Review: Boo Berry Monster Cereal (2019)

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 →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, boo berry, general mills, halloween. 6 Comments

Sep. ’19

Review: Millville Cookies & Cream Cereal

Oreo O’rnithology: the academic study of Earth’s diverse and varied flocks of cookies & cream cereals.

This field of research has only recently exploded in popularity. After the first Oreo O extinction around the turn of the millennium, budding scientists found themselves sandwiched somewhere between cereal paleontology and purgatory. Despite the ever-feeding buzz that demanded Oreo O’s’ reinstitution, it wasn’t until 2013’s false flag release of General Mills’ ghastly Hershey’s Cookies & Crème Cereal that interest in the subject—and the prophesied birth of a new C&C prodigy—began to bloom anew.

From there, creams and dreams came true quite rapidly. The world discovered South Korea’s worst kept and best tasted secret. Malt-O-Meal dropped a suspicious Oreo O’s taste alike. Then we finally got the real stuff back, albeit with a milked-down flavor that only soured with the tepid release of Golden and Mega Stuf variants. Now, mass investment in the category seems to be approaching critical mass. We’ve had a promising yet poorly executed cookies & cream cereal. One that hits your gut like a fossilized Hydrox cookie. And now, I’ve unearthed an unsuspecting store brand interpretation from Millville—in hopes that it will satisfy the authentic Oreo O’s cravings that only expensive Eastern hemisphere exports can currently satisfy.

Now, I’ve learned that Millville Cookies & Cream Cereal is by no means new—readers claim the stuff, along with its Golden variant, have been out for anywhere from 2 to 12 months. But as someone who makes few pilgrimages out to Aldi without good reason, I was hitherto ignorant, plodding along on the dark side of the moonpie while generic Oreo O’s bred like space bacteria somewhere in Aldi’s cardboard jungle of discount groceries.

But that ends today: I will make my penance with the cosmic Oreo O’verlords—and find out if there’s a new cookies & cream (dun)king in town. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, cookies and cream, millville. Leave a comment

Sep. ’19

Review: Millville Peanut Butter and Jelly Puffs Cereal

You know who I blame for this? Harry Burnett Reese.

If ol’ H.B., or “Poppy Reese,” as Wikipedia likes to allege he was called, hadn’t been tinkering in his basement with homebrewed confections whilst moonlighting at the Hershey factory, he wouldn’t’ve seized the opportunity to make a revolutionary peanut butter cup.

Maybe he would’ve been more of a candy-making hobbyist later in life. Maybe his big idea would be the Reese’s Jelly-Wrapped Peanut Butter Cup. And maybe that idea fails in spectacular and gelatinous fashion. But somehow, maybe the idea prompts cereal makers to give that flavor combo a go in a more easily preserved viscosity.

In that particular timeline, we have no shortage of options when it comes to PB&J Cereals. There’s even PB&J milk, and PB&J vodka! It’s a happy world, presumably far happier than this one, wherein Millville has manufactured the first reputable (doesn’t count!) PB&J Cereal in four years, breaking a drought that started with the sort-of-but-really-nonexistence of PB & J Cereal in the ’80s.

It’s called Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs. It’s certainly the most transparent about its devotion to the flavor, boasting a pair of chuckle-heads who look straight out of a strangely spliced Peanut Butter x Strawberry Laffy Taffy.

Which, incidentally, they have in the other world. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, millville, pb&j, peanut butter, strawberry. 4 Comments

Sep. ’19

Spooned & Spotted (2019): Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats

Move over, pumpkin spice: I can sense a pulpy orange sea change coming this autumn.

Gone are the days of the grocery store’s overindulgence in pumpkin spice beverages, foodstuffs, and assorted lifestyle paraphernalia. No, this year should be all about pumpkin pie.

And before you open your gourd-hole, of course they’re not the same! I’m sick of limited edition products that reduce an entire pie to its perfume of spiced accents. I want to taste scoops of purée! I want crust and whipped cream! I want the whole darn snack-o-lantern!

Now will I find those subtleties in Kellogg’s returning Pumpkin Pie Rice Krispies Treats? Probably not, but I feel like a fool for not yet trying. Though these auburn cereal squares were introduced back in 2017, I somehow never reviewed them. I think it was partially an accidental oversight caused by cloves blown in my eyes, and partially an intentional oversight due to 2017’s PPRKTs coming forty to a box. Since such a quantity is bigger than my lifetime list of friends I like enough to give a Rice Krispies Treats, I think fourteen is a reasonable compromise—this way, even if they’re bad, I can tape ’em to my mailbox for trick-or-treaters.

While you’re here, I might as well give a speedy account of all the other returning fall cereal products spotted so far: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: pumpkin spice, rice krispies, spooned & spotted. 1 Comment

Sep. ’19

The Empty Bowl Episode Nineteen: Doin’ it for the Graham

Look deep inside yourself. You know it to be true:

You wish you could be a graham cracker.

Don’t fight it—we all feel the same. To be a wholesome sheet of baked flour, breezily aerated and tucked in beneath a tender blanket of honey? That’s some post-Saṃsāra level transcendent comfort right there.

And we at The Empty Bowl believe every listener deserves to feel as blissfully crisp as a grahamed-up rectangle—so much so that we believe we’ve made great contributions to graham cereal’s future trajectory. My and Justin‘s show is all about meditation through cereal, so if you’re in the market for a grating and industrially noisy podcast, you might want to record your own by tossing some Corn Flakes in a paper shredder.

