Tag Archives: chocolate

19

Nov. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s Cereal

Trader Joe's Hot Cocoa O's Cereal Chocolate Holiday Box

Fight. Fight. Snowball fight!

I know I shouldn’t incite polar breakfast violence, but it just seems a little too convenient that, right after Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs broke the ice as the first-ever hot chocolate-flavored cereal, Trader Joe’s hops into the (powdered) mix with a Hot Cocoa O’s Cereal of his own.

So now there’s bound to be a munchy melee between these two well-known cereal champions:

In this corner, we have Sonny and his marshmallow puck-studded Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs! Though they may just taste like more sugary Cocoa Puffs, these cozy–crunchy orbs contain great power—and decades of cuckoo cereal clout!

Aaaaand in this corner, we have Trader Joseph and his (hopefully dark) chocolate dark horses! Though Smokin’ Joe the Trader isn’t renowned for his cereal—his Raisin Bran Clusters are perhaps his only belt-bursting championship belt-winner to date—Hot Cocoa O’s look like holiday Oreo O’s, and that alone is enough to sell more tickets than a Bob Dylan–Katy Perry tag team at Summer Slam!

Yes, I look forward to reviewing this hot chocolate cereal as soon as I find it—hopefully right next to the almond ‘nog so I can drown my early-sunset-imposed sorrows right along with my marshmallowy chocolate hoops.

Thanks to @OUATreviewed on Twitter for coming through with the find. If you have a merry cereal snapshot of your own to share, ship it via email or Polar Express on our Submissions page!

Posted by . Categories: Specials. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment

16

Nov. ’17

Review: Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs Cereal

General Mills Limited Edition Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs Holiday Cereal Review Box

Some things just make sense together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and bananas. Or peanut butter and analogies about things that go well together.

Oh, and chocolate and marshmallows, I guess.

That’s why it makes no sense that it took ’til 2017 for General Mills to realize just how many cents they’d make by putting mini marshmallows in Cocoa Puffs. From the humble Mallo Cup to being 2/3 of the iconic s’more, chocolate and marshmallows have a long history of delightfully gumming up people’s teeth.

But hot cocoa/hot chocolate (I refuse to take a stance on which name is better. As I’ve said before, I’m staying as neutral as a packet of Swiss Miss) is perhaps the most memorably cozy pairing of the two. Therefore, the only explanation for why this took so long is that Sonny always flies south for the winter. I’m willing to forgive him for going AWOL for Cocoa Puffs, so long as his redundantly named Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs are good. Since my childhood self used to think hot cocoa was made by microwaving chocolate milk, the bar is pretty low.

I still have nightmares about tepid, radiated and pasteurized dairy products.

Continue reading →

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13

Nov. ’17

2018 Cereal Preview: Peach Cheerios, Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes, & Shreds (x2!)

The future is now!

Scientists have apparently perfected time travel…but only a couple months into the future…and, uh, they apparently can only bring back cereal: not any lottery numbers, sports almanacs, or whatever cryptocurrency is most valuable at the time (CrunchCoin?).

Okay maybe not, but breakfast wormholes are the only logical explanation for how the wonderful fellas at MyCountyMarket got ahold of not I, not II, and not III, but IV (allegedly: none are confirmed) upcoming cereals from General Mills—cereals so exciting and new that I’m cancelling the New Year’s Resolutions I haven’t even made yet.*

Let’s take a gander at our soon-to-be-spooned pantry-stuffers, shall we?

*UPDATE: MyCountryMarket’s video has been removed for reasons unknown.

Continue reading →

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11

Nov. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Kellogg’s Donut Shop Cereal (Chocolate & Pink)

Kellogg's Donut Shop Cereal Boxes Chocolate and Pink

Okay fine, Kellogg’s, I’ll forgive you for egregiously misspelling “Doughnut” as “Donut.” Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but removing the “UGH” removes the rounded pastry’s inherent charm, making me vocally say…you guessed it: “Grrr! Arghh! Zounds!”

Even a pedant like me can’t stay mad when there are two new doughnutty cereals hitting the market. We’ve known that this Chocolate Donut Cereal was coming for a while now, but the surprise debut of Pink Donut Cereal, seen in this photo from a Marc’s store that was sent in by reader GM, has left me tickled pink.

So what does “pink” taste like? Well if it’s anything like “blue,” then I’m ready for it. It could mean strawberry, plain frosting, Chicken McNugget Pink Slime, or even Canadian Birthday Cake (a reader noticed the visual similarity between Pink Donut Cereal and a certain Froot Loops flavor). Whatever it is, I’ll still happily crunch away, because cereal renditions of my favorite breakfast baked good are hard to crumb by these days.

Thanks again to GM for the photo. If you have a cool cereal photo of your own to share, or if you just want to fax me a fresh doughnut, roll over to our Submissions page.

 

Posted by . Categories: Specials. Tags: , , . 3 Comments

19

Oct. ’17

Review: Chocolate Frosted Flakes Cereal from Kellogg’s (2017)

Kellogg's 2017 New Chocolate Frosted Flakes Cereal Review Box

Like a coffee snob who thinks cream ruins roasted perfection or a hipster doughnut shop that only sells original and glazed, Tony the Tiger is an artisan.

While other cereal brands let their wacky flavor flags fly with any number of peanut buttery, gingerbready, or orange ice creamy variants, Anthony the Large Jungle Cat keeps it pretty minimalistic, preferring to perfect each flavor he introduces rather than rushing to meet some pumpkin spiced fad. After all, it took him 64 years to introduce a Cinnamon kind. And now, after the length of about 6–8 of Tony’s 9 feline lives, we finally get Chocolate Frosted Flakes.

