News: Peeps Cereal is Getting Bunny & Chick Marshmallows!

Peeps Cereal with bunny & Chick Marshmallows (2020)

It only took a year, but one of 2019’s biggest missed opportunities is being repaired.

In my review of last Easter’s Peeps Cereal (which I still unseasonably blogged about in January), I noted—as any potential Peeper would—that a brand known for its cute animal shapes probably deserves better than lazy round & white marbits. Thankfully, those sugary eggs are hatching in 2020, as we can see in the above box art uncovered by Candy Hunting. I’d like to think it’s my complaints that got Kellogg’s to introduce these “Bunny & Chick Marshmallows,” but considering how I was equally scathing in my critique of this cereal’s taste, I doubt Kellogg’s would ever credit me.

After all, the frankly boring base cereal itself looks unchanged. I’ll admit that the bunnies are some of the better fashioned cereal marshmallows in recent memory—the chicks seem like they could be runny yolks—but unless those rascally rabbits breed while the cereal’s in your pantry, I might have to pass on buying a box again this spring.

But congratulations, Kellogg’s: you finally made an authentic Peeps Cereal. Now you just need to find an audience for the sugary stuff’s one-note opus.

Cerealously’s Top 5 New Cereal Releases of 2019!

Top 5 New Cereals - 2019

2019: cereal’s sophomore year of college.

I say that because, though the 1.5 century-old stuff made some great friends and memories this year, cereal also pulled some dumb shenanigans—as if it were trying to get hazed into a fraternity of goofy flavoring that it was really never cut out for.

Yes, decades from now, when cereal is telling its grandkids (named canned oatmeal & freeze-dried apocalypse biscuits) about these hectic post-halcyon days, we have to imagine it’ll grimace at the times it wore a meat dress and got sticky for no good reason.

In fact, just looking at the first three reviews I wrote this year pretty much gives you the full breadth of 2019’s cereal unorthodoxy. Pop-Tarts Cereal heralded the return of many other cult favorites. Sour Patch Kids Cereal puckered us up for freak incidents of cereal sensory overload. And Hostess’ inaugural pair of crunchable snack cakes showed us that Post means business.

But did any of those make my year-end cut of the tastiest, most creative and charming products of the past 365 days? Let’s count down like it’s Donkey…uh…Clown? Continue reading

Review: Hershey’s Kisses Cereal

New Hershey's Kisses Cereal Review - Box

Smooches. Pecks. Snogs. Canoodles.

I’m not saying Hershey picked one of the lamest, most ironically vanilla word for the union of impassioned lips, but plain ol’ Hershey’s Kisses? Even the white chocolate Hugs light a hotter fire under my stomach. But perhaps it’s just my own deep-seated disinterest in purely unadorned and lower-mid quality milk chocolate—especially when sculpted into a dainty form that a) always has its fragile tips break, and b) leaves behind a wholly unnecessary second wrapper component in the form of an annoying miniature fortune cookie fortune. One that never changes.

Despite all this, I’ll try my best to set aside these misgivings (that likely stem from the unendingly obnoxious death knell of the Kisses Christmas commercial) to impartially review Hershey’s Kisses Cereal, a creation that somehow dances around every other erotically nougated candy at the party to Kiss the chocolate frog in the corner, who ends up transforming into a cereal that looks something like, uh, this: Continue reading

Review: New Pretzel Pop-Tarts (Chocolate & Cinnamon Sugar!)

Kellogg's New Pretzel Pop-Tarts Review - Boxes

The crustular revolution will not be televised.

Probably because crustular isn’t a real word, let alone an FDA-approved one. Though one could consider it an antonym of ‘cromulent.’

Pop-Tarts varieties have gotten wilder than a berry in recent years, with a number of crazy flavors and gimmicks that weren’t necessarily crazy good by extension. But through it all, Kellogg’s wasn’t able to open up their third eye to see the true opportunity for creativity that lies in a Pop-Tart’s largely unmodified third component—arguably the most fundamentally important component. The crust.

I struggle to think of many Pop-Tarts with crust that tastes like anything more than “classic puff pastry” and “chocolate puff pastry.” There’s Red Velvet, but that’s really just clown chocolate. Perhaps the only worthy ancestral analogue I can think of for these crust-bending Pretzel Pop-Tarts would be Kellogg’s line of weirdly wonderful Peanut Butter Pop-Tarts. With a more crumbly and baked-cookie-esque crust, that trilogy of PB, Choco PB & PB&J cemented themselves as an unforgettable, holy trinity of revelatory revolutions in Pop-Tarchitecture.

So why did it take Kellogg’s so long to break the expensive factory mold again?
And was it worth it?

Continue reading

News: Kellogg’s Shopkins Cutie O’s Cereal

Kellogg's Shopkins Cutie O's Cereal

Ha, get it? Red & green. Christmas? Ever heard of it?

What’s wrong?

You don’t like it? It’s from your Aunt and I.

Aw, gee, well I’m sorry. I might not be with the times when it comes to Tik Tok (heh, get it, time?), but I figured since ya love those Mario & Louis characters so much you’d dig this cool new team of…err…Cuties! Teens love ’em.

Damn. This happens every time I try to gift away a Kellogg’s licensed cereal.

Yes, Kellogg’s latest shameless partnership is with Shopkins, tiny little squishy kawaii kitchen fixtures that are cute and apparently apple strawberry flavored. If the real toys are anywhere near as charmingly chewy as Polly Pocket accessories, I might invest higher hopes into the cereal version. Sure, Apple Strawberry is a largely unexplored avenue for cereal, and though I dream of one day pouring some of my favorite Capri-Sun flavor into a bowl of strawberry–kiwi-flavored cereal (suck it, Pacific Cooler), choosing apples in kiwis’ stead is nonetheless tasty.

