Review: Rice Krispies Treats Snap Crackle Poppers (3 Flavors!)

What makes a balanced breakfast?

Cereal commercials will have you believe it calls for toast, fruit, milked cereal, another glass of milk, maybe like a sausage?, and some OJ for good measure. Despite such a figurative feast’s skewed carbo-hydrating to protein ratio, it’s still probably a better balanced breakfast than what I had in mind: a bowl of Rice Krispies in one hand and Cocoa Krispies in the other—each precariously perched on a card-tower of respective Confetti Cupcake and Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts.

Perfectly balanced, as all impending stomachaches should be.

That said, I’m really excited to work Kellogg’s new Rice Krispies Treats Snap Crackle Poppers into my balanced breakfast. Why, you ask? Because they’d make quite the square meal.

Nothing quite like 100 words of buildup to a two-word punchline. Anyway, for those still with me after that egregious comedy sin, it’s time to do some sweet penance: a three-part munchline of creamily coated and cubed Rice Krispies! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, 8 rating, chocolate, cookies and cream, kellogg's, rice krispies, vanilla. 2 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Strawberry Shortcake Crunch

“Let them eat cake.” — Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch

Well, probably. The origin of that quote is disputed by historians, biographers, and cereal box scribes, so it may very well have been everyone’s favorite breakfast boatman. After all, the never-aging Cap’n appears to be forever sailing in some timeless sea or milky non-place, so an 1843 quotation would feel like yesterday to such a mustachioed morning mainstay.

I’ve been analyzing Crunchian flavor trends already, but Cap’n “Deliciousness of the Endless” Crunch seems to have a growing fixation on cakes. After all, doughnuts are pretty much fried cakes—as are pancakes—so his latest variety may suggest more crunchy cakes in the future.

It’s called Strawberry Shortcake Crunch, and whatever mild conceptual surprise it brings is compounded by its genuinely interesting choice to pair Crunch Berry pieces with loops instead of classic Cap’n chests. Was this done to simply mimic a round, puffed pastry? To make it easier to squelch whipped cream into every piece? Or perhaps to nefariously lure Sonic the Hedgehog into his watery grave?

Because I don’t know about you, but I can’t rule out that Cap’n Crunch is just Dr. Eggman in disguise.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, quaker, strawberry. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Frosted Crisp Apple Pop-Tarts

Wait, what the heck are these big flat things?

Steamrolled Pop-Tarts Bites? Stretch Armstrong-ed Pop-Tarts Crisps? The assimilated sentience of several dozen Pop-Tarts Cereal pieces?

Oh, right: I remember those retro rectangles now. Original Pop-Tarts—or OG PTs, as the kids may very well say—were what Kellogg’s used to make way back in 2018, before they seemingly decided to infuse essential Pop-Tart oils into every other snack product imaginable.

But after three spin-offs (that are really re-educated old school products), Pop-Tarts has finally released a new full-sized pastry, too (even if it’s really the latest in a long, long line of its kind). It’s called Crisp Apple, and it foregoes much of the flamboyant detailing of its apple’d ancestors in favor of a simplistic sauce blanche, almost exactly like that seen on Apple Blast Pop-Tarts—a flavor available in the U.K. since 2014.

But will this version be as American as apple handpies, or will its apple fall a few furlongs too far from its frosted family tree? Let me untwist my tongue and put it to work.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, apple, kellogg's, pop-tarts. 3 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Malt-O-Meal Peanut Butter Cookie Bites

Look, I don’t know much about sacred geometry, but I’m still going to thank it. Whatever Euclidian miracle is allowing my long-lost (or so it feels) Waffle Crisp to live on in spirit post-discontinuation deserves my praise. And Waffle Crisp’s memory isn’t being preserved in just one cereal analogue, either: Chicken & Waffles Cereal, which I’m ashamed to have just casually typed, is be bringing back the real, bite-sized Belgian thing; but Honey Bun Cereal presented an interesting, if not geometrically adjacent, twist on the concept.

The most important similarity is their source: Waffle Crisp and its latest subspecies are all made by Post. Post just happens to own Malt-O-Meal, making the economically bagged and bulging cereal company’s new Peanut Butter Cookie Bites a technical tangential relative of Waffle crisp, too. Though these PB pieces are round, I simply can’t disown them from my mental retcon of Waffle Crisp genealogy, as they have their father’s tic-tac-toed belly.

But will Malt-O-Meal’s Peanut Butter Cookie Bites live up to its nostalgically syruped parentage, or am I simply using this long-winded introduction to cope with Waffle Crisp’s disappearance? Better try coping calorically to compare. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, malt-o-meal, peanut butter. 6 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch

To paraphrase a notable shrimp entrepreneur, “Valentine’s Day is like a box of Crunch Berries: you always know what you’re gonna get.”

And this made-up quote from a made-up character is right: February 14th inevitably means the same parade of uneaten Conversation Hearts, shamefully scarfed Reese’s Hearts, and tentatively nibbled (but ultimately abandoned) coconut chocolate-box rejects. For a Hallmark holiday, it seems to lack inspiration.

