That’s it, folks: I’m officially out of my element and not properly certified to dissect this news piece. It just feels like, after so many recentmutationswithin the Toast Crunch family—which is really more like a genus at this point—Toast Crunchology has become a discipline so complicated it requires a college degree to fully grasp the ecological, gastronomical, and heck, cosmological significance of Chocolate Churro Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Of course, the humorless reality is that this Chocolate Churro Toast Crunch is far from revolutionary. Just as regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros tasted nearly identical to their square relatives, so too will Chocolate Churro Cinnamon Toast Crunch most likely adapt Chocolate Toast Crunch in a more tubular, crunchy, and palate-lancing shape.
Despite its not-too-surprising existence—a convenient clap-back to Chocolatey Churro Pop-Tarts, perhaps?—Chocolate Churro Toast Crunch is probably going to be pretty good, because Chocolate Toast Crunch and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros are also, well, pretty good. Congratulations, young Choco—Cinna Churros: you are the apples of both parents’ eyes.
Six months. Cereal makers have had six months of quarantine to hunker down, cut through the corporate B.S. and dream up something legendary for the breakfast industry, yet I have to admit, their current efforts feel half-baked—and more than a little stale.
Don’t get me wrong, as someone who’s been rallying for retro reversion since he started writing about cereal, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. General Mills’ just-announced “Ultimate Taste Comeback” could be a harbinger of great things to come, but two truths stand out: one, the improved cereals appearing above seem like weak initial efforts, and two, the view of celebrating cereal’s nostalgia would’ve been really hot and timely five years ago. It is the opinion of this cereal scholar that cereal as a nostalgic symbol or vehicle was once so obvious of an idea that it’s become a bit clichéd. Now that The Empty Bowl has made such a splash in the field of breakfast meditation, I presently like to supplement any corporate-driven nostalgic retrovision with an eye for what the individual can constructively make out of their own cereal experience.
But I mindfully and mindlessly digress. Let’s assess General Mills’ Ultimate Taste Comeback lineup:
Trix will feature six fruity shapes again! Wait, wait…they’ve done exactly this for the past two years. So, not exactly a comeback as much as a box art refresh.
Cocoa Puffs will have “more chocolatey taste!” This is exactly the kind of vague promise that irks me about The Ultimate Taste Comeback—how are we supposed to know this is a dedicated throwback cereal if we’re given no proof that diligence was done to recreate vintage Cocoa Puffs?
Golden Grahams is bringing back honey as an ingredient. Between this only being an eight-year throwback and the stuff not really tasting much different, we already know that perhaps the most exciting announcement of these four Comeback cereals didn’t really have that much effort put into it, in terms of palpable change.
Finally, Cookie Crisp promises the same generic chocolatey infusion as Cocoa Puffs, albeit phrased more dramatically by Chip the Wolf. If I’m interpreting his kerning correctly, this Cookie Crisp will have “More Chocolate Chip C∞oookie Taste!” Definitely a bold promise—if this Cookie Crisp grants me anything less than eternal life in a state of divinely cookie’d nirvana, I’ll be disappointed.
Alongside these cereals, as part of their Ultimate Cereal Comeback, General Mills will host The Ultimate Saturday Morning Drive-In, with guest Mario Lopez streaming classic cartoons in California and online, October 3rd. If there were ever a place for General Mills to surprise debut retro Monster Cereals, it’d be there. Just be sure to keep six feet (or cars) away from Boo Berry. Who knows what his ethereal plasm might’ve picked up.
I’ve talked about this on the blog before, but I believe there is an understated, yet sacred, beauty to foodstuffs that make the most out of minimal ingredients. This I have dubbed my “Egg & Cheddar on Ciabatta Theorem,” and I hear it’s gaining traction among renowned microgastronomists.
This framework of culinary thought applies to Golden Grahams. Not so much literally, as Golden Grahams have as many peripheral filler ingredients as any processed breakfast cereal, but Golden Grahams have at least maintained an overall brand reputation for unanointed simplicity. Golden Grahams cereal squares taste like honey graham crackers, simple as that. If you want more nuanced flavor, either buy a Golden Grahams Treat or buzz off (presumably into the open arms of Honey Maid S’Mores or Cinnamon Graham cereals).
