Fans of edible, crunchy cartoon heads: rejoice!

That’s right, General Mills’ new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles joins the proud lineage of cereals shaped like grinning faces, which includes Kaboom, Cabbage Patch Kids Cereal, and even another Canada-exclusive TMNT cereal from back in the day.

There’s something about carnivorously devouring cereal smileys that’s sadistically satisfying. It’s probably the fact that these faces tend to be nightmarishly creepy, so pulverizing them with a molar guillotine feels like I’m doing the world a service.

General Mills surprisingly dropped this TMNT cereal on shelves without any announcement, like a heroes in a half-shell bombshell. I’m not upset, though: walking into the supermarket and seeing this cereal was like finding a prize at the bottom of a cereal box…except in this case the box was the prize.

That sentence made no sense, so let’s just dive—or maybe ninja flip—right into the review.

It wasn’t until after I poured a bowl that I noticed how General Mills actually colored the pieces to match each Turtle’s iconic headband color!

This is a neat touch, although General Mills’ recent commitment to remove artificial colors from their cereals hits Leonardo the hardest. Instead of a vibrant, Froot Loop-blue Leo, we get a sad little fella who’s only a few hues away from looking like a certain “chocolate soft-serve ice cream” emoji. 💩

Speaking of Froot Loops, let’s talk taste. If you’ve ever had Cascadian Farm’s Fruitful O’s, trust me when I say that TMNT cereal tastes exactly the same. If you haven’t, allow me to put it in more generic cereal terms.

Every spoonful of turtle noggins is half-Froot Loops, half-Trix—they have some of Toucan Sam’s popping tropical fruitiness, but they also have some of the Trix Rabbit’s noticeable notes of oozing, tangy citrus. As far as actual fruit goes, there are hints of banana, grape, orange, and lemon.

But the secret of this ooze isn’t in the fruit flavor: it’s in the corn and rice base. I know texture isn’t what most cereal eaters are concerned with, but TMNT cereal has a great mouthfeel. These smirking faces have a pleasantly smooth exterior and a hearty crunch, so they caress the roof of your mouth instead of keelhauling it.

Note: don’t read about “keelhauling” unless you’re A) a scurvy pirate or B) ready to “reunite” with your breakfast.

Also present is a generic, starchy root vegetable taste, probably from the vegetable juices GM used for coloring. Coupled with the baked-in fruit flavor, at times this cereal feels close to a solidified version of a V8 V-Fusion.

That may sound gross at first, but personally, I just wish general Mills had dialed up the tomato flavor. Maybe then we’d get the pizza-flavored cereal the Ninja Turtles deserve.

Milk makes the textures and flavors a little more gummy, but it also gums all the different fruit tastes into a satisfying blend. To mix my cartoon snack references: it’s a bit like a handful of Scooby-Doo fruit snacks.

I really have no reason to love this cereal as much as I do. I wish the fruit taste was stronger, I wish the rice base was more flavorful, and I wish my dreams weren’t haunted by the ghosts of the cackling turtle heads I ate the night before. But the fun shapes, fun colors, and fun texture keep me happily munching anyway.

Because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal is just a straight up fun cereal. It’s the kind of cereal I would have looked forward to eating in the morning as a kid, preferably while I watched a certain cartoon starring adolescent reptile karate fighters.

And better yet: it’s the kind of cereal I would have used as edible alien bad guys for my action figures to stomp into the carpet. Don’t worry, my cat would take care of the crumbs.

Oh, and according to the back of the box, I’m a mutant bullfrog by the name of “The Masked Hyper Shadow” who practices the Screaming Eagle Dive in an abandoned subway car. Radical!

---

 

The Box: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal

The Breakdown: Despite a ho-hum flavor, these turtles are redeemed by a massive fun factor. And since there are no Shredder pieces, it won’t shred the roof of your mouth.

The Bottom Line: 8 rejected names for Donatell-O’s cereal out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 120 calories, 1 gram of fiber, 7 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 3/4 cup serving)