Tag Archives: 7 rating

Review: Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal

I hope with a name like “Peanut Butter Crunch,” that Kashi’s newest GoLean cereal is at least made with crunchy peanut butter.

The creamy vs. crunchy debate has been waged for decades, with proponents of each texture so ardently supporting their preferred legume paste that I’d bet America’s political system was modeled after our competitive two-PB-party system. I mean, this civil war is so divisively volatile that the opposing sides can only agree on one thing: that the unspoken third party, chewy peanut butter*, is so abhorrent that it had to be wiped from the marketplace sometime after 19-dickety-two.

*Google may tell you chewy peanut butter isn’t a real thing, but that’s just what the Illumi-nutty want you to think.

I personally grew up sheltered: my parents only bought creamy. But after experimenting with crunchy in college, I’ve come out a changed man: one who loves his butter flecked with crisped chunks of roasted goodness. Perhaps it’s my destiny to make peace between the two PB camps, and I’m meant to start by reviewing this Kashi Peanut Butter Crunch cereal, which blends the flavor of creamy PB with crunchy bits.

No matter what, I won’t let anyone silence me. Well, except for the peanut butter that’ll inevitably gum my mouth shut. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, kashi, peanut butter. 2 Comments

Jan. ’18

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds Cereal

Is Cinnamon Toast Crunch the new Oreo? The new pumpkin spice? The new sriracha? The new activated almonds?

Yes, like all those hip and trendy flavors (well, minus maybe the almonds: I’m just fascinated by nuts that unlock monkish hidden powers when soaked in water), Cinnamon Toast Crunch seems to be popping up more and more, not just as a cereal, but as a phenomenon. A condiment abstraction, if you will.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bites! Cinnamon Toast Crunch Granola Snack! Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shake! Cinnamon Toast Crunch the Flamethrower! Quite frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch branded bread yet, made specifically for use in your Cinnamon Toast Crunch Toast Toaster.

Regardless of how long it takes to reach Cinnamon Toast Singularity, these new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds are here to cinnamon swirl us one step closer. It’s one of two new Blasted Shreds cereals, and it aims to remix boring old shredded wheat biscuits by fire-hosing it with enough flavored powder to build a sweetened sugarcastle. Or perhaps a sugarhospital.

Anyways, let’s carve a new belt notch and carve into a box!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cinnamon, general mills, toast crunch. 16 Comments

Jan. ’18

Review: Peanut Butter Chocolate Blasted Shreds Cereal

If you, like me, set a New Year’s Resolution to get fit, but have been set back by leftover pie, half-empty frosting cans, new cereals, and every other sweet treat whose scent lifts me off the ground like a euphoric Looney Tunes character, then I have a solution for you.

Just buy this cereal and tell people you’ve been getting Shredded at the gym every day.

But don’t tell them that you really mean you’ve been eating Peanut Butter Chocolate Blasted Shreds straight from the box in the little nook by the broken cardio machines, snarling at any post-jazzercise grandma unfortunate enough to cross your crumb-strewn path.

Not-so-secret gluttony aside, I’m stoked to review the first of General Mills’ two new Blasted Shreds cereals (the other being Cinnamon Toast Crunch). I’ve heard many good things about Peanut Butter Chocolate, with some ranking it as a last-minute dark horse in their Best Cereals of 2017 list, and others just in awe that the whole bicep-curl-friendly box weighs over a pound.

So whether you’re bench pressing the box or just doing some spoon-to-mouth deadlifts, let’s all get absolutely Shredded together. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, chocolate, general mills, peanut butter. 23 Comments

Dec. ’17

Review: Quaker Gingerbread Spice Oatmeal

By this point, my obsession with gingerbread is well documented on this site—and probably by the Library of Congress, too.

So I’m not going to start this review of Quaker’s new Gingerbread Oatmeal (just one arm of their 2017 gingerbread menagerie, which also includes a cereal) by clobbering you over the head with my love for cloves, ginger, and molasses-y dough. Instead, I’ll segue in by briefly obsessing over my other favorite winter flavor: eggnog. In short…it’s great!

This delightfully spiced custardy concoction is coziness distilled, and now that my bucket list is one gingerbread cereal shorter, my new “dream cereal” has to be an eggnog one—preferably of the Toast Crunch variety—if only so that I can pour eggnog on my crunchy eggnog cereal and feel as giddy as a kid watching a G.I. Christmas Special on a Saturday morning Christmas Eve.