That is, if Cutie O’s can pull it off. Most of Kellogg’s lazily looped licensed cereals have been disappointingly bland, so while I see promise in every cereal, Cutie O’s has its work cut out for it if it wants to break the curse of its thoughtlessly franchised forefathers.

Oh, and merry Christmas to everyone who follows, reads, or even just passively remembers that this blog exists. It’s been a year of great growth for the site and a time of constant change in my own life. I’ll be able to find more poignant words for the past year of cereal in an upcoming recap of the year’s best releases. But until then, consider this the start of a 24-hour purge of cereal crimes. Feel free to eat it with or without orange juice, in or from the bathtub—if that’s what floats your Cutie O’s.

Review: Jolly Rancher Cereal

New Jolly Rancher Cereal Review Box

Poll 100 full panels of 100 Family Feud survey respondents, and I sincerely doubt, with every last drop of mouthwater I have ready to dribble, that anyone would choose Jolly Rancher as the candy most deserving of a breakfast cereal.

I mean, first of all, Jolly Ranchers are popular for having several distinct, atomically potent candy flavors—each a strong personality that threatens to react with combustive volatility if kept too close to another. Second of all, they’re just not that great. Sure, I have a soft spot for the Blue Raspberry Jolly Ranchers I used to melt raw spots in my tender palate, but put these glossy little cylinders next to just about any chocolate candy and I’d feed every Jolly Rancher on Earth to a cabal of feral hogs if it meant getting a Three Musketeers Cereal with freeze-dried nougat.

But I get it: General Mills is clearly trying to get the most money possible out of their Hershey brand partnership. And even though competitor Kellogg’s is probably chuckling with knowing condescension at General Mills for picking up a brand that produced one of the worst Pop-Tarts crossovers, here I sit with a box of Jolly Rancher Cereal regardless.

Clearly trying to ride the tattered coattails of one Sour Patch Kids Cereal—who left in its Warhead-impacted wake a sense of sour delirium surrounding tarter cereals. But does Jolly Rancher Cereal deserve the same sort of hype-worthy hysteria? I’ve got mistletoe on hand, so it’s time to pucker up. Continue reading

News: Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites

New Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites Box

Fact: Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts are inherently the most nostalgic to me.

Are they my favorites today? Not a chance. But they were the only ones my parents ever got, and the memories of eating them with my sister are unparalleled in their neurologic detail. In fact, it’s because of my mortal youthful sin of microwaving my Pop-Tarts for 15 seconds to cook them that today I feel a phantom guilt hugging my soul so tightly that I’ve become an ardent crusader for the true method of Pop-Tart preparation: freezing.

Such a technique likewise works wonders on Pop-Tarts Bites, which debuted right around this time last year in Brown Sugar Cinnamon and Strawberry. By bringing a thicker crust and more permeating frosted sweetness to portable breakfasts everywhere, these Bites are worthy successors of Pop-Tarts Mini Crisps and Go-Tarts.

So while it was such a no-brainer to bring chocolate into the mix—even if it took 365 days of face-palming obviousness—and while I have no-doubt these will be tasty enough to take permanent residence in my car’s glove box, I again hope Chocolate Fudge isn’t the Rise of Skywalker to an ending Bites-sized trilogy. If we’re gonna milk this pastry franchise for what it’s worth, I want Cookies & Creme, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Wild Berry too—it’d practically be this series’ Baby Yoda!

Review: Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Muffin Toasters

Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Muffin Toasters Review - Muffin Tops Cereal Bag

Lucky Charms? Frosted Flakes? Honey Bunches of Oats?

Sure, they’re classic cereals, but are they legends? You can’t have a myth without the mythology, nor a hero without an origin story. And I’m not talking about internally manufactured lore—no matter how good the Cap’n Crunch Extended Universe is. No, the cereals whose legacies will endure the eventual expiration of every earthly trademark will be the ones who moved people. The cereals that collided with culture without significant marketing spin.

I’m talkin’ Oreo O’s, which endured an enigmatic purgatory of legalese by seeking refuge in South Korea.

I’m talkin’ Honeycomb, whose formula change revealed that not only do people not want all-natural flavoring in classic cereals, but they don’t want it so hard that they’ll rally with the vitriol of a bloodlusted Crazy Craving.

And I’m talkin’ Blueberry Muffin Tops, a cereal that launched an outlandish, fan-driven convention spectacle. At that time, Blueberry Muffin Tops was at the cult-favorite cusp between its 2004 introduction and 2016ish disappearance. Back then, before it was bought out by Post, Malt-O-Meal had a much harsher (thought largely unfounded) reputation for selling cheap cereal bootlegs in bulk without a granule of originality. But Blueberry Muffin Tops was a breath of freshly Ziploc’d air. We’re spoiled for choice now, but years ago a craving for blueberry breakfast cereals forced a choice between Blueberry Mini-Wheats (boring), waiting ’til October for Boo Berry (boo-ring), and Post’s Blueberry Morning—which, to be fair, is pretty great, but without word-of-mouth recommendation it just looks like another boring ‘healthy’ cereal.

Blueberry Muffin Tops solved that crisis with its unrestrained, shameless sugary goodness. And while it was discontinued due to a lack of consumer demand, BMT’s everlasting appeal has resurged to the point that Malt-O-Meal, no doubt buoyed by Post’s greater capacity for potential failure, is rebirthing them as Blueberry Muffin Toasters, most likely to make them gel with their larger line of Toast Crunch taste-alikes, but also hopefully because M-O-M doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea about bringing back low-rise jeans.

May they be lowered to the deepest drop-crotch of hell. Continue reading