Review: Cookies & Crème Pop-Tarts Cereal

Look, I know, deep down, that I am but a flake fragment stuck between two cogs within the grand corporate cereal machine, but can’t a crumb dream of being a marbit?

By this I mean: I seriously doubt anything I’ve written on this website has ever influenced a cerealsmith’s grand designs—though if Blueberry Muffin Toasters hits shelves, I will claim peripheral clout by right of Justinian association. But in my imagination, I like to pretend that something like Cookies & Crème Pop-Tarts Cereal was made with a picture of me on an easel, connected with string to a bran map of all my favorite flavor descriptors.

Yes, that sounds narcissistic, but my birthday is next week, so give me a break.
And yes, I know, unsubtly mentioning my upcoming birthday isn’t much better.

C’mon though, a merger of Oreo O’s and Pop-Tarts? Sure, they could’ve picked any of my more-obscure, all-time favorite Pop-Tarts (Milk Chocolate Graham, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, or Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal Delight), but the only cereals more quintessentially dan g. would be a PB&J Waffle Crisp or Gingerbread Golden Grahams!

Ahem, Post and General Mills? Next week, remember? You’re not invited to my all-night laser tag lock-in without presents.

Okay, enough about me: let’s write about these little sandwich cookie pillows entirely in the second and third persons. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, cookies and cream, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 4 Comments

Aug. ’19

Review: Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Corn Pops Cereal

How do you think big cereal companies choose to reintroduce old cereals? Do they do something logical, like hold a focus group of common cereal consumers and wise cerealheads alike, or perhaps mail out surveys?

Or do they just go to Mr. Breakfast’s cereal archive, rip a fat scroll off the mouse wheel, and throw a dart at the computer screen (blindfolded)?

Because it really seems like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops, a 2007 Kellogg’s cereal apparently best known for including a “send-away offer for an Adidas Sports Top,” must have gotten lucky to win out in the re-continuation race—or at least swapped coffins with Tony’s Cinnamon Krunchers right before Kellogg’s’s undertook their dead cereal exhumation. It’s also entirely possible someone at Kellogg’s thought of this without even remembering the 2007 version, because the only geologic record remaining of it is deep in the Kellogg’s archives, sandwiched between Puffa Puffa Rice and Bart Simpson’s No ProblemO’s’s bordering strata.

Whatever its second genesis, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops trades its ancestor’s flavored spheres (i.e. bootleg Reese’s Puffs) for the half-deflated popcorn pieces of Corn Pops proper. The wilted kernels have an incomparably unique texture, one that hasn’t been replicated—and possibly for good reason, because the idea of milky buttered popcorn is no-doubt a daring and dairily divisive philosophy. But will it be conducive to caked on gobs of flav-o-dust?

Let’s all go to the lobby and find out! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, chocolate, corn pops, kellogg's, peanut butter. 28 Comments

Aug. ’19

News: Kellogg’s Baby Shark Cereal

Get back! Stay away from me! I’ve drawn a protective circle in the sand that thou shan’t not breach!

Sorry if I sound overly defensive, but it’s been three years and I’ve still never once heard the parasitic ear-worm known as “Baby Shark.” Sure, I’ve seen the memes, and I’ve heard gut-wrenching testimony from parents on the shoreline of despair, unable to stop the shark from hammering its tune into their head.

I don’t want to hear it, and I’ll strap pillows to my head if it means protecting my noodle from a Great White heck-bent (this is a children’s cereal) on devouring my own grey matter. To me, the only “doo doo doo” I need to remember is from Nickelodeon GUTS.

For this memetic oceanic virus isn’t content with staying online any more. As the first YouTuber cereal to hit shelves, Kellogg’s Baby Shark Cereal beats out other, cleverer ideas like Tay Zonday’s Chocolate Grain, The Evolution of Brans, and Charlie Bit My Ladyfingers.

But hey, at least we’ve got a Gangnam Style Cereal.

Baby Shark Cereal, which debuts at Sam’s Club for August 17th’s Shark Week before hitting other retailers in September, features “Berry Fin-tastic” rings and marshmallows—which is code for, “we couldn’t sell enough Caticorn Cereal (another Sam’s Club exclusive), so we expelled it from the Mytho-Mammalian class and into the realm of cerebrally carnivorous kids’ marine life.”

So while I do expect Baby Shark Cereal’s flavor to be familiarly unfulfilling, as with all cases I must reserve judgement until I can sink my own teeth into it. If it includes a free puka shell necklace inside, I may just be able to forgive this infant terror of the deep for what it’s done to eardrums everywhere.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: kellogg's, news. Leave a comment

Aug. ’19

Review: Mermaid Cereals (General Mills and Kellogg’s Froot Loops!)

Finally, after decades of alpha-male tigers, geriatric cinnamon-toast bakers and the fiery testosterone of the sky’s giant Raisin Bran-loving plasma ball, we’re getting a cereal mascot who’s a strong female role mod—aw wait…she’s only half human, isn’t she? Do we really want the world’s daughters looking up to someone who craps in the ocean?

