08

Oct. ’19

Review: Toasted Coconut Cheerios

New Toasted Coconut Cheerios Review Cereal Box

Listen, I’ve been cereal blogging for four and a half years now. After about two, adjectival creativity gets tough.

I mean, even for a concept as broad as cereal, there aren’t that many words to clearly convey its flavor without getting too hokey—which I still do, to the point of putting the wrong words in and taking the right words out before I shake the sentence all about.

Sweet. Buttery. Toasted. Crunchy. I pray for anyone who’s been diligently reading long enough to count how many times I’ve even stooped to using more idiosyncratic descriptors like “hedonistic,” “sugar soaked,” or “droolbending.”

Actually, wait, I should use that last one more.

Regardless, if cereal adjectives get stale, then specific flavor words are even worse. For example, after reviewing a lengthy patchwork of pumpkin spice products, I feel obligated to pay the hyphen in pumpkin-y overtime. And that’s nothing compared to the fines I owe Merriam Webster for unlicensed neologizing.

But there’s pumpkin spice, and then there’s coconut. At least PS has like five constituent spices I can rely on to split cloven hairs: once I use the phrase coconutty in this review, it’s all over for me…and there you have it. I’m all out of ideas. Well anyway, Toasted Coconut Cheerios are good. See you in the next one! Continue reading →

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07

Oct. ’19

Coming Soon: Frosted Mini-Wheats Filled – Mixed Berry

2019 Frosted Mini-Wheats Mixed Berry Filled

And the hits. Just. Keep. Coming.

You thought Blueberry Eggo Cereal was exciting? Psh, maybe if you’re a garden variety syrup snob.

And Blueberry Muffin Toasters? Don’t make me laugh. Isn’t that just Eggo for squares?

No, what any true-goo cereal fan should be excited for is just this: dry, sugar-dusted wheat bricks tenderly squelched (12%) full of dried mixed berry goo.

Uh, you know, when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound quite as good as bite-sized griddle cakes and cerealized Seinfeld concept restaurants. But regardless, thanks again to cereal sleuth of the month (year?) Devin, we now know that the Mixed Berry variety of Filled Frosted Mini-Wheats will be returning—though I wouldn’t blame you if you never noticed it leave.

In fact, this cereal concept is so niche—and admittedly blasé in its appeal—that I can’t even find an accurate lifespan for its original incarnation. The only key indicator that 2019 (or 2020)’s version is new is that they’re now simply called “Filled” instead of “Touch of Fruit in the Middle,” a welcome renaming that will no-doubt stave off my carpal tunnel minutes longer when it comes time to review this stuff.

Regardless, fans of fruit and obfuscatory wheat cages for said fruit can prep their berry-discerning taste buds to try this one soon. I mean, there is blueberry in there, so we can safely assume these will take well to butter and maple syrup.

 

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05

Oct. ’19

Coming Soon: Pretzel Pop-Tarts & Froot Loop Pop-Tarts

Pretzel Pop-Tarts Brown Sugar Cinnamon & Chocolate

Photo via Candy Hunting

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the phrase “jumping the shark” by this point. You know, major turning points in the absurdity of any given property over time. The final season of Scrubs. The 3D television. The Renaissance. Many such cases.

And it seems even breakfast products in the best couple years have been iteratively cranking the the dubious complexity dial on their flavoring up to 100(g of sugar or degrees of abstraction). For cereal, this was less of a shark jumping than a sour patching, as this year’s gut-warpingly weird Sour Patch Kids Cereal eroded a hole in the proverbial stomach lining of possibility, allowing and normalizing the entrance of other cereal mutations—for better or worse.

Pop-Tarts, on the other hand, seemed to go off the deep end—right into the uncanny crumb catcher—earlier, with Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts heralding many other largely gimmicky Tarts.

Thankfully, Pop-Tarts’ latest conceptual sneak peeks are far more domesticated in their wildness than their second latest—I was worried we’d too-quickly evolve from Scanning our Tarts to Embedding Our Holo-Tarts With Genetic Seasoning (for the last Valentine’s Day before the Pastry Singularity.

Continue reading →

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04

Oct. ’19

News: The Return of Star Wars Cereal

Star Wars Cereal 2019 Rise of Skywalker

Hey you: yeah, you!

Do you love cereal as much as Han Solo knows Leia loves him?

Do you find yourself hyperdriving through boring, terrestrial cereals without a dent in your appetite?

Has your stomach ever rumbled so hard that you wondered whether there was a hypothermic Jedi warming himself inside you?

Well then you may be in luck: General Mills is teaming up with Lucasfilms again to bring back Star Wars Cereal. The last time we saw this stuff was in 2015/16, when it debuted in boxes bearing Yoda, Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, Rey and BB-8. After The Force Awakens, we didn’t get anything special for The Last Jedi. But now that The Rise of Skywalker is looming like a metropolitan cloud formation, we’re getting updated boxes featuring BB-8 and new droid D-O (who looks like a mobile megaphone), alongside Kylo Ren and a “red Sith Trooper” (who looks like a more vanilla Emperor’s Royal Guard).

Granted, this cereal really isn’t anything special: it’s a generic corn base with the same ol’, largely inscrutable marbit Darth Rorschachs.

But if you’re a die-hard Star Wars fan or the parent of one, you’ll probably want to sneak some of this into theaters this December—in a milk-filled fanny pack, of course.  Just don’t expect the back of the box to be anything but a watered-down version of those Star Wars Cross-Section books.

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01

Oct. ’19

News: Toasted Coconut Cheerios are Coming Soon!

