Spooned & Spotted: Golden Grahams Retro Recipe!

You ever see a new product release like this and wonder how you’re supposed to take it? As a celebration? An apology? A self own?

I consider myself both knowledgeable about cereal, and I’ve always been a big graham cracker stan, but I’ll admit I never noticed that Golden Grahams apparently hasn’t had honey in its ingredients list for some time now. I suppose I just never expected my old buddy Golden Grahams, my dear, sweet, innocent and unchanging Golden Grahams, to betray my trust. Between its yellow branding and its most famous commercials, Golden Grahams should’ve at least told people when it told mascot Honey The Honey Drop’s namesake stuff to buzz out of their cereal.

This is a dupe right up there with all Froot Loop colors tasting the same and Chocolate Lucky Charms being a corn-based cereal!

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when Golden Grahams pivoted from a honey graham to a brown sugar graham cereal, but comparing school cafeteria nutrition labels for single-serve Golden Grahams packaging, we can estimate it was some time between 2011 and 2013.

Now, so many depraved years later, Golden Grahams is proudly doubling back on its duplicity, at least temporarily, with Retro Recipe Golden Grahams—made with real honey! Spotted at Walmart by Tim S. (long-time vocal advocate for oat flour’s return to General Mills’ Monster Cereals, a noble and just cause), Retro Recipe Golden Grahams are certainly at the top of my “must try” list. And by “try,” I mean in the “push ’em to the edge” sense of the word. These Grahams have a lot of explaining to do.

We shared everything with each other, Golden Grahams! Promise me you’ve changed for good! Prove it to me by making Retro Recipe Count Chocula happen!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: general mills, golden grahams, honey, spooned & spotted. 6 Comments

Sep. ’20

Review: Chocolate Life Cereal

Oh, thank goodness. There’s a new Life out—this current one’s been getting pretty stale. I think 2020 was its expiration date. I can only imagine that living a chocolate life is gonna be a heck of a lot sweeter than the plain one I have every day.

Wait, you mean Quaker’s new Chocolate Life Cereal doesn’t include a free immersive Matrix pill as the prize inside? I have to just eat the stuff and pretend I’ve been thrown down a perspective-shifting rabbit hole? Yeugh. This new cereal ride is quite the lemon already.

That said, Chocolate Life is, from the outset, more exciting than the long-running, Mikey-beloved cereal brand’s other latest spinoff varieties. Because unlike the light flavor-glosses found on Vanilla or Strawberry Life, Chocolate Life actually features visible cocoa-infusion at the base grain level.

But is it enough to overcome my disdain for Life as a road-rolled facsimile of Chex? Only time will tell—and not a lot of time, at that, before things get soggy. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Uncategorized. Tags: chocolate, life, quaker. 1 Comment

Sep. ’20

The Empty Bowl Episode Thirty-Eight: Cinn City

Whoa, whoa, easy there, stranger. You new around these parts? It looks like you’ve got some contraband on you: a worrisome burden weighing on your shoulders, and a bellyful of unaddressed anxieties. Here on The Empty Bowl’s Empty Beach of twinkling auburn cinnamon sugar sand, such negativity is not only discouraged, but actively remedied by the beach’s staff. So please, check all your emotional baggage and hoist it into the milky ocean. Where we’re going, you won’t need woes.

Welcome back to The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast hosted by me and Justin McElroy. In Episode Thirty-Eight, we continue exploring 2020’s bottomless cinnamon cereal selection, talk about an underrated cereal that crept up on us, and give a brief primer on the season’s best autumn cereals.

Still smuggling a few uncertainties in your back pocket? The calming cereal tides keep churning at our Anchor hub, where you can listen to Thirty-Seven and any other episodes. 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 helps seize sadness from a clamoring beachgoer.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: empty bowl. Leave a comment

Sep. ’20

News: Kellogg’s & Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal + Rumored Cosmic Brownies Cereal!

Rumored Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal and Cosmic Brownies Cereal Little Debbie

(Image via Stevil Librium Entertainment)

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this, Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal has been CONFIRMED for a December release by Kellogg’s! No word on Cosmic Brownies yet.

UPDATE 2: Kellogg’s has told me that Cosmic Brownies Cereal “is not launching at this time.” Whether this means it’s been scrapped entirely remains unclear.

Get out of my brain, Big Cereal! Good ideas don’t come ’round too often in this noggin of mine, so I can’t have you siphoning ’em off like a milk-blooded facehugger.

Okay fine, it doesn’t take a particularly ingenious synapse-firing to realize a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie Cereal would be a great idea, but given the number of times I’ve referenced the iconic snack cake on this breakfast-centric blog, I at least deserve fringe kudos for keeping the things prominent in our toothsome zeitgeist.

That said, this rumor is an interesting one—it starts with a YouTube video detailing not only a leaked Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal, but a Cosmic Brownies Cereal, too.

