This is a Cinnamon Toast Crunch callout post! Yes, I am weaponizing my half decade of accumulated cereal culture clout to criticize the gratuitous Toast Crunch idolatry  of our times.

Don’t get me wrong, CTC is good, but I’m here to insist that it isn’t flawless and certainly isn’t immune to competition. Just like Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal before it, Malt-O-Meal’s Churr-O’s Cereal amply evidences this. Ostensibly a cut-and-dry reboot of the early 2010s’ Post Mini Cinnamon Churros, Churr-O’s nevertheless deserves a blind and unprecedented review, as Mini Cinnamon Churros were discontinued before I could use this blog to memorialize their intricacies.

Oh, and there’s a new Malt-O-Meal Not-Trix, too. “Pranks,” if you will. But we’ll get to those. Right now, we’ve got preconceived Toast Crunch-spectations to crush.

Malt-O-Meal ChurrO’s Cereal Review

Question: what part of “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” is the biggest lie?

The Crunch, of course!

For a cereal bold enough to include such an onomatopoeia in its name, it sure lacks a lot of actual, hearty texture. CTC’s thin, rice-floured squares are far crispier than they are crunchy—you’re more likely to hear a million tiny sugar granules softly crunching the numbers behind your next dental bill than the cereal itself.

It’s this sense of impending crunch time that makes Malt-O-Meal Churr-O’s appear more well-rounded as a cinnamon cereal. Though their thick, cinna-sugar dusting gives them the exact “over-flavor” of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, these thick rings have a substantial, audible and satisfying crunch that ever-so-slightly elevates them above their mainstream nemesis.

That said, don’t go into a one-pound bag of M-O-M Churr-O’s expecting deep pastry intricacy or any sort of genuine cinnamon spiciness. No, this stuff was clearly manufactured for a purpose—it’s a Toast Crunch tulpa that flawlessly mimics CTC’s iconically excessive and merely cinnamon-tinged sweetness. Yet I must reiterate that the crunchular upgrade alone is worth the price of entry. This also gives Churr-O’s better in-milk stamina, as their burly builds don’t swell and buckle with sog.

Overall—and though it’s a reboot of an earlier Post cereal—Churr-O’s is another example of Malt-O-Meal being just subtly innovative enough to make their once-chintzy reputation a modern breakfast powerhouse. One could argue that Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros had the exact same golden-brown glow-up, but those noodly tubes were way more dangerous for the ravenous likes of me—someone who ended up lancing his palate with one too many of those mostacciolian munchies. No, Churr-O’s is a must try for Cinnamon Toast Crunch fans of all speeds.

The only thing that could improve it? A little graham flour.

The Bottom Line: 9 cereal & coffee breakfasts with Dougie Jones out of 10

Malt-O-Meal Fruity Blasts Cereal Review

As a slightly dimmer post-Churr-O afterglow, Fruity Blasts is a far less exciting Malt-O-Meal cereal. Imitation Trix is something my brain just kind of assumed Malt-O-Meal was already making, so the only surprising part about Fruity Blasts is that it took so long to manifest.

When even the proprietary faux-pomological formulas behind Froot Loops and Crunch Berries have been replicated by Malt-O-Meal, I can’t imagine Trix is a tough one to figure out. Like Trix itself, Fruity Blasts is a citrus-forward cereal, with orange and lemon leading each bite. These are backed up by subtler raspberry notes, as well as a pervasive miasma of generic artificial fruitiness—this crucial touch of Froot Loop essence balances out the citrus; we’ve seen what happens without it. Trix calls it “Wildberry Blue,” which seems like a fitting analogy given how much it tastes like Blue Moon ice cream, too.

Speaking of Wildberries, they’re potentially referenced directly by Fruity Blasts cereal’s blue cluster shapes. Unfortunately, the one place Fruity Blasts can’t compete with Trix is the piece geometry front. Aside from these cluster-some Wildberries and Raspberries, the only other shapes are banana, unripe banana, and candied yam.

But if you don’t care about in-bowl aesthetics, I don’t see any reason not to save money buying Fruity Blasts if you’re a big Trix fan. They taste nearly identical, and while I think Trix is ‘just fine’ when compared to the other biggest fruity cereals, I have to admit it’s pretty good. No less, no more.

The Bottom Line: 7.5 bananas eating cereal in pyjamas out of 10