News: Fillows Cereal is Launching in Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll & Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme!

Ever have one of those dreams where the Pillsbury Doughboy offers you a bite of his arm, and you wake up molar-deep in memory foam?

Uh, yeah, me neither.

But if you have ever wanted to sink your teeth in a pillow first thing every morning, General Mills has two new cereals to tickle your down-feathered fancy.

They’re called Fillows, and they’re launching this Monday at select Walmart stores, before hitting other grocery chains this fall. Coming in both Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme and Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll, Fillows are likely a bold effort by General Mills to counter their rivals’ tasty cereal partnerships—though Cookies ‘n’Creme has actually existed in regional markets for some time now.

Fillows claim to be “the only cereal to deliver a crunchy shell with a burst of creme filling in every bite.” Which isn’t really true, especially since Fillows are already a direct dig at Krave—I hear they even meant to call ’em Krillows, but it would’ve ruined their idea for a crunchy crustacean cereal.

Comparisons aside, I’m very excited to try both icing-packed flavors and immediately fill my own pillow with my face.

News: Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts are Here!

Kellogg's New Red White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts Box

What does America taste like? It seems Pop-Tarts is having a tough time figuring it out.

They’ve tried the obvious. They’ve tried to distill the essence of our diets. And they’ve tried two other Red, White & ___ flavors before ditching the generic Berry and misplaced Cherry (which works neither chromatically nor rhythmically) for Blueberry.

Red, White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts may make more sense than its previous flagged flavors, though I do wish they’d get right to the heartland of America and make Superman Ice Cream Pop-Tart—they already have DC’s blessing!

Proudly baked in the USA* without oxford (or any) commas, Red ⭑ White & Blueberry Pop-Tarts have already been spotted at Market Basket and Jewel Osco stores (with complete nutrition info), according to The Impulsive Buy. But in keeping with the recent tradition of weird places to buy breakfast products, you can pick up a box of RW&B Pop-Tarts from…Menards?…and get a $0.21 mail-in rebate to boot!

Think of all the penny whistles and MoonPies you could buy with that!

If you have any new breakfast news of your own to wave proudly, hoist it on over to our Submissions page. If I don’t put it on this blog, I’ll at least cram it in my toaster.

*Google seems to think all Pop-Tarts are made domestically, and there is indeed a Pop-Tarts factory not far from me.

News: Lucky Charms Soft-Baked Treats Marshmallow Blondies

Lucky Charms Soft-Baked Treats Marshmallow Bliondies

If there’s any tangential breakfast product spin-off that needed another Darwinian evolution, it’s the cereal bar.

Following the halcyon days of the Milk ‘n’ Cereal Bar (which you can still buy at places like…Staples?), most modern cereal bars are basically just airy candy/granola bar hybrids. Which isn’t a bad thing—it’s still the only way to experience a different flavor of Golden Graham—but I’m generally in the mood to choose one of those two extremes, or split the difference with a Clif Bar so I can at least feel like I’m scaling a daunting crag whilst lying perfectly horizontal.

But the cereal bar’s next munchable mutation is far more exciting. General Mills—pretty much the only cereal company still making bars of mainline cereals—has launched new Marshmallow Blondie Lucky Charms Soft-Baked Treats, which have already been spotted at BJ’s, Walmart, and Sam’s Club.

Though I’m no-doubt excited about these sugar-drizzled blondies—their fossilized layers of marshmallows remind me of the swirling sugar stew that was Lucky Charms Oatmeal—they do look a lot like General Mills’ Fiber One Bars. So will these magically delicious blondies also be digestively rigorous? That remains to be seen. But whether or not Lucky will be keeping my intestines plucky, I’m all for buying a value-pack of these bricks and mortaring ’em up with ice cream ’til they hit the ceiling.

Review (x2): Confetti Cupcake & Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts

Kellogg's Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts Review Box

Look, I have a whipped cream firehose right here, and the safety’s off.
So I’m gonna ask you one more time: where’s Captain Cupcake?

It’s really the only explanation: the squiggle-stached mascot behind Hostess Cupcakes, known for his hulking naval circumference and nautical nonsense, hasn’t been seen in action for years. Many theorized that he, along with the other obscure sideshow snack cakes, were disappeared out of existence by the powerful Fruit Pie the Magician, whose grand illusion managed to rewrite our dark timeline and save Hostess from bankruptcy.