Or maybe that’ll just be the rum talking. Whatever: oatmeal time! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, gingerbread, holiday, oatmeal, quaker. 5 Comments

Oct. ’17

Review: Boo Berry Monster Cereal (2017)

And the 2017 “Most Improved Monster” award goes to…Boo Berry!

Yes, it’s true, everyone’s favorite indigo apparition has stepped up his game this year—in my past two years of Boo Berry reviews, his dubiously ambiguous and ambiguously dubious “fruit flavor” has lived in Count Chocula and Franken Berry‘s shadows. Ironic, for someone who’s essentially an anthropomorphized blue shadow.

But before we give Boo his third annual taste test, I have an important announcement: Happy Halloween! May your night be full of macabre merriment and no fewer than 8 fun-sized Snickers—and by “fun-sized” I mean “king-sized” because that’s where the real fun is.

Closing out this monster cereal review trilogy feels like a fitting way to celebrate—that’s why I originally wrote this review by stupidly replacing every instance of the “oo” vowel sound with “boo,” but switched back because it was unreadable.

Okay fine, I didn’t actually do this—but self-deprecation is the key to successful blogging, and man I sure am dumb! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, blueberry, boo berry, general mills, halloween. 2 Comments

Oct. ’17

Review: Nature’s Path Organic Frosted Pumpkin Pie Toaster Pastries

It’s like that old children’s book:

If you make a Pop-Tart organic, it’ll want a typewriter to tell people about it.
If you give that Pop-Tart a typewriter, it’ll need thick-rimmed glasses to see the keys.
When you give it thick-rimmed glasses, the Pop-Tart will need to know the proper pronunciation of “quinoa” for its upcoming poetry slam…

I jest, but Nature’s Path Organic’s toaster pastries are, in my mind’s eye, Hipster Pop-Tarts. And just like Trader John Misty—err, I mean, “Joe”—Nature’s Path has a sleek, pumpkin spiced pastry to compete with Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts: Kellogg’s big guns.

(And we all know Pop-Tart guns should be taken seriously.) Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, halloween, nature's path, non cereal, pop-tarts, pumpkin. 1 Comment

Oct. ’17

Review: Quaker Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal

October 14th, 2017: the day Dan finally shut up about wanting a gingerbread cereal.

Yes, this is a landmark day—literally: the spot where I excitedly stamped my feet upon tasting Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal is now craterous enough to be deemed a geologic point of interest. I’ve begged for a gingerbread cereal (Gingerbread Toast Crunch, to be more specific, but gingerbeggars can’t be choosers) since the first year I had enough teeth to eat both a gingerbread man and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And after decades of disappointment, that stoically grinning Quaker Oats guy must have finally felt my annoying laments reverberate through his 2-dimensional cardboard plane, because we now have Gingerbread Spice Life Cereal: America’s first ever gingerbread breakfast cereal.

I told myself I’d wait ’til winter months to review this stuff, since i have so many autumn treats to write about, but pumpkin spice and caramel apple be damned: if I don’t give my inner child this one, he’s going to beat my internal organs with a whiffle ball bat and a pair of Sock’em Boppers. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, gingerbread, holiday, life, quaker. 8 Comments

Sep. ’17

Review: Steak ‘n Shake Breakfast Cereal Milkshakes (Cinnamon Crunch & Honey Smacks)

Whoever first decided to pair milkshakes with cereal deserves a monument. Only a giant marble shake cup will do, preferably filled with liquid platinum and gold nuggets to stand in for soft serve-soaked cereal nibs. It’s an unexpectedly genius idea: sure, cereal and milk have an esteemed history, but you don’t generally associate an indulgent dessert like a milkshake with anything breakfast related—unless you had a bad night at the casino and want to make one last terrible 4am choice.

Now I may revoke my celebration of the breakfast shake’s inventor if this confection enables the shuddersome creation of cereal-infused cheese, but for now, let’s celebrate this golden age of shakes by uniting sugared cereals and cold cream cylinders in holy gastro-matrimony—at a place that’s literally 50% founded on milkshakes.

Yes, Steak ‘n Shake has 5 new Breakfast Shakes—technically 4, because one is Caramel Latte and you can tell the other shakes are only bringing him along because their moms made them (I’ve been there, buddy…as Caramel Latte). I intend to review all of them—Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Krispies, Cinnamon Crunch, and Honey Smacks—eventually, but based on how late my shake-seeking partner and I made it to The House of Beef and Lactose, I didn’t want to be up until 4am with a sugar-addled brain and an abdomen swollen to the size of a cow’s first three stomachs.

Because at that point, I’d feel terrible enough to go back for a fifth. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, 7 rating, cinnamon, honey, kelloggs, non cereal. Leave a comment