Wait, actually, this is probably the first time you’ve actually looked your age, like, ever. You’re telling me you were rocking that same ivory ‘stache from K–12? Must’ve made the chocolate milk cartons a nightmare.
Anyway, everyone’s favorite seafaring cereal mascot will soon be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the original Cap’n Crunch cereal’s 1963 debut with this colorful Birthday Crunch. And even though I infamously loathe birthday cake-flavored cereals, what with their historic lack of substantial taste and all, it’s hard to stay mad at ol’ H. M. Crunch when this box looks like a ’90s Taco Bell.
Since 60 years would suggest a 2023 debut, you won’t be able to find this Crunch on shelves just yet, but it’s already up on Walmart.com, so it’s only a matter of time before you can have the Cap’n’s cake and eat it, too.
What qualifies as a successfully transformative “Shake Up” (let alone one with an exclamation point at the end) in the cereal world? Is it enough to simply “shake together” a bunch of existing cereal bits, or do you need to “shake in” something entirely new? Well we’re about to find out, because Pebbles’ new pair of pieced-together pouches represent both ends of that continuum, and I’m here to be the supreme arbiter—the Lady Justice holding the bowl-shaped scales, if you will—of just how good they really are.
So let’s do this, Post: shake up my stomach like a wedding-day bottle of champagne! Continue reading →
Back by unpopular demand, now in a perennially putrid flavor! Seriously, I’m not trying to be rude, but if you asked me to guess which discontinued cereal would be getting a 2021 reboot, I’d probably die of natural causes before even remembering Dippin’ Dots Cereal ever existed. First released in June 2018, DD Cereal came in Banana Split and Cookies ‘N Cream. They were both extremely boring, and since they only debuted in family-sized boxes, I was left with enough uneaten cereal to stuff an ark’s worth of Beanie Babies.
This new variety, Birthday Cake Dippin’ Dots Cereal, has me the opposite of optimistic—well, maybe “pessimistic” is harsh. How about, “floptimistic”? As I’ve reiterated throughout countless one-note saccharine reviews, birthday cake is borderline impossible to translate into an interesting cereal, and unless this new Dippin’ Dots Cereal is actually sold in the freezer aisle, I have little hope this stuff will break its namesake flavor’s streak of blandly frosted failures.
Cookies ‘N Cream Dippin’ Dots Cereal is also returning, with a “NEW! IMPROVED FLAVOR.” However, based on the box art so far, it looks like this iteration of DD Cereal has removed the crispy coated clusters, which were the only freakin’ good part about Dippin’ Dots Cereal in the first place!
That said, it’s too soon to pass definitive judgement, because these are clearly still concept boxes—you can tell because Birthday Cake is described as a multigrain cereal, while CnC is described as corn with real cocoa. I think I scream for everyone when I say it better be the former.
Regardless, these new and/or improved Dippin’ Dots Cereals should be releasing in the coming months. You can already enter an online sweepstakes for a chance to win free Dippin’ Dots for a year, which may very well be the only good thing that could come out of this cereal’s revival.
I Turned [REDACTED] And All I Got For My Birthday Was This Lousy Cake Cereal
Well of course, this isn’t entirely true—I also got a heck of a champagne headache and a long arm scratch from a cat who wasn’t as playful as I was. But nevertheless, the highest peaks of yesterday’s celebrations had nothing to do with the trough-full of sugary spheres that happened to make an incidental appearance.
Maybe I’m spoiling this review by leaking my distaste for Funfetti Cereal, but hey: it’s my post-party and I can post what I want to. Plus, I have yet to be impressed by a cereal marketed as vanilla or birthday cake, so my only scant hope for Funfetti Cereal was that—since no one really knows who’s manufacturing the cereal—it could crumb out of left field with, oh, I don’t know, actual freeze-dried frosting piped into every puff or something. As I mentioned in my news post on this cereal, the Funfetti and Pillsbury branding is a bit confusing. You’d expect General Mills to be behind this, but they only own the rights to Pillsbury cookies, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, etc., not Funfetti or other dry baking mixes.
So who’s actually behind this confetti-caked crunch fest? And is it even worth finding out? Continue reading →
I’ve written about a lot of battered & baked cereals in my time, but this one takes the confetti cake.
Coming soon from Pillsbury, Funfetti Cereal promises to be ‘the fun and only’ birthday/vanilla/angel food cake cereal you’ll ever need. Just how it will be “bursting with fun” remains unclear, but as Funfetti Cereal’s release trails a full Chuck E. Cheese itinerary’s worth of birthdaycakeflavoredbreakfastproducts, these sprinkled spheres are going to have to work really, flavorfully hard to avoid being just another boring, exponentially sugared cereal.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit over vanilla and birthday cake in the breakfast aisle, because its typical one-note sweetness feels like a cheap cop-out to avoid paying for richer, more imaginative flavors, but hey: at least Funfetti looks pretty (pretti?).