But those amongst us who want to be nestled into tranquility by cereal news, reviews, and various other tomfooleries, join us for Episode Nineteen. In this one, we cover the wishy-washy return of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, more pumpkin carving decal disappointment, and a whole lot of Golden Grahams.

If you need more golden goodness, you can find eighteen other cereal escapades at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one opens up a new graham chakra inside me.

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

Sep. ’19

Review: Kellogg’s Baby Shark Cereal

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Baby Shark the song is infinitely more interesting than Baby Shark Cereal.

I’ll admit, I have an ongoing aural embargo against the tune. My grubby brain is nematodally susceptible to earworms, so out of fear for my undisturbed dreamscapes, I’ve not only never listened to Baby Shark, but I’ve also never taken time to appreciate the sheer breadth and insanity of the infant man-eater’s history.

I might sound dumb for not knowing this, but apparently Baby Shark is originally a campfire chant dating back hundred of years, if not more, from a time where” YouTubers” were in the business of potatoes. The original version, however, is far more violent than the brine-washed version popular amongst children. Many versions involve a swimmer who not only loses an arm to a hungry sharkling, but a leg and sometimes a blood-gushing head, too. Other variants involve grueling and unsuccessful attempts at resuscitation, as well as philosophical inquiries on whether shark victims go to heaven, and what kind of god would continue to spawn such deceptively cute sea demons.

Then there are ongoing copyright claims surrounding the song, controversial political affiliations, and cruel attempts by law enforcement to use the track for repelling homeless people.

This is all to say that it’s kind of a shame how a bizarro slice of life like Baby Shark got such a soul-deadening cereal. If you read my Birthday Cake Froot Loops review, you know that not only did I voice a searing distaste for lazy sugar ring cereals, but I also spewed so much linguistic vitriol that it’d probably be bad for my blood pressure to do it again.

But does Baby Shark Cereal really deserve the same hate as Toucan Sam’s pathetic chemical droppings? And when I’m finished eating it, will it go to heaven? These are the questions I was, with great pains, born to answer. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, kellogg's. 3 Comments

Sep. ’19

News: Golden Grahams S’Mores Bites

Oooooh, Golden Grahams: you’re looking good! You’re 44 going on :30!

No, seriously—this is a big step for Golden Grahams. This criminally underrated 1975 cereal almost always gets the short end of the campfire roasting stick when it comes to creative new variations. Perhaps it’s an intentional—and respectable—commitment to the purity of Golden Grahams’ sterling reputation, but the fact that we’ve never seen a Peanut Butter or Chocolate Golden Grahams leaves my heart crying honey-drop tears not unlike the cereal’s short-lived ’80s mascot:

But when Golden Grahams does get an ancillary exploration of flavor potential, it’s always in a cereal-adjacent form. We’ve gotten a couple different Golden Grahams cereal bars, and now the no-brainer concept of Golden Grahams and s’mores ingredients—a notion already popularized by Post and subsidiary Malt-O-Meal—is getting a more well-rounded interpretation.

Piggybacking off the presumed success of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites, Golden Grahams S’Mores Bites deliver thirty rounds of choco-‘mallow stuffed graham balls to your microwave, and in just thirty more seconds, you can have enough incendiary enjoyment to launch a trebuchet of ’em into your neighbor’s potluck.

I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited. Graham as a flavor—or even just an abstract principle—deserves more representation. So here’s hoping these Bites are the start of a slow roll into 2020: the Year of Golden Graham’d Experiences.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, golden grahams. Leave a comment

Sep. ’19

News: Millville Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs!

Now we’re talkin’!

Perhaps sensing my grating distaste for granulated, tasteless rings, an unexpected source is about to relieve my weathered sweet tooth from the kind of breakfast blandness slowly eroding it like a suckled candy cane.

It’s aptly titled “Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs,” a no-nonsense, respectably minimalistic name that nevertheless belies the sheer insanity of the stuff’s chuckle-some mascots, who could totally wipe the floor with the Apple Jacks mascots in a tag-team cage match—just look at that strawberry’s Medusa hair, and the peanut’s gravity-defying buck-nut tooth!

This isn’t the first time Aldi store-brand Millville has stunned us with a novel concept. Last year, my brain was warped by the goodness of Snickerdoodle Kookies, a cereal that led me to uncover Millville as a puppet brand of Post. So while it’s not entirely surprising that Post, who has been reliably delivering creative cereals for over a year now, is the one to fulfill my unending hunger for PB&J cereals, it still calls into question why they’re trying something so experimental exclusively at Aldi.

Perhaps, if Snickerdoodle Kookies is any indication, if Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs goes over well, it will be picked up by Malt-O-Meal for a wider release. This would suggest that Millville is a trial kitchen of sorts for Post’s wilder ideas, which then supply Malt-O-Meal with testable flavors to release on the Post label proper.

No matter the grand strategic alignment, I am excited. Strawberry jelly is my preferred filling over grape, and I personally loved JIF’s interpretation of PB&J cereal from way back. Plus, the only other cereal of its kind I’ve had since was an embarrassment to lunchboxes everywhere, so here’s hoping Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs puts a sticky-sweet smile on my face again.

And even if it doesn’t, PB&J is still a gateway taste to a Fluffernutter Cereal.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: millville, pb&j. 1 Comment