Tag Archives: chocolate

Review: Nature’s Path Love Crunch Dark Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cereal

These ain’t your kid brother’s Reese’s Puffs.

No, while the most famous chocolate and peanut butter cereal is a sugary smorgasbord of twinkling cocoa spheres, downright pedestrian peanut butter puffs, and the persistent spirit of a million Saturday morning memories, the granola gourmands at Nature’s Path have conspired in their organically all-natural gluten-free ivory tower to produce a choco-nutty cereal with class.

“Look at those pithy Puffs,” one doubtlessly said. “They’re all the same. We’re capitalists, for GORP’s sake: we need a hierarchy!”

Thus, Love Crunch Dark Chocolate & Peanut Butter Organic Cereal was born, ready for the well-mouthed silver spoons of people who can afford $4 boxes of cereal. This new Love Crunch line of flake ‘n’ cluster foodstuffs also includes Dark Chocolate & Red Berries and Dark Chocolate Macaroon, but my ennui about fruity cereals and boycotting of macaroons until we get a French macaron cereal made my first flavor choice obvious.

And really, how could I lose, when all 3 flavors contain weirdly specific fair trade Italian dark chocolate that Nature’s Path probably impulsively bought like it was Milo’s Egyptian cotton? Real chocolate chunks are like a cheat code for cereals. But I digress: let’s ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A START this review. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, nature's path, peanut butter. 11 Comments

Jul. ’17

Review: Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops Cereal

Neapolitan ice cream is criminally underrated. I mean, it combines the three most popular ice cream flavors (though I still can’t fathom how plain ol’ vanilla is more popular than Chocozuma’s Revenge, Chocolardiac Arrest, or any of those other “X-Treme Ice Creamz”) into one—sometimes even in snowman form—and we still hardly see it appear in things other than ice cream. Heck, even Naples itself has a flag that looks more like Superman ice cream than neapolitan’s iconic pink, brown, and creme.

And before these new neapolitan Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops, there has been only one other neapolitan cereal—and it was only released in New Zealand. I guess America will have to make the first kiwi cereal as revenge.

But enough melty melancholia. Let’s see if these strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate Cocoa Puffs are good enough to turn my local Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors into 401k. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, chocolate, cocoa puffs, general mills, strawberry, vanilla. 2 Comments

Jul. ’17

Review: Mocha Crunch Cereal

I’m a coffee snob. There, I said it, since you were going to find out anyway.

Yeah, I’m the guy who lets creamer expire, who recoils upon hearing the word “Frappuccino” like it was a different F-word, and who orders small black coffees at McDonald’s while in quiet camaraderie at all the old guys who used their senior coffee discount to do the same. Perhaps it speaks to the bitterness of my heart, but I like my coffee potent and sugarless, with names that are hard to pronounce and pretentious flavor notes like elderberry or toasted marshmallow that don’t actually exist and were probably drawn out of a hat by a mischievous barista.

So while I can’t remember the last mocha I’ve drank, hearing about General Mills’s new Mocha Crunch Cereal still left me giddy (although that might’ve been residual caffeine). The online-only Coffee Cereal has the beaned and bitter cereal market cornered, so I was ready to welcome a sugary chocolate coffee cereal into my life with open arms that are holding hot coffee mugs so you probably shouldn’t hug me. Sorry, Mocha Crunch.

Now the cereal’s here, and a single whiff of the bag’s medium-roasted cappuccino scent has me convinced good things are brewing. No need to wait for it to cool: let’s dive in. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, chocolate, general mills. 2 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Oreo O’s Cereal (2017)

Oreo O’s are back in America. This is true.