Yet after decades of chaste cereal pride, leave it to a year like 2020 to see Golden Grahams not only breaking bold new graham ground but also revealing (by way of an apology) a betrayal eight years in the making.
Bam. Smelted Golden Grahams icing on a so-so Toaster Strudel. Boom. A way overripe Golden Grahams S’Mores Remix snack pouch. And now, the grand ka-pow: Retro Recipe Golden Grahams that…bring honey back as an ingredient?
This is so silly to me because a quick googling suggests honey wasn't removed from GG until like 2012, so the "Retro Recipe" is anything but.
There’s the betrayal. Maybe I’m the most deliberately ignorant Golden Grahams fan, but I had no clue honey left the cereal around 2012—a fact that makes the ’80s box theming feel a little disingenuous.
Regardless, I’m excited to taste real honey in my Golden Graham again. Like Plato’s Allegory of a Cave’s Continental Breakfast, I’ve lived nearly a decade with false faith in the Grahams I spooned before me.
Finally, a cereal snack that will scream D-J KHALED! when you open it.
That’s how remixes work nowadays, right?
Perhaps in line with their recent Retro Recipe debut, General Mills is releasing three pouched portmanteaus that pair familiar cereal pieces with other breakfast guest stars. As first shared by Candy Hunting, these Remixes aren’t quite shelf ready yet, but from what we can see, there’s plenty to speculate about.
The Cinnamon Toast Crunch Remix takes a pretty safe position: CTC squares and Churros join Vanilla Chex for what should be a fairly predictable hyper-sweet Toast Crunch Textural Medley. The Golden Grahams S’Mores Remix is also well-trodden territory for other big cereal companies, so I’m sure the name-brand GG thing will be good, but likely leave me craving a bigger serving.
Chocolate Toast Crunch’s Remix is the biggest surprise here, since Cocoa Puffs is usually General Mills’ flagship chocolate cereal—and I’ve heard from many people claiming Chocolate Toast Crunch has been discontinued, at least in their area. It’s also the only Remix that thinks outside the cereal box, enlisting caramel corn as well as Vanilla Chex again. Given how well H-E-B incorporated popcorn into their own caramel granola, I expect this Remix to be a standout hit, too.
All that said, my excitement for these Remixes is at a meek 5.5/10. Not saying I could’ve designed a more exciting trio of sweets *cough* Honey & Oat Cheerios Oat Crunch, Honey Nut Chex & Pralines *cough* but I faintly hope that if these are just store samples so far, they’ll get enough feedback to crank up the indulgence factor like a Rollercoaster Tycoon ride given a triple corkscrew loop.
You ever see a new product release like this and wonder how you’re supposed to take it? As a celebration? An apology? A self own?
I consider myself both knowledgeable about cereal, and I’ve always been a big graham cracker stan, but I’ll admit I never noticed that Golden Grahams apparently hasn’t had honey in its ingredients list for some time now. I suppose I just never expected my old buddy Golden Grahams, my dear, sweet, innocent and unchanging Golden Grahams, to betray my trust. Between its yellow branding and its most famous commercials, Golden Grahams should’ve at least told people when it told mascot Honey The Honey Drop’s namesake stuff to buzz out of their cereal.
This is a dupe right up there with all Froot Loop colors tasting the same and Chocolate Lucky Charms being a corn-based cereal!
It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when Golden Grahams pivoted from a honey graham to a brown sugar graham cereal, but comparing school cafeterianutrition labels for single-serve Golden Grahams packaging, we can estimate it was some time between 2011 and 2013.
Now, so many depraved years later, Golden Grahams is proudly doubling back on its duplicity, at least temporarily, with Retro Recipe Golden Grahams—made with real honey! Spotted at Walmart by Tim S. (long-time vocal advocate for oat flour’s return to General Mills’ Monster Cereals, a noble and just cause), Retro Recipe Golden Grahams are certainly at the top of my “must try” list. And by “try,” I mean in the “push ’em to the edge” sense of the word. These Grahams have a lot of explaining to do.
