News: Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles

New Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles Cereal

*Throws hands up in the air with enough gusto to alter the flight patterns of passing geese*

Fine, I guess.

Innovation in the cereal sphere is often a weirdly all-or-nothing affair. Sure, we get intelligent strokes of sweet strategic genius like Apple Pie Toast Crunch, but a lot of the time it seems like if we’re not getting bludgeoned over the buzz-fed head with wacky headline-grabbers like Green Onion Chex or…meaty cereals, big cereal companies will instead play it super safe by simply making a sugary cereal more sugary—whether that means frosting an already frosted cereal or just chucking in a mittful of marbits and calling it a day.

Case in point: new Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles. Pebbles are no stranger to marbits: from Dino Pebbles to Marshmallow Mania Pebbles, it’s well-trodden territory for the shaved rice crisps brand. Which is why I can’t find myself getting too excited about another (admittedly kinda lazy) marshmallow addition—even if they are using cocoa-infused marbits this time. If nothing else, as a purple-loving people cereal eater, I adore this vibrant box, but, uh, I’m drawing a big, white and fluffy blank when it comes to saying anything else interesting about Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles.

The cereal has already been spotted out in the wild, so if Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles sounds like your bag, run—do not walk—your stone-age car to the store ASAP.

News: A Pantry’s Worth of New General Mills Cereals

New CinnaGraham Toast Crunch Cereal

Y’know, they say imitation is the sublimest form of flattery.

Yes, General Mills unleashed a mouthwatering downpour of new cereal news this week, and the twinkling, golden, Luciferianly tempting lightbringer leading the firestorm is CinnaGraham Toast Crunch: a game-changing union of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams that pairs the former’s sweet cinnamon sugar swirls with the latter’s hearty honey base grain.

To be honest, I’d’ve preferred if GM made this a variant of Golden Grahams instead of a Toast Crunch. I totally understand how CTC has more cult appeal, but poor Golden Grahams never gets limited edition variants, whereas there are enough members of the Toast Crunch family to start a mafia, inspire an Ancestry.com commercial, and clean out an Olive Garden. Continue reading

News (UK): Cereal Killer Treat Cereals

Killer Cereal Collection

Oh boy am I glad this is just a blog, and I don’t have to say the names of any of these cereals out loud.

Wait a minute, I have a podcast. A family friendly podcast.

Aw, [dolphin noises].


Anyway, it seems like I’ve been sleeping on the Cereal Killer Cafe for a long time—not surprising, considering how they’re like, 5 timezones ahead of me. But I also knew them as the Brits with the most famous cereal cafe of all time. Cereal cafes aren’t all that rare in America, but since you can just buy all the same cereals at your local grocery store, the concept is much more of a novelty overseas, where American cereals are comparatively exotic and exuberantly sweet. Add in Cereal Killer Cafe’s immersive branding, and you had a hit on your spoon-gripping hands. Continue reading

The Empty Bowl Episode Sixty + Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats

Happy Ho-Ho-Hovember! Not to be confused with Yo-Ho-Hovember (only celebrated in international waters), H-H-H-vember is my go-to name for the late-autumn parts of November that are cannibalized by the coming Christmas season (i.e., every day in November except for like, three).

I highly recommend you celebrate with either a) strict defiance and rigid adherence to Thanksgiving tradition with a “come and take ’em” on your mashed potatoes, b) the kind of dastardly combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities that results in cranberry sauce leaking out of a stocking, or c) a new episode of The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast from myself and Justin McElroy.

I won’t lie: I do a very bad job about remembering to tell y’all when we have a new episode. In fact, it’s been an embarrassing 5 months since I’ve done so. But nevertheless, Episode Sixty is a darn good one, even if it gets a bit off topic into the rich realms of s’mores and doughnuts…and shoddy Halloween costumes.

New Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats Box

We also discuss these new Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats, which thankfully aren’t exclusive to the Sam’s Club 53-count box after all—and instead can also be found in this 35-pack at Walmart stores, even though that’s still enough sweet little rectangular prisms to leave Santa too stuffed to slide out of your house the way he came in. Forgive him for tucking and rolling out the living room window…and taking the head clean off your front yard reindeer sculpture.

Anyway, if you want to hear all the Empty Bowl episodes I forgot to tell you about, you can find them at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one is like a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treat injected directly into our veins.

News: Smartfood Merry Berries Cap’n Crunch Popcorn

New Smartfood Merry Berries Cap'n Crunch Popcorn

Well there ya have it, folks: Halloween is is barely dead and buried, and Christmas is already doing a perverse little gumdrop dance on its grave.