So naturally, this review is going to be unnecessarily long and rambling—but spoiler alert: not in a good way. Before we get to that, though, I figure a crash course in Oreo O’s 1O1 is appropriate. I’ve already exhaustively covered the cereal’s history in last year’s review of imported Oreo O’s, so head there for all the textbook-worthy details, but here’s an IMDB-worthy synopsis:

In 1997, Oreo O’s blessed us with its authentic Oreo cookie flavor in creme-sprinkled chocolate cereal ring form. Then in 2007, when the world needed it most, Oreo O’s (which had marshmallows by this point) vanished…everywhere but South Korea, where you could buy it until 2014 and then again in 2016. It’s finally back in America, 10 years after hibernating, and you probably heard about it 10 times from BuzzFeed in the past 2 hours alone.

And while I can’t prove that I am the world’s biggest Oreo O’s fan, that hasn’t stopped me from calling Guinness about it. So since this is my favorite cereal, and since I’ve spent enough on the South Korean stuff to rent an Aruban timeshare, you’d think I’d be beyond geeked to see Oreo O’s back in their home turf. But I’m not geeked. Nor am I freaked, piqued, or as the kids probably no longer say, “on-fleeked.”

Why not? Because like a Scooby-Doo villain, these Oreo O’s are not what they seem. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Uncategorized. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, oreo o's, post. 12 Comments

Jun. ’17

Review: Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk Powdered Drink Mixxer

I wholeheartedly support the powderization of all cereals and milks. One day, humanity will inevitably go too far and causes its own extinction by putting too much x-treme nacho cheese flavor into a single corn chip or attempting an Oreo flavor that tastes like God’s leftovers. When our food science hubris causes our downfall, I still want post-human lifeforms to enjoy Earthen snack culture by reconstituting old powdered foodstuffs with long shelf lives.

Hence why this line of new powdered Cereal Milk drink “Mixxers” is a step in the right direction. When the self-aware Doritos turn on us, I’ll still be able to savor a tall glass of Reese’s Puff-flavored milk while watching the atomic orange sun set on mankind.

And Peanut Butter Cup isn’t the only flavor, either. These innovative products, which seek to re-create the flavor of cereal endmilk without that daunting “eating cereal” part, also come in Frosted Flake and Cinnamon Crunch. And while I’d love to raise a GRRR-EAT Cinnamon Toast to all three varieties, these things cost as much as a family-sized cereal box. So I embraced my soul-deep Reese’s Cup love and took the choco-nutty plunge.

Now let’s mix this stuff into everything I have in my pantry. Look out, Chef Boyardee. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, non cereal, peanut butter, reese's puffs. 2 Comments

May. ’17

News: Oreo O’s are Coming Back to America, 10 Years Later!

New American Oreo O's Cereal 2017 Cookies & Cream

(Image via Post)

I’m Oreo O-verjoyed.
I’m Oreo O-ver the moon.
I’m bellowing “Oreo O-h yeah!” to the skies, heavens, and great sandwich cookie cosmos above.

Yes, friends, neighbors, countrymen, and dunkers: Oreo O’s, your favorite ’90s cereal or probably favorite cereal ever, is coming back. In the year 2017.

On the 20th anniversary of its debut and the 10th anniversary of its tragic discontinuation in the States, news has broken—and subsequently broken the internet in two like a twisted apart cookie—that Post has brought its iconic, cookies and creme flavored cereal back from our nostalgic memories and into reality. Of course, the cereal has been around in South Korea for nearly a decade now—a fact that I’ve well-documented—but its high price of important made it out of reach for all but the most “devoted” (by which I mean “questionably sane” and by which I also mean me).

These new Oreo O’s should be hitting shelves in early June, so start prepping some garage space to stockpile boxes. Heck: maybe Nabisco will even re-release S’Mores Oreos so we have something to eat during our Walmart parking lot campouts.

Before I leave you all to bathe in a palpable sea of nostalgia, this new Oreo O’s news does come with a cumbersome (or “crumbersome,” if you will) caveat. Malt-O-Meal, which is owned by Post, already released a Cookies & Cream Oreo O’s doppelgänger. This taste-alike is pretty good, but it still can’t match the dense, buttery flavor of the Korean kind—which I consider to be the true original.