What’s especially strange here is that General Mills is not producing this cereal, despite Pillsbury being their subsidiary brand. This tip comes from longtime friend Gabe Fonseca, who suspects Post might be producing the product, as they were the ghost writers behind the similar-looking Canada exclusive Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal.
Though it already appears on Walmart’s site, Funfetti Cereal’s release date is as of yet unknown. Hopefully Pillsbury & their mysterious co. take their time with this one, because unlike a real gooey cake, a half-baked cake cereal is like a trick candle: it blows, and never grants our wishes.
Just as every bootleg Chuck E. Cheese birthday party—what, you’ve never been to Buck G. Brie?—is bound to be punctuated by a cake so paradoxically full of empty sweetness and frosted typos, so too is a Pop-Tarts gala destined for the apex of adequacy.
Following three successful Pop-Tarts Bites launches that run a rich flavor gamut of Strawberry, Brown Sugar Cinnamon, and Chocolatey Fudge, Kellogg’s is commemorating the occasion not with a fan-favorite taste like S’Mores or Wild Berry, but with…Confetti Cake. As a former grocery store bakery worker, let me earnestly say this:
What a load of sheet.
Look, I’m not saying Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites will be bad, but if recent caked-on breakfast products areanyindication, this is just an excuse to dump sugar, vanilla and maybe buttercream into a churning cauldron and call it a day.
Even more perplexing are the naming conventions within the Pop-Tarts Bites sub-brand. Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts became Chocolatey Fudge Bites, and now Confetti Cupcake Pop-Tarts are simply Confetti Cake Bites. Is this an accidental oversight, or am I meant to believe that these teeny pastries contain more concerted cake flavor than a Tart five times their size?
Either way, we’ll find out soon when Confetti Cake Pop-Tarts Bites drop and I end up eating them by the cupful.
Or at least I do. I love all bits, whether it’s exponentially sugar-fortified cereal dust, forgotten salt-stewed French fry-lets, or the last messy bite of a restaurant meal that you saved as a parting gift for yourself after boxing up the rest of the leftovers—the very same last bite you had to awkwardly tell the waiter you were saving as he’s midway through lifting the plate from your desperate mitts. Or maybe that’s just me.
No matter how you spin it, I’ll always love bits more than pieces. Well, unless it’s those honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my strange bit-diction stems from a long childhood relationship with Timbits: those lovable lil totally-not-doughnut-holes from Tim Hortons that just about any teacher who had a hope of winning their class’ trust would bring in by the party pack-ful on syllabus day.
Though Tim Hortons and his namesake ‘bits were a source of warm nostalgia for my fellow Michiganders, the coffee chain is a more deeply in-granulated cultural epicenter in its country of origin, Canada. So it makes sense that the first ever Timbits Cereal would be released exclusively north of the states—even if I firmly believe my mitten of origin should be considered an annexed state of the Hortonian Empire. Thanks to Cereal Time’s Gabe Fonseca, I was able to secure boxes of both Timbits Cereal flavors, Birthday Cake and Chocolate Glazed.
So let’s all grab a coffee, PBR coffee, or perhaps some strange soup of poutine and Labatt Blue and see if these itty bitty Timbits are a slam dunk. Continue reading →
Ooh, this one hits me hard. Hard as a quarter-empty 50-pack of Timbits left behind at an executive meeting that was later scavenged and greedily gobbled by me like a feral Pac-Man.
As a lifelong Michigander, I’m no stranger to Tim Hortons. In fact, I have a nostalgic, pliable and doughy soft spot for the place, as it conjures fond memories: of my dad buying me chocolate chip muffins. Memories of my high school self bicycling out of school at lunchtime like a bat out of hell to make it to Timmy’s before they stopped making maple oatmeal. And of course, memories of my more recent self scavenging and gobbling Timbits like a feral Pac-Man.
Waka waka waka, and yada yada yada: the point is that Canada is getting exclusive Timbits Cereals to celebrate what may arguably be the northwest hemisphere’s most beloved doughnut holes.
A few things are still unclear about these Post-produced products. When will they come out? Will there be more flavors beyond Chocolate Glazed and Birthday Cake (I’m lookin’ at you, Apple Fritter)? And who will trebuchet 90kg of this stuff 300m over the MI–CA border for me?
No matter the answers, I can conclusively say that as a fan of both doughnuts and doughnutcereals, I’m excited to see if these boxed dozens can bring zen to my breakfast table.