The company ought to call Yami Yugi, as it appears to have ignored the Heart of the Cards. Or maybe just shoot a text to Cap’n Crunch.

See, like Valentine’s Day, Cap’n Crunch’s infinitely iterated Crunch Berries cereals seasonally remix the geometry and color psychology of each, without touching the tried-and-true flavor formula. That is, until now, as H.M. Crunch’s Valentine-adjacent Chocolatey Berry Crunch brings chocolate to the Cap’n’s well-oiled chests and strawberry to his lovingly processed Crunch Berries.

Which is all to say that if Cap’n Crunch is breaking tradition just to make us his Valentine, he better buy us dinner too, before we accept his invitation to this dessert of a breakfast. But will this fresh face make him look like a snack, or will his cereal’s fresh duds be just that?

There’s just one way to find out, and I hope it doesn’t involve kissing a sea-brined mustache.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, cap'n crunch, chocolate, quaker. 4 Comments

Jan. ’19

News: Honey Brunches of Oats Chicken & Waffles Cereal is Coming for National Cereal Day!

*Frantically checks calendar*

Oh no, this is all wrong: April 1st is still months (of snow and slush) away. I’m afraid we must accept an uncomfortable truth—food science’s rate of cereal experimentation has mutated far faster and more disturbingly than any human could possibly orchestrate.

Breakfast must be growing self aware. And it wants a taste of intelligent life.

First we saw cereal take on the shape and emotional imbalance of young humans. Soon it will use malleable marshmallow to mimic our planet’s cutest animals. But with this latest news? It’s trying to transmute itself into flesh.

Just a week ago, I got a cryptic tip in the comments section about a possible pseudo-Waffle Crisp revival. It wasn’t hard to picture what flavor was being hinted at, but I ultimately had no visual reference to go off of.

That is, until today, when Instagram users Dan J. and Canadian Candy Hunters shared this very real, very ~~mouthwatering~~ pore-watering box of Post & Honey Bunches of Oats’ Chicken & Waffles Cereal in Toronto. But while it may make sense that this sticky-skinned Southern comfort flavor has flown to land of maple syrup, U.S. thrill and grill-seekers need not fret: this Canadian-made cereal is hitting America.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: honey bunches of oats, maple, post, waffle crisp. 2 Comments

Jan. ’19

Review: Chocolate Toast Crunch (2019)

What cosmic breakfastian powers command the scales of cereal justice? Which ancient grain gods and granulated goddesses hold court over the eternal fates of discontinued cereal souls, reanimating some amd leaving others in cultically revered purgatory?

Well whoever they are, they’ve got some explaining to do: it’s been nearly half a decade since the heyday (and collapse) of the 2000s’ Toast Crunch empire, and the General Millsian pantheon has only just now resurrected a second member of that power trilogy.

Let me explain—I firmly believe the first of the Toast Crunch’s Y2K success stories to return was not reborn directly. No, Frosted Toast Crunch (2012-2015) must have had its powdered sugar-dusted soul reincarnated in the form of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch. By binding Frosted Toast Crunch’s might to a seasonally limited plane, this ho-ho-glow up made its predecessor frostier, butterier, and infinitely more loveable.

So now that we’re seeing the total return of the youngest Gen Z Toast Crunch, Chocolate (2013-2016), it begs an eternal question: where is the first among them? Where is my beloved Peanut Butter Toast Crunch? It debuted in 2004 to wide acclaim, even making a brief 2013 re-appearance after its first 2006 retirement. So while I’m ready to dive into these Chocolate Toast Crunch squares with cocoa gusto, it will inevitably leave me hoping for another spiritual successor to PB…

…one that merges its ghostly life energy with that of recently departed Strawberry Toast Crunch.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, general mills, toast crunch. 9 Comments

Jan. ’19

The Empty Bowl Episode 7: Beating a Dead Shortcake

I don’t mean to brag, but this is my mom’s favorite episode yet.

Or maybe least favorite, as The Empty Bowl’s seventh journey into the pearly milk gates of calming cereal paradise covers my biggest childhood cereal influence’s debatably unjust disposal of preciously Honey Bunched goodness.

But while I (lovingly!) wait for her testimony, allow me to remind you as always of our podcast’s goal. Hosted by Justin McElroy and myself, The Empty Bowl is your roughly biweekly snack of sweetly serialized and cerealized catharsis. In addition to cereal dust drama, Seven explores Cap’n Crunch’s latest tempting treasures, my second Walmart walk of shamelessness, and some truly questionable* Pop-Tart copywriting.

*I don’t mean to say I could do any better, but I did once invent a clever term** for when people wrongly interpret other brands as better than Pop-Tarts.

Thank you all for the continued support and kind words about the podcast. If you’d like to subscribe or support the show, you can visit our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. All relevant Honey Bunches of Oats grievances will be forwarded to our most crisply suited breakfast lawyers.

**It’s “misconstruedel.”

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