Tag Archives: canada

News: Multi-Grain Strawberry Cheerios + Canadian Frosted Vanilla Cheerios

Let us all send prayers and psychic Gatorade to Cereal Life, who, as the online cereal correspondent with the closest connection to General Mills insiders, must be exhausted lately. For whatever reason, while Kellogg’s, Post, and Quaker have merely trickled out new cereal news, General Mills tips are spilling out in torrents. The most likely explanation for this is that, since January is the biggest time of the year for new cereal, and since most of Cereal Life’s finds are still in the sales sample stage, he’s simply getting a sneak peek at a huge wave of news to come in a couple months.

Among these bountiful chronicles of cereals foretold are two new types of Cheerios. First, the above Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberry Pieces. As Cereal Life mentions in the caption, a Cheerios variety with strawberries (rather than flavored with) hasn’t been seen since the Berry Burst line in the early 2000s—which, on an interesting tangent, contained the scarcely documented Cherry Vanilla Cheerios, first documented as a Cereal Myth in The Empty Bowl’s first-ever episode.

Granted, 2003’s version of this formula didn’t use Multigrain Cheerios, so at least this (presumed) 2021 version can be considered less of a bland reboot and more of a remaster. Continue reading

News (Canada): Tim Hortons Froot Loops Dream Donut

New Tim Hortons Froot Loops Dream Donut

Oh, I once had a dream about a donut, alright. It was the size of two Gateway Arches and had the auto-cannibalistic serpent’s head of a dough-roboros. The thing started spinning toward me like Sonic the Hedgehog, launching sprinkled shrapnel all across the Windows XP wallpaper I’d been having lunch on, and I only managed to flee by rolling down a rollicking green hill. The dream donut launched off the hill and into the sun, exploding into a yeasty meteor shower.

So yeah, Tim Hortons: any chance you could make that one?

For those who have been sleeping under a rock-hard stale cruller all year, Tim Hortons has been testing a number of experimental donut flavors in their Innovation CafĂ© and across Canada. And while the likes of Chocolate Truffle and Dulce de Leche have had some pretty crumby reviews, the latest flavor debuting in both whole-nut and Timbit form is sure to pique any cereal blog reader’s interest.

Tim Hortons Froot Loops Dream Donuts pair a pink-glazed and white-iced donut with a whole handful’s worth of Froot Loops pieces themselves—pieces that can be pummeled to smithereens and stuck to a Timbit, too. Unfortunately, if the comparatively natural colors of these foreign Froot Loops are any indication, FL Dream Donuts are likely to be Canada-exclusive for the foreseeable future. This means it’s also very unlikely that I’ll be able to do a full review of these baked treats, but other reviewers have already done the sticky work for us, if you want to know how the taste stacks up:

Personally, I’m hesitant about any cereal dessert that includes full-sized pieces, as they often end up tasting extremely stale. But if you live near a participating Canadian Tim Hortons, let me know whether these Froot Loops Donuts made your dreams come true—or if they chased you nightmarishly into the Hudson Bay.

Review: Timbits Cereal (Birthday Cake & Chocolate Glazed)

New Timbits Cereal Review Boxes

Bits.

We all love ’em.

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

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Tim Hortons Timbits Cereal!

Canada Exclusive Tim Hortons Timbits Cereal

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 doughnut cereals, I’m excited to see if these boxed dozens can bring zen to my breakfast table.

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Canada

There are a lot of things that separate a good cereal from a great cereal: unique flavor, creative theming, brand evolution. But there’s only one thing that separates great cereals and legendary cereals—you know, the kind of breakfast fare you need a Master Bowl to catch.

And that’s accessibility.

Yes, while you’d expect to only encounter legendary cereals on the secluded shores of the Whirl Islands, true morning myths know no borders. They aim for deliciousness for all, and now Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is joining that wanderlusting pantheon.

Once considered extinct, the Toast Crunch family member I’ve called “the greatest seasonal cereal of all time” has returned this season with full confidence and Canadian citizenship. Spotted by Junk Food Jeff (thanks Jeff!) alongside General Mills’ other, less exciting holiday 2018 release, Canadian Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch boasts exclusive box art, too.

This bluer and more frigid design seems to harken back to the cereal’s original, 2014 art, but now one of the squares wears a pair of floating mittens, frighteningly suggesting rapid mutation and evolution in the Toast Crunch species.

So enjoy Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch while you can, Canadian neighbors, because if this cereal keeps growing new limbs, it might be humankind that’s Limited Edition.

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Post Cookies & Cream Cereal

Post Cookies & Cream Cereal Box (Canada)

Whether they’re called Twist & Shouts, “Lickety Splits, or…*shudder*…Creme Betweens, off-brand Oreo cookies just feel uncannily wrong to eat. Even Hydrox, being the original chocolate sandwich cookie, just feels like the snack equivalent of a cheap bootleg VHS with hilariously mistranslated English to Chinese and back to English subtitles.