But with the release of these new conveniently frosted Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts, the truth is clear. Captain Cupcake, bitter about his fudgy offspring not getting their own Hostess Cereal (this was C. Cupcake’s one chance to return fire against Cap’n Crunch!), defected and sold trade secrets to Kellogg’s. Now we can only assume that he’s hiding out in the molded wreckage of an abandoned Hostess Bakery Thrift Outlet.

If he happens to reappear under a new diet alias—with a slimmer shape due to months spent lifting stale Wonderbread pallets—I hope the feds book this “Admiral Aspartame” instantly.  Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s HI! Happy Inside – Simply Strawberry

Kellogg's HI! Happy Inside Review Simply Strawberry Cereal Pouch

Oh, you thought cereal was for you and your taste buds? Nope, sorry buster: this cereal is specifically for your stomach. Your gut. Your food wallet. Whatever you call it, it better be ready for a healthy migration of gut flora, because Kellogg’s new HI! Happy Inside cereal line is here to culture abdomens everywhere.

We’ve been aware of HI! Happy Inside for a while now, but it was largely only available in location- or cost-prohibitive value packs. My local chains have finally begun to stock the stuff in smaller pouches, so I’m taking a cautious first spelunk into this protozoan belly of the beast with Simply Strawberry—ostensibly the fruity front-liner of this howdy-happy cereal trilogy that also includes Bold Blueberry and Cocoa Crunch.

I was hesitant to try this stuff to begin with, since, generally any healthy cereal that brands itself from head to intestine as an anatomical expedient ends up abandoning my appetite somewhere near the gall bladder. But as I wait for other new cereals that are less stomach-friendly and more gut-punchy, I figure it couldn’t hurt to brace my body for impact. Each HI! Happy Inside cereal boasts a three-in-one benefit of prebiotics, probiotics, and fiber, so even if I hate this stuff, maybe this review can still be cited for some kid’s science fair project. Continue reading

News: Kellogg’s Simply Pop-Tarts Harvest Strawberry

Kellogg's Simply Pop-Tarts Harvest Strawberry Box

How much time has to go by before a News post becomes an Overdue post?

At least I’m not alone: the existence of Harvest Strawberry-flavored “Simply” Pop-Tarts has apparently gone under the radar of every snack food journalist from the information super highway to the dusty backroads of the Wild Wildberry West.

And for good reason: the timeline behind these GMO-free Pop-Tarts is a little cloudy. Web searches reveal that they’ve been mentioned in early 2018, when it seems they were exclusive to school lunch programs, much like General Mills’ neufchatel-filled cereal bars. But I was able to date their current, Costco-exclusive 32-pack debut back to January of this year, thanks to a Kellogg’s newsletter for health and wellness professionals.

The irony here is that the nutrition facts for Simply Pop-Tarts are just as, if not more dietarily damning than a normal Strawberry Pop-Tart, with more saturated fat per pastry. But hey: at least it has half a gram more of dietary fiber and no green sprinkles!

No word on whether these will taste dramatically different than normal Strawberry Pop-Tarts—I expect to taste that harvest, whether it’s a touch of earthy dirt or the metallic sheen of an International Harvester combine—but without a Costco membership, I’ll ask that if you’ve tried them, leave a comment below. In the mean time, I’ll have to woo my grandma into xeroxing her membership card.

Or just try Google Express.

Spooned & Spotted: Cap’n Crunch’s Red, White & Blue Crunch

New Cap'n Crunch Red, White & Blue Crunch Cereal Box

For yet another boring Crunch Berry palette swap, this is still a juicy development for the Cap’n.

Close followers of Crunchian lore will remember a certain Freedom Crunch, a hyper-patriotic Cap’n variant that I discovered last summer and later redacted, after hearing from Cap’n Crunch that it was never actually produced. But then, I received word from Minnesota that the cereal demonstrably did reach at least one very select market (ironic for a nationally branded cereal). The truth of Freedom Crunch’s purgatorial existence has never been revealed—but hey, the stuff even has an officially licensed shirt! Continue reading

News: Confetti & Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts are Coming Soon!

New Confetti and Chocolate Cupcake Pop-Tarts

(Images via Kellogg’s)

Whether your stomach’s half full or half empty, there’s always more room to fill it with full-filling cupcakes. But if you’d rather circumvent common cupped and caked frustrations (why are my hands so oily? where do I put this damp, crumb-covered liner? why have we as a culture recognized Funfetti’s flavorlessly sweetened sovereignty?), then there are about to be two new and newly returned Pop-Tarts that’ll make your morning dessert a little less messy. Continue reading