New Toasted Coconut Cheerios Box

Quick: forget everything you know about fall.

That big holiday everyone loves? Oh, you mean Spooksgiving?

Crunchy stuff that falls from trees? Those are bird fossils. Don’t touch.

Don’t even get me started on PSLs. Palm Sauced Luau-fuel is what I call ’em. Yes, as Cheerios has proved, something as summery as Toasted Coconut should still be allowed to be a flavor for colder seasons—for, uh, some reason.

You might think that Toasted Coconut Cheerios are just an early leak for Summer 2020, but these tropical rings have already been spotted in the pre-wintertide wild:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B29LGN6FFsR/

With all kinds of “OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS,” Toasted Coconut Cheerios will soon join a proud lineage of seasonal Cheerios. But whether it successfully staves off fall fatigue—or if it’s a bit more forgettable—remains to be seen, spiced, and sighed through autumn’s crisp, whispering winds.

Err, I mean, “Summer’s 3-Month Yawn.”

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28

Sep. ’19

News: First Look at New Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Muffin Toasters

New Malt-O-Meal Blueberry Muffin Toasters Tops Revival

That muffin you like is going to come back in style.

Blueberry Muffin Tops? Heard of ’em? Dreamt of ’em? Wept for ’em? Many do all three at once.

This early 2000s cult favorite pastried cereal had an impressive life, between being one of very few “Malt-O-Meal Originals” at the time, being criminally under-discussed save for its memorable feature in what is likely the most confusing cereal event to witness without context:

But it’s been discontinued for some time now, despite many fans lamenting for them, their pleas echoing unheard in whatever barren blueberry patch M-O-M had abandoned.

Nevertheless, the cereal persisted. A conspicuously short time after Justin and I discussed the cereal on The Empty Bowl, I shared a rumor that the cereal would be revived as Blueberry Muffin Toasters—and now we have visual confirmation of the beautiful stuff!We must again thank reader Devin, who already tipped us off about Blueberry Eggo Cereal‘s upcoming release. Sort of an interesting impasse Kellogg’s and Malt-O-Meal have found themselves in—each releasing an ooey-gooey fresh-baked blueberry cereal around the same time.

Who will triumph? Toaster or griddle? With a jar of peanut butter as my witness, I vow to find out in a JIFfy.

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26

Sep. ’19

News: Blueberry Eggo Cereal is Coming Soon!

Kellogg's Blueberry Eggo Cereal

Buckle up, friends: we’re in for a ride.

In fact, you should probably buckle up, drive to your nearest greasy spoon station, pull up to pump #4, Ignore the standard unleaded butter and mid-grade compotes. No, only super premium syrup will provide the fuel needed for this high-octane breakfast road trip.

You may recall that August 24 was National Waffle Day, which, unlike the seemingly arbitrarily dated National Cereal Day, actually commemorates the anniversary of the first waffle iron patent. You may also remember that on said red-letter day, the red-fonted Eggo Twitter account promised to bring back Eggo Cereal, should they get 10,000 retweets.

They did, of course, and while we may pose several conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of those stats—it takes a long time to make a new cereal, so they likely already had it ready, plus the retweets stalled at 4,000 for a week before launching up conspicuously—but it seems the end result more than makes up for it.

Yes, thanks to reader Devin, we have an exclusive first look at Blueberry Eggo Cereal! No word yet on whether original Maple will return as well—to fill the Waffle Boy sized hole left in my heart—but this alone is beyond exciting. Looking at these indigo-specked waffle rounds, I’m holding onto hope that these taste more like Ralston’s legendary Blueberry Waffleos than Cap’n Crunch’s ho-hum Blueberry Pancake Crunch.

No word yet on when these jacks will flap onto shelves, but I think the moral of the story is that we all should be guilt-tripping sassy brand Twitter accounts into creating or reviving innovative cereals. After all, it’s the least they can do in return for filling our timelines with embarrassing “wrap battles” about Crunchwraps and Jimmy Dean breakfast burritos.

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24

Sep. ’19

Review: Boo Berry Monster Cereal (2019)

Boo Berry Review - 2019 Monster Cereal Box

Knock knock.

“Who’s there?”

Boo.

“Boo who?”

That’s for me to decide, ma’am. Now step aside so me and the ‘buster boys can exorcise the restless dust bunnies haunting your droppings-dropping vacuum.

But the question does remain: will Boo Berry make me weep tears of mirth or mourning this year? It’s been two years since I did a write up of a General Mills Monster Cereal—I took 2018 off out of protest, as Brown Vampire, Pink Abomination and The Blue Guy have continually grown less inspired year after year.

Of course, my Boo-cott didn’t affect this year’s release, which features perhaps the lamest “theme” in recorded Monster history: digital pumpkin stencils featuring Count Chocula, Franken Berry & Boo Berry, as well as members of the Addams Family, who doubtlessly left a few cash-stuffed gourds on General Mills’ porch to make this happen. I was tempted to continue my autumnal abstinence for 2019, but after realizing that cereal companies aren’t throwing me a single femur this year when it comes to new fall cereals—seriously, don’t be surprised if I sleep upside down in my pantry for most of October—I decided it was worth exhuming and examining at least one of the gang, just to see if it’s changed at all.

I picked Boo Berry, because aside from being my favorite non-mummified Monster Cereal, he’s also been the most inconsistent. It seems every year the cerulean specter either possesses my Halloween excitement like something out of Hereditary during sloppy years, or a JoJo Stand in more crunchily coordinated seasons.

So what’s it gonna be, my ectoplasmic little friend? King Paimon or King Crimson? Continue reading →

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