Ha, Apri—err, I mean, January Fools!

Either way, I totally got ya, didn’t I? I bet when you saw General Mills’ lineup of new 2022 cereals hitting shelves this month, you thought I’d spring right for the exciting ones: most likely the golden twinkling CinnaGraham Crunch, or possibly the bold Reese’s Puffs Clusters Crunch. But no, instead I’m tearing into the new year with the less assuming, least outwardly exciting box of the bunch. The one whose whole branding is based around one of cereal’s tiredest tropes—that is, the proposed benefit of a making you feel more full using whole grains and other assorted brown stuff. I mean, just look at that bowl on the box: it all kinda warps together like a Magic Eye puzzle if you stare at it too long.

Of course, the second you look beyond the bland branding (blanding), Plentifull’s true promise shines through. With the promise of peanut butter coated flakes, you know you’re in for a cereal that isn’t so much filling in the sheer gut-leadening, bland and Grape-Nutsian sense of the word, but rather in the “candy bar filling” sense of a cereal using dense, rich ingredients to make it feel more like a full meal. That meal being dessert.

Peanut Butter Plentifull has gotta be one of the best peanut butter cereals I’ve ever had. The reason it excels is simple: it uses coated flakes.

Historically speaking, I’ve found coated cereal bits to be way more indulgent than any mere flavor frosted or dusted fare, because it kind of combines both (though all three pale in comparison to a flavor dipping, let alone a good ol’ fashioned fire-hosed howitzer flavor blasting). The flakes are coated in a blizzard of golden-sweet peanut butter powder that’s held together and given a plush mouthfeel with the help of an additional, more oily peanut butter glaze. In this way, Plentifull gets the best of both sweet buttery and salted nutty worlds.

It isn’t just the flakes striking this balance, either. The nut & seed clusters add great. crunchy texture with more earthy flavor—yet they’re held together by a brown sugary goo, microcosmically uniting nut with butter again. It’s a beautiful system: together, this texture and taste makes even dry Plentifull cereal feel like you’re actually eating a spoonful of real crunchy peanut butter, topped with oats and pumpkin seeds for good hearty measure. In this way, Plentifull is elevated way above any mere Reese’s Puffs or Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, which only really get the sweet part right.

The only cereal that comes close to Plentifull’s straightforward nuttiness would be Nutter Butter Cereal, and Post discontinued that almost two years ago.

In fact, cereal aisle pickings are pretty slim for peanut butter purists. Something like Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios or Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Love Crunch are similarly indulgent, but only Plentifull explores peanut butter in all its isolated nuance. This is only more apparent in milk, when the creaminess gets amplified and salty and sweet infuse the endmilk alike with an authentic PB richness.

Of course, decadence has its drawbacks. There’s a reason more cereals don’t use flavor coatings—a box of Plentifull is going to cost you at least a few dollars more than your Peanut Butter Crunch. It ultimately comes down to how much you like peanut butter flavor—for me, as a certified nuthead and butthead, I’d say the leap in PB quality justifies the higher price but as a fan of chocolate, too, the temptation to spring for Love Crunch is equally compelling.

Keep in mind, as well, that Plentifull is also releasing in a Cinnamon Almond Butter variety, which I look forward to trying once I can find it in stores. Which I hope is soon, because I’m already nearing the end of this Peanut Butter box and contemplating dumping the bottom-of-the-bag bits in the middle of  a PB&J sandwich.

The Bowl: Peanut Butter Plentifull Cereal

The Breakdown: The peanuttiest and buttiest [sic] cereal out there, Plentifull delivers everything a PB fan could want out of a cereal, albeit with high quality at a high price.

The Bottom Line: 9 Goofy Goobers who say it rocks out of 10