Quick: pretend you’re in 4th grade and it’s lunch time. You sit down at an uncomfortable wooden table, and tear open your hyper-crinkly brown bag while you wait for your friends to come back from the hot lunch line with their spicy chicken sandwiches and Bosco breadsticks.
You’re more than a little jealous of them, but you know Mom had to have packed you something good. So what’s the main course? Ham and cheese on rye? Leftover chow mein from China Kingdom down the road?
Both guesses are wrong. In an attempt to get you eating healthy, Mom packed Quaker’s newest instant oatmeal cup flavors: Banana Bonanza and Blueberry Bash.
But are these oatmeal cones worth trudging over to the school’s vintage, pizza sauce-stained microwave for? Or should you trade them like edible Pokémon cards and try to game Billy out of his Ziploc full of Oreos?
Those are the existential questions I hope to answer.
Quaker Banana Bonanza Oatmeal
Though most instant oatmeals taste better with less water than the directions recommend, I always “follow the rules” when testing oatmeal products for this blog. In the case of Banana Bonanza, this meant filling to the cup’s perforated line, stirring (or in my case, stirring too aggressively and accidentally launching oatmeal slop across the room) and zapping in the microwave for 55-60 seconds.
After cooling the oatmeal and scrubbing my floor, my fears came true: my Banana Bonanza was a little too watery. But I think in my case, it hardly affected the flavor. That’s because this banana oatmeal is only lightly sweet to begin with, and the syrupy—yet authentic—banana flavor is pretty subtle.
This banana flavor comes from “dried banana powder,” and I’d rate its intensity at a 4 out of 10 on the Banan-o-meter.*
*The Banan-o-meter is a proprietary scale for banana flavor measurement developed by renowned Bananologist Gwen Stefani.
However, its not the browned, earthy banana bread taste you’d expect Quaker to include in an already naturally earthy oatmeal. Instead, it has the floral, tropical fruit twist of a green banana. So there is a pleasant contrast between the oats and the banana, but I have to wonder how much better it would be if everything tasted more potent—or as the kids would say: “more XTREME.”
Quaker Blueberry Bash Oatmeal
Despite my efforts to use less water with this one, my oatmeal still turned out a little soupy. Quaker must have an executive dolphin on their board of directors, because they certainly like turning their oatmeal products into marine environments.
But all textural concerns aside, Blueberry Bash certainly stays truer to its name than Banana Bonanza. It includes actual dried blueberries: full ones, too, instead of the rinds that some yogurts use. These little blueberry nuggets are chewy like raisins, and they ooze out a pleasant, faintly puckering fruit juiciness.
Like its banana brother, this oatmeal’s blueberry flavor is much more realistic than artificial. Combined with the cup’s rich oat flavor, this made Blueberry Bash taste like the oatmeal equivalent of General Mills’ Blueberry Tiny Toast cereal.
But despite this, I still yearn for more. Since both Banana Bonanza and Blueberry Bash are clearly marketed towards children, they should have more creative flavor gimmicks than “more natural tasting versions of existing Quaker oatmeals.” Quaker could have tried Banana and Peanut Butter Bonanza, or Peanut Butter & Blueberry Jelly Bash, instead.
…I just really like peanut butter.
But more importantly, Quaker could have done more with the awesome cartoon mascots on these oatmeal cups. Just look at them: I want to know all of their lore! How did the monkey get his driver’s license? Who is the conspicuously airborne bear hurling blueberry missiles at? Is this some sort of dystopian wildlife civil war, where all humans have been wiped out by intelligent animals that now fight for control over the world’s rapidly dwindling oatmeal supply?
I guess I left this review with more existential questions than answers.
The Bowl: Quaker Banana Bonanza Oatmeal and Blueberry Bash Oatmeal
The Breakdown: Natural tasting fruit flavors make for two unique additions to the typically artificial-tasting oatmeal aisle, but these oatmeal cups’ watery nature, weak flavor density, and “safe” flavors keep them from reaching true greatness.
The Bottom Line (Banana Bonanza): 6.5 military monkey motorists out of 10
The Bottom Line (Blueberry Bash): 7.5 brazen bear bombardiers out of 10
(Quick nutrition facts – both flavors – 160 calories, 3 grams of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein per cup)