We shared everything with each other, Golden Grahams! Promise me you’ve changed for good! Prove it to me by making Retro Recipe Count Chocula happen!
P. is for pouches, they’re foiled & grand! O. is for OH YES!, my response to the brand. P. is for pouches, c’mon can’t you read? – is the hyphenated joy of a fast feed. T. is for toasted, as all Tarts should be. A. is for awesome, this crust fills me with glee! R. is for Raspberry, the worst compared to Strawberry. T. is for the filling: is it good? My answer: very. S. is for sweet icing, a true sort of edible art.
And those, my friends, are the reasons I love Pop-Tarts.
Okay phew, I’ve put the Kellogg’s execs reading this to sleep: now let’s talk about how good these Toaster Strudels are.
Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little Toaster Strudel experience. I grew up on P-T (which is, in a sense, the opposite of P.T. the game), and with that kind of lifelong conditioning, anything more than tearing open a crumb-spewing pouch with the elegance of a resident campsite raccoon feels like too much work to get a toaster pastry in my stomach.
But if there’s one flavor I’d move mountains for—assuming there’s a rich vein of graham’d ore to suckle beneath them—it’s Golden Grahams. Though I have no proof of this, Golden Grahams seems to be the most popular cereal that never gets flavor variants, despite how obvious the possibilities are. Perhaps this is just a testament to Golden Graham’s chaste and pure breakfast beauty, but with a bunch of other s’mores cereals out there using Golden Grahams-esque pieces, it’s kind of strange that the General Mills brand has only given Golden Grahams the S’Mores treatment in cereal bars and now flaky strudels—maybe when GM’s legendary S’Mores Crunch was discontinued way back, the S’Morecerer casted an unbreakable “do nut resuscitate” spell in retaliation.
Unblazed cereal frontiers aside, I’m excited to get my large rectangular graham on, a little thicker than usual. Continue reading →
Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. I was just playing some Smash Bros. to celebrate Cereal Life‘s leak of an upcoming new Pokémon Cereal from General Mills. My character? Pichu, of course. Who else is there?
But much like everyone’s favorite pre-evolved rat, I might be hurting myself by getting too electrically excited. See, Pokémon Cereal has a very dear reputation, especially to me. With the original Pokémon Cereal released by Kellogg’s in 2000, this General Mills “Berry Bolt” cereal has a lot to live up to. Sure, Kellogg’s version was *just* an oats & marbits cereal, like any ol’ Lucky Charm chaser, but what it lacked in originality—and hey, it still tasted great—it made up for with charm: namely, adorably diverse pastel marshmallows, a holographically embossed box, and bowl paltoys inside.
Will General Mills’ team bring anything so super nostalgically effective to the table? Since as with most of Cereal Life’s leaks, the box art here is far from final, it’s difficult to say—however, as it is a puffed cereal, it’s very unlikely to be anything but corn based (and therefore extremely weak to both Oat and Milk type Pokémon), while its two meager, monochrome marshmallow designs leave me about as giddy as a post-dinner Snorlax.
Maybe they can make up for it with some sort of in-box exclusive—General Mills has been doing Pokémon Card promotions for a while now—but as it stands, you might be better off using a Max Revive on an old eBay box of the original stuff. It may be crusty and inedible, but at least you could pretend it’s a Gengar.
— Positively Ghostbusters (@PositivelyGB) July 25, 2020
With a crunchy creak, the Count’s fudge-encrusted crypt has opened again, and with only one cocoa-buttered fingernail poking out so far, the news is…promising.
Thanks to Positively Ghostbusters, we have our first look at what 2020 has in store for Count Chocula plus his fellow Monster Cereals Franken Berry and Boo Berry. While I’m not holding out hope for a Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy return, much less a reversion to these now-corn-based Monstrosities’ former oat flour glory, the ear-shaped head of a vintage Chocula is enough to leave me spooking my pants about Halloween in July. Continue reading →