Sorry fishladies, didn’t mean to slander you. I’m sure there are plenty of sophisticated mermaidens out there who use seafoam bidets, and you’re all way classier than those treacherous sirens. All I wanted to do was hear them cover Chocolate Rain, but I did not stay dry and I certainly felt the pain.

Oceanic etiquette aside, I find the food world’s mermaid trend intriguing. It seems these Ms. Thological creatures have eclipsed unicorns as young kids’ cryptids of fixation, as mermaids are apparently popular enough to warrant two cereals, from two different companies, released at roughly the same time in two different hemispheres. While General Mills was kind enough to hook me up with several (several) boxes worth of their new Mermaid Cereal, the Aussies of the Yeah, G’Day! podcast were kind enough to send me Kellogg’s Mermaid Froot Loops from the land down-underwater.

So which continent will emerge as ~~king~~ queen of breakfast’s aquamarina? Let’s dive in. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, 8 rating, general mills, international, kellogg's. 1 Comment

Jul. ’19

News: Lucky Charms Crispy Rice Clusters Cereal

Oh, Lucky, you beautiful chameleon of predatory cereal assimilation: you’ve done it again!

Early last year, the breakfast aisle’s favorite impish Irelander threw all caution to the sugar-swirled wind with Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes, a marbit mashup that may not have tasted amazing, but was nevertheless a flippant play that earned my respect for poking the Kellogg’s tiger-bear.

And now, in a move so unprecedented in both shade and punctuality, it seems Lucky Charms wants to remedy the biggest cereal crisis to plague an infinity of earths: the death of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal as we knew it. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, lucky charms, news, rice krispies. 10 Comments

Jul. ’19

Review: Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts

Listen, when the slogan tells you to “save big money at Menards,” there’s an invisible asterisk attached that reads “if you’re willing to wait two full months per 60¢ saved.”

For those confused by most of that (rather than just some of it): Menards is a midwestern hardware store comparable to Home Depot or Lowe’s—if you add a twang of ope-fulness. When news of Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts broke in mid-May, I immediately started looking for a place to buy them. You know, so I could get them in time for Independence Day.

Both wonderfully and strangely, the only place I could find them was on Menards’ website—what’s more patriotic than discount lumber, I guess?—and with a 60¢ mail-in rebate to make the box cost me under $1.50. Sounds like an American Dream come true, right?

Well, 48 automated Menards customer service emails later, I learned that not only were the Pop-Tarts on a seemingly infinite backorder, but I’m also probably the only person to buy them from the site. The page where I bought them has been deleted, and they finally arrived conspicuously in a package better secured than Fort Knox’s solid-gold diary.

So while the actual Fourth of July is weeks behind us, perhaps we can rechristen this occasion: Happy Menardian Solstice, everyone! Who wants fireworks? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, blueberry, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 2 Comments

Jul. ’19

The Empty Bowl Episode Sixteen: Hot, Buttery, & Oh-So Glossy

Hold onto your unripe pumpkins, because it’s about to get prematurely spooky up in here.

What better way to beat the summer heat than to dream of cooler, crisper times ahead? That’s why the latest episode of my and Justin‘s meditative cereal podcast covers a diverse temporal spread of seasonal products, from sarcophagus-juicy Halloween gossip to Christmas cookies in July.

New to this calming corner of the world’s breakfast table? Get yourself good and horizontal—if you want to go the extra mile, fill your belly button with 2% for good luck—as we tackle muffin-flavored toast, Bubsy the Bobcat, and the many uses of the word “mythos.”

Oh, and these:

New perennial potluck favorite, anyone?

If the world’s got you hot and bothered, rather than buttered, you can find more existential cereal reassurances at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but reading them beats the heck out of daytime television.

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

Jul. ’19

Review: Vanilla Almond Raisin Bran Crunch

The more time passes, I think the more our society is not just normalizing raisin bran, but celebrating it. Gone are the days of clumsy bathroom humor. Gone is the Seinfeldian slander. And gone are the chronic misinterpretations of the stuff’s sugar content (the servings are heavier. heavier I tell you!)

Now, I like to believe that we as a culture can appreciate and thank our sun-dried stewards of more nutritionally substantive sweetness.

Even in our darkest hours, we’ve learned to praise the sun.

To evidence this, I’d point to the wealth of limited edition Kellogg’s Raisin Bran varieties we’ve seen lately, all of which have been arguably effective evolutions of the twice-scooped formula. Apple Strawberry hit us with an unexpectedly creative haymaker, while RB + Bananas boldly did what no lazy breakfaster has done before: acted on the diced-fruit “serving suggestion” seen on cereal boxes everywhere.

Vanilla Almond Raisin Bran continues that curiosity-driven tradition with a flavor pairing that’s more familiar, but perhaps more fitting. Rather than overtly fruity, V.A. takes R.B. back to some earthier thematic roots.

But enough mumblings about motif: let’s munch!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, almond, kellogg's, raisin bran, vanilla. Leave a comment