Let us all send prayers and psychic Gatorade to Cereal Life, who, as the online cereal correspondent with the closest connection to General Mills insiders, must be exhausted lately. For whatever reason, while Kellogg’s, Post, and Quaker have merely trickled out new cereal news, General Mills tips are spilling out in torrents. The most likely explanation for this is that, since January is the biggest time of the year for new cereal, and since most of Cereal Life’s finds are still in the sales sample stage, he’s simply getting a sneak peek at a huge wave of news to come in a couple months.
Among these bountiful chronicles of cereals foretold are two new types of Cheerios. First, the above Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberry Pieces. As Cereal Life mentions in the caption, a Cheerios variety with strawberries (rather than flavored with) hasn’t been seen since the Berry Burst line in the early 2000s—which, on an interesting tangent, contained the scarcely documented Cherry Vanilla Cheerios, first documented as a Cereal Myth in The Empty Bowl’s first-ever episode.
Granted, 2003’s version of this formula didn’t use Multigrain Cheerios, so at least this (presumed) 2021 version can be considered less of a bland reboot and more of a remaster.
Frosted Vanilla Cheerios are less hypothetical, as they’ve already been spotted in stores. Anecdotal addendums seem to suggest these are indeed exclusive to Canada. What’s less clear, though, is whether Frosted Vanilla Cheerios are actually different from America’s blue-box Frosted Cheerios, or whether it’s the same product with an additional word in the name to make it more appetizing and less saccharinely American. Every week, there’s new proof that the cereal industry conflates “vanilla flavor” with supercharged sweetness, so while I’d love for this to be a delightful win for Canadians jealous of America’s cereal exclusives, semantic changes are typically cheaper for big cereal companies than gastronomic ones.
Thanks as always to Cereal Life for allowing me to share from his fountainhead of cereal leaks. Speaking of which, if you, humble reader, are sitting on a hot cereal lead that’s burning to be aired, you can always reach me on our Submissions page.