stack up the prose, and call it a day 😉
It’s fans like you that stoke the metaphorical flame ever brighter 😉
Do you ever read your own reviews? A lot of the words and phrases that you use, such as “dessert desertion”,”quasi-cloying cocoa powder”, “fresh-shucked starch milk”, “ephemeral”,and “muncher’s masticatory velocity, don’t make any sense to me. I go to this site often and look forward to reading your reviews but you lose me almost every time with these complicated statements. I just want to know if this cereal is good or not, why can’t you just get straight to the point without using fancy sayings?!
uhhhhhh because it’s my website, and if I didn’t write in my own voice, it wouldn’t be fun. you’re welcome to skip to the bottom for my rating….
Pay this nefarious naysayer no never mind! I adore your writing style! Thanks again for another great review.
thank you!! i appreciate it
I love this site, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t know what you are saying most of the time. I guess I am not as educated as the rest of your fan base.
We have different taste buds, but I love your writing and website. Keep doing your thang.
🙌🏻
This world would be an even more depressing place if everything had to be written for the uneducated. Enough things already have to be!
I thought these were delicious! A worthy addition to the Choco PB lineup in my household.
I too appreciate your vibrant prose and hope you continue to review cereals with that vigor and verve.
You have my word(s)!!
I thought they were pretty bloody good, so your mileage will vary.
3 ratings? if i was you =, stick with other Peanut Butter creals like Peanut Butter Chex
well yeah, that’s the idea. because these are bad
In your opinion. These are bad in your opinion. Opinions should not be stated as facts, I expect better from you than to use such simplistic statements.
in matters of subjective taste, “in my opinion” is always implied. i’m not going to waste words qualifying every statement i make
It’s not always implied, as some cereals, as with foodstuffs in general, are objectively bad.
Also, is your shift key broken?
i don’t have time for pedants. go read a different blog
What the hell do you think a review is? You always leave at least 4 tee’s at Cracker Barrel, don’t you? EG No Ra Moose