Tag Archives: 3 rating

Review: Millville Cookies & Cream Cereal

Millville Cookies and Cream Cereal Review Box

Oreo O’rnithology: the academic study of Earth’s diverse and varied flocks of cookies & cream cereals.

This field of research has only recently exploded in popularity. After the first Oreo O extinction around the turn of the millennium, budding  scientists found themselves sandwiched somewhere between cereal paleontology and purgatory. Despite the ever-feeding buzz that demanded Oreo O’s’ reinstitution, it wasn’t until 2013’s false flag release of General Mills’ ghastly Hershey’s Cookies & Crème Cereal that interest in the subject—and the prophesied birth of a new C&C prodigy—began to bloom anew.

From there, creams and dreams came true quite rapidly. The world discovered South Korea’s worst kept and best tasted secret. Malt-O-Meal dropped a suspicious Oreo O’s taste alike. Then we finally got the real stuff back, albeit with a milked-down flavor that only soured with the tepid release of Golden and Mega Stuf variants. Now, mass investment in the category seems to be approaching critical mass. We’ve had a promising yet poorly executed cookies & cream cereal. One that hits your gut like a fossilized Hydrox cookie. And now, I’ve unearthed an unsuspecting store brand interpretation from Millville—in hopes that it will satisfy the authentic Oreo O’s cravings that only expensive Eastern hemisphere exports can currently satisfy.

Now, I’ve learned that Millville Cookies & Cream Cereal is by no means new—readers claim the stuff, along with its Golden variant, have been out for anywhere from 2 to 12 months. But as someone who makes few pilgrimages out to Aldi without good reason, I was hitherto ignorant, plodding along on the dark side of the moonpie while generic Oreo O’s bred like space bacteria somewhere in Aldi’s cardboard jungle of discount groceries.

But that ends today: I will make my penance with the cosmic Oreo O’verlords—and find out if there’s a new cookies & cream (dun)king in town. Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s Baby Shark Cereal

Kellogg's Baby Shark Cereal Review Box

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Baby Shark the song is infinitely more interesting than Baby Shark Cereal.

I’ll admit, I have an ongoing aural embargo against the tune. My grubby brain is nematodally susceptible to earworms, so out of fear for my undisturbed dreamscapes, I’ve not only never listened to Baby Shark, but I’ve also never taken time to appreciate the sheer breadth and insanity of the infant man-eater’s history.

I might sound dumb for not knowing this, but apparently Baby Shark is originally a campfire chant dating back hundred of years, if not more, from a time where” YouTubers” were in the business of potatoes. The original version, however, is far more violent than the brine-washed version popular amongst children. Many versions involve a swimmer who not only loses an arm to a hungry sharkling, but a leg and sometimes a blood-gushing head, too. Other variants involve grueling and unsuccessful attempts at resuscitation, as well as philosophical inquiries on whether shark victims go to heaven, and what kind of god would continue to spawn such deceptively cute sea demons.

Then there are ongoing copyright claims surrounding the song, controversial political affiliations, and cruel attempts by law enforcement to use the track for repelling homeless people.

This is all to say that it’s kind of a shame how a bizarro slice of life like Baby Shark got such a soul-deadening cereal. If you read my Birthday Cake Froot Loops review, you know that not only did I voice a searing distaste for lazy sugar ring cereals, but I also spewed so much linguistic vitriol that it’d probably be bad for my blood pressure to do it again.

But does Baby Shark Cereal really deserve the same hate as Toucan Sam’s pathetic chemical droppings? And when I’m finished eating it, will it go to heaven? These are the questions I was, with great pains, born to answer. Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Corn Pops Cereal

Kellogg's Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops Review Cereal Box

How do you think big cereal companies choose to reintroduce old cereals? Do they do something logical, like hold a focus group of common cereal consumers and wise cerealheads alike, or perhaps mail out surveys?

Or do they just go to Mr. Breakfast’s cereal archive, rip a fat scroll off the mouse wheel, and throw a dart at the computer screen (blindfolded)?

Because it really seems like Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops, a 2007 Kellogg’s cereal apparently best known for including a “send-away offer for an Adidas Sports Top,” must have gotten lucky to win out in the re-continuation race—or at least swapped coffins with Tony’s Cinnamon Krunchers right before Kellogg’s’s undertook their dead cereal exhumation. It’s also entirely possible someone at Kellogg’s thought of this without even remembering the 2007 version, because the only geologic record remaining of it is deep in the Kellogg’s archives, sandwiched between Puffa Puffa Rice and Bart Simpson’s No ProblemO’s’s bordering strata.

Whatever its second genesis, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops trades its ancestor’s flavored spheres (i.e. bootleg Reese’s Puffs) for the half-deflated popcorn pieces of Corn Pops proper. The wilted kernels have an incomparably unique texture, one that hasn’t been replicated—and possibly for good reason, because the idea of milky buttered popcorn is no-doubt a daring and dairily divisive philosophy. But will it be conducive to caked on gobs of flav-o-dust?