This new Post Oreo O’s revival looks eerily similar to Cookies & Cream, leading me to worry that “new” Oreo O’s are just repackaged C&C and not, in fact, the real Oreo O.G. A Post spokesperson claims that, “Fans of the iconic OREO O’s cereal will find the product has stayed true to its roots,” but as, arguably, the world’s biggest Oreo O’s fan (wait ’til I put that on my resume), I have one thing left to say:

Be ready to put your money where my mouth is. Or something like that.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: chocolate, news, oreo o's, post. 9 Comments

May. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops Cereal

(Update: We reviewed Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops!)

Drink it in, folks: Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops, the first (American*) neapolitan cereal, is here.

Err, perhaps “drink it in” isn’t fitting enough. “Lick it in”? “Cone it in”? “Do everything but bite it in because you have sensitive teeth and a chronically frozen brain”?

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we can finally taste strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate all in the same cereal bowl without Frankenstein-ing some weird mix of Tiny Toast, Life, and crumbled-up Halloween Pop-Tarts (I know there are many chocolate cereals, but if you’re going to be a mad breakfast scientist, you might as well go borderline bonkers).

Spotted at Jewel-Osco and graciously shared by fellow snack scholar The Junk Food Aisle, Ice Cream Scoops Cocoa Puffs appropriately combine corn puffs bearing the three fruity, beany, and fudgy flavors of neapolitan ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate have crossed paths beneath Sonny’s bill before, but strawberry is a welcome newcomer. It’s so welcome that it makes me forget that last year’s greatest ice cream cereal (and simply greatest cereal), Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch, has passed on to the great cosmic creamsicle in the sky.

Here’s hoping that if these Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops work out, we’ll get different frozen novelty flavors in the future. Superman Puffs, anyone?

Thanks again to Junk Food Aisle for sharing the scoop—literally. Got a freshly spotted flavor of your own to dish out? Spoon it over to cerealously.net@gmail.com for a chance to see it on the site.

*There has been a neapolitan cereal before…in New Zealand! As usual, Cereal Time time traveller Gabe Fonseca knows all about it.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: chocolate, cocoa puffs, general mills, spooned & spotted, strawberry, vanilla. 10 Comments

Mar. ’17

Spooned & Spotted (Israel): Nestlé CRUNCH Cereal

https://www.instagram.com/p/BR_rmSjFQ8F/?taken-by=munchiebunchie

When Aaron Carter covered “I Want Candy” back in 2000, I wonder how serious he really was about craving Milky Ways, Snickers, and Three Musketeers for three meals a day. Serious enough to book an intercontinental flight just to crunch CRUNCH bars for breakfast?

If so, Mr. Carter better renew that passport, because believe it or not, a breakfast cereal based on Nestlé’s famous chocolate-coated crisp rice bar does exist—but not in America. This cereal does justice to its namesake candy bar by clustering puffed cocoa rice into clusters and flavoring it with cocoa liquor (a.k.a. cocoa mass, which sounds like the best religious ceremony ever), but it only does so in Europe and the Middle East—including Israel, where our Instagram friend Munchiebunchie got the above box.

My apologies to any non-American readers who are shaking their heads at me six time zones away who see CRUNCH Cereal as a commonplace breakfast option; here in the U.S., we’re starving for a fresh candy cereal, between the Lion Cereal we’ll never get and the Jolly Rancher Pop-Tarts we’re not sure we even want.

Maybe Krackel will throw us a bone on this one.

So if you have eaten Nestlé CRUNCH Cereal, please tell me how it is below so I can live vicariously through your taste buds. I hope it tastes as much chocolate corn-off-the-cob as it looks. And if you have a cool foreign or domestic cereal photo of your own (big thanks to Munchiebunchie!), spoon it over to cerealously.net@gmail.com for a chance to see it on the site.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: chocolate, Spooned and spotted. 3 Comments