This review goes out to you, 54-year old Larry P. from Tampa Bay, Florida.
You don’t actually exist, Larry, but you are an archetype of consumer both I and countless underpaid cereal customer service reps have had to deal with for the past two decades.
You’re the guy who complains on every Monster Cereal post about how Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry just aren’t as good as they were during your childhood growing up in some rural place that resembles the house from Courage the Cowardly Dog. You’re the guy who lambasts the cereals’ change from oat flour to corn flour as borderline cataclysmic, a harbinger of dark times that probably brought us reality TV and bluetooth headsets, too. And you use General Mills’ blog comments section as your impromptu soapbox.
So even though you are a persistently vocal one, Larry: you’re right. Oat flour does rock, and Malt-O-Meal’s newest cereal, Double Brownie Crunch, proves it with a masterful blend of fudged flours.
While at a passing glance, Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch cereal may sound like one of those excessive ice cream flavor names and look like a cheap Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs, one scholarly bite told me all I need to know about what may be Malt-O-Meal’s Montezuma-pleasing magnum opus. Let me say it big and brown:
This cereal tastes exactly like pre-Y2K Count Chocula.
But you don’t have to be a Gen-X nostalgiaholic to appreciate this: Pogs or no Pogs, Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch is a cereal slammer that dunks your taste buds with layers of chocolatey goodness. The base is the real winner here: with a core of savory, heartily roasted oat flour and just a dash of mouthwateringly golden-toasted cornmeal, these dense puffs aren’t over-aerated and palate-lacerating—instead, they provide a wholesome canvas for the brownie flavor to build on. There isn’t even any plasticky aftertaste leeched in from the bag—a first for Malt-O-Meal.
And despite the ambiguous name (is it referring to a single, double chocolate brownie, or two plain chocolate brownies?) this chocolate flavor is appropriately complex. Cocoa buttery and well-fudged, but with a baseline of smoked milk chocolate and genuine oily brownie undertones, this cereal feels illegally chocolatey. It’s like every chocolate biscuit and iced wafer you’ve ever eaten—plus a couple Oreo wafers—decided to merge their essences into a single orb of delicious choco-instrumentality.
Forget what you’ve heard about artificial color-free, all-natural breakfasts: the golden age of cereal is well and truly alive in this 2-pound bag.
And I haven’t even mentioned the marshmallows yet. Perfectly chalky–chewy and infused with milky cocoa powder, they meld symphonically with the puffs, diffusing creamy, fluffy, and frosting-esque flavor into every hand, spoon, or crane-ful that you eat.
Milk isn’t a must, but it is a must-try. The absorbent marbits turn pleasantly squishy, and their compound creaminess combines with the lightly milk-swollen—yet no less chocolatey, due to their oat-bolstered structural integrity—puffs to make the collective cereal concoction taste like, of all things, a powdered chocolate doughnut (it probably doesn’t hurt that each puff is dusted with a confectioner’s sugar-esque coating, too).
I never expected it to come from Malt-O-Meal, but Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch is what the cereal the breakfast aisle needs, even if it may not deserve it. Instantly heartwarming for nostalgiaholics of all ages, but also universally tasty enough that even an invading alien could enjoy it after exterminating all human life, Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch brings the best of cereal past into the future, and I commend M-O-M for it.
Plus it’s so cheap that I could build a bunker out of these cinder block-sized bags and outlast those pesky aliens. It’s a win-win-martian!
The Bowl: Malt-O-Meal Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch
The Breakdown: A perfect blend of oat and corn flour, topped with layered chocolate flavor that’s both milky, fudgy, and somehow smoky, and with choco-infused marshmallows to boot, this is a galaxy-unifying cereal that demands comma-laden praise.
The Bottom Line: 10 mascots gone cuckoo with jealousy out of 10
I know this article is a few years old but I just wanted to say this turned out to be my all-time favorite cereal… sadly I can’t seem to find it anywhere now, I hope they bring it back!
Dude… Seriously (cerealously!)… Archetype, my ass!
You can just mention me by name. (You practically quoted everything I’ve ever said on the topic, anyway. I know my own words.) LOL!
I proudly own my outspoken opinions on General Mills needing to restore the Monster Cereals to their former oat-based glory! And I’m only too eager to get up on my soap box (cereal box?!), spoon in hand, to tell anyone who’ll listen! LMAO!!!
And I’m only 50 (which I just turned, on St. Patrick’s Day, while I was eating my St. Patrick’s Day Special Edition Lucky Charms!) YES, REALLY!
I really need to have you on my podcast, the ‘Computer Talk Radio Nerdcast’, the next time we talk about breakfast cereal!
Sounds like a plan 🙂
hm… i really thought i left a comment here… 🤔
Especially because the fact, that with this cereal the chance to try some sort of the “old” Count Chocula Cereal with oat flour is alive again!
I really hope you read comments on older reviews, ’cause i have question.
I just discovered that MOM is also using Oat flour in their copycat variant of Chocolate Lucky Charms (Chocolate Marshmallow Mateys) and i just wondered if you ever had them and if they are way better than Chocolate Lucky Charms? I mean the thing is: It seems that this cereal is a really really good one and it’s somehow or in some ways even a bit better than the current Count Chocola Cereal. Maybe due to the Oat content in it. That makes me wonder, if Oat is an essential ingredient, when it comes to cereal with marshmallows and GM needs to add it to their cereals again. 😀
Cheers! 🙂
Sorry I’m late on the reply: Chocolate Lucky Charms are pretty much all oat flour, while these strike a corn-oat balance like the old monster cereals did. So it’s not better or worse than the Charms, just a different kind of great!
No worries Dan! We all have busy lives (i also still haven’t posted the comment on your Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp review… though i still have a question xD ;))
Are you sure about the oat flour in Chocolate Lucky Charms? ‘Cause if i remember correctly, i already had this discussion with Gabe and we found out, that Chocolate Lucky Charms don’t contain ANY oats xD
And that was actually why i was asking. Since “the old Count Chocula” is dearly missed and this cereal with oat in it is really close to the old count chocula, i was just wondering if there already was a cereal pretty close to the old monster cereal – just without the choclate flavored marshmallows. (’cause chocolate lucky charms never really was a substitute, because of the missing oat flour)
Cheers! 🙂
where oh where did you find this?
i found myself like a depraved person on the MOM website using the store locator function for every likely zip code where i would be in the coming year and had no matches.
They have it at Walmart, only in HUGE bags though
Love the site.
Is there any way to add ingredient list to your reviews?
Thanks!
I am glad I read this review.
I would NEVER have considered buying a cereal with this name as I don’t like brownies.
But if it bears even a passing resemblance to the Count, the way he was when I was a child, this is a cereal that could be a regular purchase.
If only they could come up with a strawberry cereal that is a take on old school Frankenberry, I would be in bliss.
I think Post/Malt O meal is onto something here… providing versions of cereals General Mills ruined with their attempts to sell sugar bomb cereals as being “healthier.” It worked fairly well with the chips ahoy cereal, not perfect but tastes more like the cookie crisp of my childhood than General Mills’ current version.
Of course they could stand to look inward as well. Get rid of the current god awful Honeycomb formula please. I never thought I would refuse to ever buy Honeycomb again, but here we are.
Good news: Post is bringing back Classic Honeycomb in April!
I think 2018 is going to be one of the best cereal years of all time. Thank you for the blessed news!
Just wish it came in a smaller size. I hope the Count is taking notes.
Ok, this sounds FABULOUS. Now, to try to find it in a store…