Though to be honest, I doubt Halloween minds chilling six feet under with all the skeletons, worms, and cursed alien artifacts.

Regardless, I’m not ready to dive into the holiday spirit yet. Partly because I’m a wuss when it comes to snow and winter cold, and partly because I still need to stuff my face with a metric ton of, well, stuffing. Which is why it’s a bit sad we’re not getting any new Thanksgiving cereal products this year—no Pecan Pie Toast Crunch? C’mon!—and instead diving right into the sugar cookies and….”Merry Berries?”

You’d think that’s a euphemism for mistletoe, but no: it’s the name of a limited-edition Smartfood popcorn flavor starring Cap’n Crunch and his Crunch Berries. And if the idea of Crunch Berry popcorn rankles your stockings with recognition, you’d be right. Last summer, Smartfood and the Cap’n dropped a more straightforward-branded version of the same snack.

The disappointing news is that Merry Berries Cap’n Crunch popcorn seems to be the exact same product, just with red and green Crunch Berries only. The alright news is that this pretty much describes what Christmas Crunch already is. And finally, the good news is that Smartfood’s Crunch Berries popcorn was already extremely tasty, so I’m gonna recommend you seek out Merry Berries if you haven’t tried the mix yet. I’m not even a fan of sweet popcorn, usually, but the combo of saltiness, berry-dusted popcorn, and the Crunch Berries themselves is uniquely magical.

Not as magical as a Cranberry Sauce Crunch Berries popcorn might be, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.

News: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Bullying works!

See, when Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs debuted way back in 2017, I made fun of the name for being redundant and clumsy to say. Now, the concept of wintery marshmallow’d Cocoa Puffs is back from its four-year embarrassment-induced hibernation, and with a less tongue-twisting name. Sure, “Hot Cocoa” is still the flavor descriptor—despite no one in their right mind actually eating hot Cocoa Puffs—but “Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs” sounds a lot neater.

Sadly, the cereal itself will probably be more tongue-tiring than tempting. Looking back at my Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs review, it’s clear I need to get at least halfway through a box before giving it a full review, for while the charm of marbits and cocoa-powdered puffs was cozy at first, I remember getting really bored of the cereal’s one-note adequacy long before I finished it. Cocoa Puffs as a corn-based cereal has simply lost its luster in the face of other, better-base-grained chocolate cereals, plus the marbits are boring and Cocoa Puffs’ recent reformulation has left me distrustful of Sonny the Cuckoo and his bowl-gripping feathers…

…even if I happen to love his sweater, which makes the bird look like a Fat Albert side character.

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs have already been spotted at Sam’s Club.

News: Coffee Mate Golden Grahams Creamer

New Coffee Mate Golden Grahams Coffee Creamer

January 2022 is gonna be BIG

…for fans of viscous cereal fluids.

Yes, Coffee Mate, the folks who already brought us Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer, are double dipping into the great big bowl of cereal inspiration for this shining supernova of liquid sweetener known as Golden Grahams Coffee Creamer.

It’s no secret that I’m a Golden Grahams fan—honestly, we need a term for that. Golden Grahamaniacs? In fact, I’m a big fan of all things graham’d, be they crackered or Teddy’d. I even find it quite silly that graham crackers were invented to curb prurient urges, because nothing gets me going like a coffee-dunked sheet of twinkling Honey-Maid goodness.

And now, with this GG (fitting acronym) Coffee Creamer, I can dunk my graham crackers in graham cracker flavored coffee creamer that I’ve poured in my coffee….which I’ve then poured into a bowl of actual Golden Grahams. I expect a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure villain-tier ability to see through time to develop shortly after. Continue reading

Review: Apple Pie Toast Crunch

New Apple Pie Toast Crunch Review – Box

Picture this epicurean odyssey: it’s the day after Thanksgiving, and you’ve just finished a delightful franken-wich of fused leftovers—gravy-braised turkey suspended in cranberry sauce topped with a mashed potato schmear, all on a bun made from waffle-ironed stuffing.

And now it’s time for dessert, so you make Grandma’s classic: a fat slice of toasted bread thickly buttered with the puréed result of cramming an apple pie slice into your food processor.

At least, that’s what I picture when I think of “Apple Pie Toast,” the latest naming convention-transgressing foodstuff implied by the people who brought you “Frosted Toast” Crunch and “Sugar Cookie Toast” Crunch. I mean hey, I understand that it’s just the name of a cereal and therefore it doesn’t need to conform to reality, but c’mon, they did this flavor already with Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a name I had no trouble accepting.

But whatever, I’m just grasping at semantic straws. If Apple Pie Toast Crunch is good, I’m willing to forgive its eponymous sin. Continue reading