“Oreo: the treat that lactose loves to be smothering!”

And that’s how I feel about Post debuting Cookies & Cream Cereal in Canada, too. Though it’s ostensibly the same cereal they released as Oreo O’s in the States earlier this year—which was, in turn, ostensibly the same as Malt-O-Meal Cookies & Cream Cereal, which is also a Post holding—I can’t help but think that my brand-loyal taste buds would reject these crunchy cookie rings faster than my brain rejects the blasphemous existence of “Low Fat Oreos.”

I don’t know why Post couldn’t bring the Oreo O’s name to Canada—maybe border patrol would’ve “confiscated” them for “thorough gastrointestinal inspection”—but thanks to reader Jas A.’s above photo, we know that our northern neighbors will at least get to experience the cereal’s deliciousness in a comparatively anonymized form.

And hey, the box art is actually pretty cool! We don’t get enough purple candy stripes in the cereal aisle (come on, Raisin Bran: live a little!), and the cereal name’s stylized font looks like something that would be cross-stitched, framed, and hung above the toilet in a motor home. Which works here, because in my mind, nothing says “haphazard family camping trip” quite like generic cereal eaten out of flimsy paper bowls with lukewarm 2%.

Thanks again to Jas for the photo. If you’d like to share a cereal photo from anywhere in the world (even from my own backyard—I’d be impressed), mail it on over to our Submissions page for a chance to see it on this site!

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Oatmeal Crisp Apple Crisp Cereal

Apple Crisp Oatmeal Crisp Cereal

Oatmeal Crisp is a strange and wonderful beast, and it’s quietly getting a new Apple Crisp variety—in Canada only.

Traditionally lumped with Basic 4 and Raisin Nut Bran in the odd pantheon of “General Mills Cereals That Are Really But No One Talks About Them,” Oatmeal Crisp is a decadent cereal featuring toasted oatmeal flakes glazed with sugar syrup, paired with almond slivers and granola clusters.

So it’s pretty much normal oatmeal, just made more crunchy, less microwaveable, and with about a thousand more delicious calories per oatmeal-imeter.

Given my love for toasted oatmeal cereals, I’m personally embarrassed that I haven’t geeked out about it more. As punishment, I’ll accept execution by way of conveyor belt-induced mass Oatmeal Crisp ingestion.

Canada’s newest Apple Crisp Oatmeal Crisp variety, discovered and kindly shared by our friend Junk Food Jeff, excitingly pairs the not-so-iconic cereal with the apple-cinnamon taste (and homely thatched charm) of a homemade apple pie, apple streusel, or apple slice topped with cinnamon and butter and microwaved for 12 seconds because I’m too poor to bake, okay Grandma?

Meanwhile, America has only seen regular Almond and Hearty Raisin Oatmeal Crisp in the past decade or so. I tried to more thoroughly research Oatmeal Crisp’s past American flavors, but this cult favorite is so elusive that online cereal historians can’t come to a consensus. The cereal’s Wikipedia page also name-drops Triple Berry, Apple Brown Sugar, Maple Nut, and Vanilla Yogurt as past, oddly specific flavors, while trusted resource Mr. Breakfast only names Maple Brown Sugar in addition to the mainstays.

Whatever Oatmeal Crisp’s true past contains (perhaps we once briefly overlapped with a parallel universe where Oatmeal Crisp is a currency), I’m just excited that its shelf presence isn’t petering out here in the 21st century. As Basic 4 and Raisin Nut Bran feel like they’re becoming modern relics, one of them has to survive and speak on behalf of weird cereals everywhere.

As a cereal weirdo myself, I thank Oatmeal Crisp for being my Lorax.

Our thanks again to Junk Food Jeff for sharing the photo. Wanna see your own find in a Spooned & Spotted post? We’d love to see your latest breakfast haul, discovery, or feast: send it over on our Submissions page.

Review: Canadian Maple Cheerios Cereal

General Mills Special Edition Canadian Maple Cheerios Cereal Review Box

“Put maple in everything. Do it.”

Picture me saying that in my best Sheev Palpatine voice, because I really am serious about syrup. Maple is tied with gingerbread and second only to PB&J on my list of favorite sweet flavors, so while the news about General Mills’s new Maple Cheerios, released in Canada to celebrate the country’s 150th birthday, excited me, the syrup-sucking greedy child in me wanted more.

Maple Cookie Crisp. Waffles & Syrup Oreo O’s. Pancake-flavored Waffle Crisp—I don’t care how redundant that sounds, just prop my mouth open with a french toast stick and keep piling it in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself—and sweating what I believe to be a mix of perspiration and whipped butter just thinking about it. I should enjoy Maple Cheerios while I can, because you know what they say: you only turn 150 once! Continue reading