What’s that you say, with your raised pitchfork pilfered from the clearance section of a Spirit Halloween? Chocolate Frosted Flakes already existed 20 years ago? Well those were Cocoa Frosted Flakes, not true-blue (or brown?) chocolate.

Oh, but you also say, holding a rudimentary torch made from back issues of the National Enquirer, “There are already two different kinds of Chocolate Frosted Flakes in my grocery store right now”? Well there are Frosted Flakes Choco Zucaritas made for Latin American markets, and Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Skeleton Marshmallows, made for Halloween, which are…uh…from a seasonal spin-off and therefore aren’t canon.

Phew. Through arbitrary technicalities, I’ve confirmed that 2017 Chocolate Frosted Flakes are the first of their kind. After all, Kellogg’s has made a big fuss about these ones are made differently. Like their much-hyped cinnamon-infusing process from 2016, the chocolatey frosting on these flakes is proprietarily designed to meet American tastes for milk chocolate, as opposed to Choco Zucaritas, which are supposed to be more dark chocolatey.

Maybe this is all choco hokum, but that’s not going to stop this American from indulging his sweet tooth. After Tony himself sent me this elaborate care package to try the stuff, I’d be remiss not to use his big metallic head to scoop shards of well-browned gold into my mouth like an emperor of the Nile. Continue reading →

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17

Oct. ’17

Review: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios Cereal from General Mills

General Mills Limited Edition Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios Cereal Review Box

I’ve long had a theory that every cereal a person could ever need can be formed through a triangulation of three “primary flavors.” The three corners of this Cerealluminati Pyramid (working title) are formed by chocolate, peanut butter, and strawberry. Think about it, sheeple people: while those three flavors are near-universally delightful by themselves, by pairing them you can make a choco-pb cereal, a PB&J cereal, or a chocolate fondued strawberry cereal.

And if you happen to find some hipster niche of cereal lovers that isn’t pleased by any of those, you can just combine all three and tear a rift in space-time through sheer flavor alchemy.

New Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios are proof that my philosophy of breakfast geometry isn’t so obtuse after all—in fact, it’s pretty acute. See, even though General Mills has a near-monopoly on chocolate peanut butter breakfast cereals with Reese’s Puffs, they still decided to release another cocoa-nutty product. That’s because, as a key bastion of my Cerealluminati Pyramid, the mouth-watering power of chocolate and peanut butter together really is that persuasively strong.

Unless, of course, my deeper conspiracy is true, in which case the prophecy of threes has yet to be fulfilled:

But allow me to trade in my tinfoil hat for an equally shiny spoonand dig in—if I’m gonna be a nutcase, I’d rather be a peanutcase. Continue reading →

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06

Oct. ’17

Review: Steak ‘n Shake Breakfast Cereal Shakes (Cocoa Krispies & Frosted Flakes)

Steak 'n Shake Milkshake Sign

As I patiently wait for my local Burger King to stock their new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shake—hurry up, Mr. Beef Royalty: it’s cold waiting out in this tent made of Whopper wrappers—I figured I’d finish my review series of Steak ‘n Shake’s menagerie of breakfast cereal-infused arctic beverages.

When we last left our humble, shake-sucking heroes, they had polished off Cinnamon Crunch and Honey Smacks Shakes at an ungodly hour under the gaze of Sauron-tinted neon lights and nearby angst-tinged teenagers. I recommend you read Part 1, if you haven’t already, because I don’t want to re-tread too much old ground in this post—after all, my stomach still hurts from the whole “mildly lactose intolerant” thing.

The things I do for breakfast journalism.

In short, though, the shakes were good, but BK’s shakes were superior in every way, on account of them actually mixing in syrupy cereal magic syrup instead of just plopping cereal pieces on top. This could’ve put the kibosh on my pasteurized odyssey, but the Steak ‘n Shake waiter said Cocoa Krispies and Frosted Flakes were by far the most popular flavors. Tempted by this forbidden fruit (“Frosted” is a fruit, right?), I set off with my shake-craving sidekick once more to put that waiter’s money where my dairy-sensitive gastrointestinal system is.

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05

Oct. ’17

News: Kellogg’s Donut Shop Chocolate Donut Cereal is Coming Soon!

Kellogg's Donut Shop Chocolate Donut Cereal Box

(Image via Kellogg’s)

Somewhere out there, in whatever crunchy, cosmic Valhalla awaits discontinued cereals, Cap’n Crunch’s Choco Donuts weeps.

See, Kellogg’s is debuting a new Donut Shop Chocolate Donut Cereal, and it reminds me of the Cap’n’s long-discontinued and much-beloved chocolate pastry cereal from the early 2000s (its full name: Oops! Choco Donuts, as if that was anything but the happiest accident).

Sure, Kellogg’s version, which has a gorgeously Pepto-Bismol pink, family-sized box, may lack the Cap’n’s sprinkles, and sure, the Cap’n still has Sprinkled Donut Crunch to rival or mix with this, but it still does feel like a low blow to the Cap’n’s dearly departed doughnuts (that’s the correct way to spell it, ugh), whom I’m sure he misses like a edible, frosted children that went to study abroad in Rome and never came back.

At least, I like to tell myself that there’s still a box of Choco Donuts hidden somewhere beneath the Colosseum.

No word yet on when Kellogg’s Chocolate Donut Cereal will hit shelves—or whether it’ll just taste like Cocoa Puffs or cream-less Oreo O’s—but I like to remain hyper-optimistic: if “Chocolate Donut” is just one variety of a wider “Donut Shop” brand, maybe we’ll finally get the world’s first Sour Cream Donut Cereal.

Too ridiculous? Fine, I’ll settle for Boston Cream.

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