Now, there’s plenty to be skeptical about here. For one, finding evidence of any ongoing relationship between Little Debbie and Kellogg’s is difficult, beyond product recalls from a decade ago claiming Kellogg’s manufactured some snack cracker products for Little Debbie’s parent company McKee Foods. But if Post could cozy up with Hostess, it wouldn’t surprise me to see competitor Kellogg’s seize the chance to partner with the next largest snack cake company. At the same time, with no box art (or rainbow sprinkles!) for Cosmic Brownies Cereal, one could reasonably argue that the cereal pictured is just the similar-looking Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch.

But luckily, just this morning I got an inside scoop from a retail worker who saw the UPC for a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies Cereal in their store’s product order catalogue. They were quick to note, though, that said catalogue also included listings for long-gone releases like Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy, so while all signs point to an imminent release of these two Little Debbie cereals, I can’t confirm them with 100% certainty just yet.

Regardless, my hype is has reached the height of three-to-four dozen double-decker Oatmeal Creme Pies, so I’m going to be reciting silent prayers to goad these leaks into a realized retail birth—especially if the OCP Cereal debuts with a vengeful amount of oat flour. What do you think? Legit or no? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: chocolate, kellogg's, oatmeal, rumor mill. 4 Comments

Sep. ’20

Spooned & Spotted: Barnes & Noble Café Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookie

In a year that refuses to be read like a book, we’re getting at least one more sweet little twist of cereal-adjacent obscurity.

Starbucks—err, well only Barnes & Noble Café locations that serve Starbucks coffee—is unleashing a new cookie studded with Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares. But don’t expect a pure and chaste cereal milk & cookies experience: as one Redditor has mentioned, this cookie is a triple threat of oatmeal, cinnamon, and chocolate chip. Which, honestly, sounds a lot better. Just as Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is basically Toast Crunch with a beefed-up base grain, so too does this cookie sound like Chocolate Toast Crunch if it were made with oat flour.

If you’ve tried this cookie, let me know what you think of it in the comments below. Personally, I’m swearing off Barnes & Noble until the disrespected ghost of Borders Books & Music tells me it’s okay.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cinnamon, non cereal, spooned & spotted, toast crunch. 1 Comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Smartfood Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn

There is beauty in simplicity. This is known.

Example: in the 200,000ish-person city where I live, despite dozens of renowned restaurants and artisan makers, perhaps my favorite menu item is a modest egg & cheddar on ciabatta sandwich. The ability to do so much with so few ingredients never fails to blow me away and make me scramble back for more. I mean, have you seen most sandwiches these days? Their menu descriptions are borderline biblical, with so much stuff stuffed within that it’s as hard to taste anything in particular as it is to eat the thing without it prolapsing prosciutto and quarts of aioli all over your hands.

But I digress. And wipe my fingers off.

I’ll admit, when it was first announced, Smartfood’s new Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries popcorn mix turned me off with its very concept. Sharp hulls and serrated Crunch Berries teaming up to shred my palate? My dental insurance is expensive enough. But now that I’ve actually got a chance to try the stuff, I’m happy to say that I was wrong, and Cap’n Crunch is a master of minimalistic munchies. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cap'n crunch, non cereal. Leave a comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Cookies & Creme Krispies

This is going to be a tough review to write. Not because Cookies & Creme Krispies are so rich with nuance that their abstract appeal defies conventional language. More like the opposite: this cereal is such a big yawn that my writerly brain is distracted, grappling with daydreams of better cereals. Or any cereal, for that matter.

It’s no secret that I’m biased against Krispies, Pebbles, and any other cereal that lacks a certain stomach-smacking density. But for the sake of this review, I will say that Cocoa Krispies & Pebbles are growing on me as indulgent late-night bowls of sopping milked chocolate. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cookies & creme, kellogg's, krispies. 4 Comments

Aug. ’20

News: Malt-O-Meal Churr-O’s Cereal

As the world keeps turning, burning, yearning, spurning, and churning, a little Churro-ning goes a long way.

In a clear revival of their long-lost Mini Cinnamon Churros Cereal, which disappeared from shelves around 2013, Post and its cereal subsidiary Malt-O-Meal are bringing the tubular treat back to shelves with Churr-O’s Cereal, a decidedly more rounded take on churros.

Though they’ve always been a beloved dessert, churros are having a renaissance of sorts in the breakfast aisle. Between General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros, Chocolatey Churro Pop-Tarts and Kellogg’s of Mexico’s Panaderia Churros Cereal, there’s never been a better time to eat cinnamon cylinders in the morning.

Though these have already been spotted at Walmart, you can keep your eyes peeled for Churr-O’s Cereal near you with Malt-O-Meal’s product locator.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cinnamon, malt-o-meal. 1 Comment