Let’s all go to the lobby and find out! Continue reading

Quick Review: Wild Kratts PB&J Power Discs Cereal

wild-kratts-pbj-power-discs-cereal-box

Entering this review, PB&J and cereal have a flawless track record.

After 2016’s fantastic JIF PB&J Cereal and the ’80s’ mythical PB&J Cereal—which was apparently so transcendentally mind-blowing that no one knows how it tasted—Wild Kratts (whose cartoon series I won’t pretend to know anything about: I thought it was a bootleg Thundercats) has a 100% perfect legacy to stack up to with its appropriately stackable PB&J Power Discs.

I just hope I can finish this review before a rogue box of PB&J Cereal falls into my lap and wipes my memory. Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s Super Mario Cereal

Kellogg's Super Mario Cereal Review Box Amiibo

You know I love you, Mario, but man: you need to work on your personality.

Sure, you can save the princess, grow a killer ‘stache, and kick Goomba buns in every sport (Olympic or otherwise), but plumbing anecdotes and an occasional “Wa-hoo!” isn’t going to make you a hit at parties.

Unless you whip out the big green wind-up boot and cue up Destruction Dance, of course. Just imagine the dance moves!

But really, on my list of favorite little red dudes, you’re pretty far down the list: Pikmin, Cool Spot, that smug M&M, heck, even the Noid would be invited to my wedding before an inarticulate Italian hero whose stats are average in every baseball game.

And that “Thwomp-of-all-trades, Bowser-of-none” problem persists with Kellogg’s and Nintendo’s new Super Mario Cereal, a much-hyped team-up of cereal and video game titans that nearly exploded my website, reputation, and inner child when I leaked news about it last year. Everyone’s excited about the box, which doubles as an Amiibo for Super Mario Odyssey, but since I’m still replaying Super Mario Sunshine on my GameCube and trying to figure out how Game Boy e-Readers work, I don’t have the modern tech to explore that Amiibo functionality.

I do, however, have a spoon, which means we’re all about to see why this fruity marshmallow cereal lives up to the flat (and I’m not talkin’ Paper) legacy of its namesake portly protagonist. Continue reading

Review: Cascadian Farm Organic Vanilla Chia Crunch Cereal

Cascadian Farm Organic Vanilla Chia Crunch Cereal Review Box

Apparently Cascadian Farm is a real farm, but I refuse to learn anything about it. Instead, I want to preserve my fantastical mental image of Cascadian Farm as a quaint rural community where busier General Mills cereals like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams go to escape the city’s sugar-addled hustle and bustle, settle down, and become tamer versions of themselves, with no-nonsense names like Cinnamon Crunch and Graham Crunch.

Yes, the Cascadian Farm of my imagination is pretty much a breakfast parody of Harvest Moon, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Now the newest citizen in Cascadian Farm’s Wholesome Good-Time Barnyard Bayou (my mental name, not theirs) isn’t a direct derivation of another General Mills product. But it does remind me of Kashi’s recent Plant Power Vanilla Pepita Clusters, which is why I took note and lovingly planted Vanilla Chia Crunch into my grocery store cart like a transplanted chia plant. I just wrote the word plant in that sentence more times than I have cumulatively since 2008.

Kashi’s take on vanilla ‘n’ seeds tasted like cupcake-frosted popcorn. Let’s see if the Animal Crossing of cereal brands can be just as memorable. Continue reading

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Lip Balm

General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch Lip Balm Chapstick Packaging

What can I say: sometimes I just love cereal so much, I want to kiss it.

I know, I know: a bad one-liner to introduce a bad review. But since this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Lip Balm is the first ever non-edible product I’ve reviewed here, I didn’t know how else to start.

If the antiquated art didn’t give it away, this lip balm totally isn’t new, but I found it in a local grocery bargain bin—along with 10(!) other cereal “flavors”—and I couldn’t resist. I was tempted to drop a crisp green Alexander Hamilton, buy all of them, and coat my mouth ’til it became a living pair of those candy wax lips, but I found some self-restraint and chose the one that sounded like it’d be the most pleasant to have slathered near my taste buds all afternoon.

I’m not saying Cocoa Puff-smacked lips isn’t an appetizing idea, I’m just saying I’ve had enough public Mr. Goodbar mishaps to give me pause. Continue reading

Review: Kashi Sprouted Grains Cereal

IMG_4111What happened here?

There’s a bowl in front of me. There’s a little bit of milk left in it, and it’s tinted a light beige, as if there had once been a cereal bathing in its milky goodness.

But…but I can’t remember eating any cereal recently. My palate feels clean and unflavored; no sugary aftertaste sits comfortably on my tongue.

What happened here?

If you’ve ever seen the movie Memento, I invite you to read that first bit of confused rambling in the smoky voice of Guy Pearce himself. And while that narrative may be a bit hyperbolic, it is quite reflective of my experience with Kashi’s “new” Sprouted Grains cereal.

And hey, while I’m on a Memento kick (a remake was just announced!), let’s just do this review backwards, too. I hope you can humor me long enough to follow along.

Continue reading