Tag Archives: general mills

Review: Chocolate Toast Crunch (2019)

Chocolate Toast Crunch Cereal Review Box

What cosmic breakfastian powers command the scales of cereal justice? Which ancient grain gods and granulated goddesses hold court over the eternal fates of discontinued cereal souls, reanimating some amd leaving others in cultically revered purgatory?

Well whoever they are, they’ve got some explaining to do: it’s been nearly half a decade since the heyday (and collapse) of the 2000s’ Toast Crunch empire, and the General Millsian pantheon has only just now resurrected a second member of that power trilogy.

Let me explain—I firmly believe the first of the Toast Crunch’s Y2K success stories to return was not reborn directly. No, Frosted Toast Crunch (2012-2015) must have had its powdered sugar-dusted soul reincarnated in the form of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch. By binding Frosted Toast Crunch’s might to a seasonally limited plane, this ho-ho-glow up made its predecessor frostier, butterier, and infinitely more loveable.

So now that we’re seeing the total return of the youngest Gen Z Toast Crunch, Chocolate (2013-2016), it begs an eternal question: where is the first among them? Where is my beloved Peanut Butter Toast Crunch? It debuted in 2004 to wide acclaim, even making a brief 2013 re-appearance after its first 2006 retirement. So while I’m ready to dive into these Chocolate Toast Crunch squares with cocoa gusto, it will inevitably leave me hoping for another spiritual successor to PB…

…one that merges its ghostly life energy with that of recently departed Strawberry Toast Crunch.

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Review: Fruity Lucky Charms Cereal

Fruity Lucky Charms Box Review

How long before seasonal cereal rotations become literal?

Someday I anticipate we’ll reach a cereal singularity. When all the ideas have been made already, it will become most economically viable to print Count Chocula and S’Mores Oops! No Graham Crackers! Cereal on respective sides of the same box. Then some grocery stocker need only flip the boxes around come October and brainwash anyone who brainwash customers into believing it never happened.

No need to read that box back, humble shopper. Just chew on that cocoa corn, because we’ve always been at war with Boo Berry.

But until that dark chocolate day arises, we must remain hesitant about letting seemingly carbon-copied cereals get away with döppelganging up against us brave breakfast lovers. That’s why when I first heard General Mills was releasing Fruity Lucky Charms, I immediately saw it as a 10-month early reanimation of Franken Berry under a different name: perhaps out of creative laziness, perhaps to use up a few thousand quarts of near-expired strawberry syrup.

So I’ll try the stuff, for sure, but don’t think I won’t be swapping my spoon for a pitchspork, just in case I need to incite a little bedlam.

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Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros Cereal

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros Cereal Review Box

There’s an old adage in the breakfast and breakfurious business of cereal: K.I.C.S., which of course stands for Keep It Cinn-ple Stupid.

The Toast Crunch family of cereals is many things: necromantic, with its obsessive reanimation of old products. It’s viral, as the cereal’s cinnamon-spiced squares infect products with only a tertiary connection to the cereal medium. And the Toast Crunches are borderline mythological, as one of their kin is seemingly set to rival Santa Claus in seasonal popularity (at least according to short surveys given to a small sample of IHOP parking lot-dwellers [my people!]).

Yes, these cereals are a complicated brood set on cereal domination. But they’re also clever, because they always keep things cinn-ple. Whether it’s actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch products or a fruity family tree outcrop, every T.C.-ereal know what strategy works for them, and they stick to it: sticking a flour sack’s worth of confectioner’s sugar-textured flavoring formula to pieces that are already mildly (but not distractingly) sweet, a 1-2 combo that could make even an End Piece of the Loaf Toast Crunch sound appealing.

Butt, I digress. New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros are interesting by design, because you, like I, may think on the surface that it’s just a lazy reimagining of an old flavor, stolen from Post. Yet its fascination comes from the question of whether Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s heavenly ghost of cereal dust can survive on an airy puffed piece without its decades old shell of squared crisped wheat/rice. If so, how long before these noodly Churros grow arms?

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Rumor Mill: Fruity Lucky Charms & (Boxed) Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros Cereals!

Fruity Lucky Charms 2019

Photos via sega_retro_revival

(Update: We reviewed both!)

What does Franken Berry do for the 10.5 months of the year he isn’t slinging spooky strawberry cereal and reclining seductively in plain view of traffic?

Trading secrets with Lucky and Mario, apparently.

Thanks to tips from sega_retro_revival and cereal compatriot Gabe Fonseca on Instagram (thanks!), we now know that General Mills is at the very least testing a new Fruity Lucky Charms cereal. While the cereal hasn’t been confirmed to be hitting stores, the “not for resale” boxes sega_retro_revival received directly echo four cereals play-tested by General Mills about this time last year, all of which ended up coming out. So I think it’s safe to say that those specifically nostalgic for 2006’s Berry Lucky Charms will have something to look forward to soon.

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Review: Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms

Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms Cereal Review

You know that unfortunate person in your life whose birthday tragically falls within a week on either side of Christmas? The one whose cake and ice cream inevitably end up getting rebranded as pumpkin pie and sugar cookies so their family can make a joke about “2-for-1 discounts?”

I have a theory that Lucky the Leprechaun is that person. Why? Because he seems to be thoughtlessly regifting his Chocolate Lucky Charms like someone who’s lived through a spirit-numbing lifetime spent receiving “festive birthday socks.”

Yes, while the Toast Crunch family’s holiday party went off with nationwide fanfare—and probably more than a few interstellar parades, assuming the aliens got my celebratory transmission—Lucky and his band of merry Charms certainly didn’t try to steal Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch’s thunder.

Rather, we’ve been gifted Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms, a cereal that takes the Chocolate Lucky Charm flavor General Mills has refined for decades, with the, erm, questionable geometry of holiday marshmallows first seen in last year’s Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms.

Despite sounding unique, the Cinnamon Vanilla variety wasn’t terribly compelling. So maybe it’s for the best GM went the safer route: especially since, astoundingly, I haven’t yet reviewed Chocolate Lucky Charms on this blog.

That means I can consider Chocolatey Winter Lucky Charms a gift of opportunity, if not originality. Much like how coal gives a chance for some (very) early summer grilling. Continue reading

Coming Soon: Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Cocoa Puffs Bars from Pillsbury

Pillsbury Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars

Image via General Mills

What’s with General Mills and thermal activation? First we got the infamously inscrutable Toaster Strudel, essentially a high-maintenance Posh-Tart, and now a pair of Soft Filled Cereal Bars. Is the whole company a puppet operation run by a shadow council of Pillsbury Doughclerics, hellbent on igniting the world and ascending to the breaded plane?

Or am I just really lazy and hate waiting for the toaster when I could be eagerly and beaverly carving into a Pop-Tart?

Pillsbury Soft Filled Cocoa Puffs Bars

Image via General Mills

Despite my aversion to exertion, I’m excited to try Pillsbury’s latest “ovenable” cereal-pastry crossover. According to General Mills, both are a “Frozen soft bar filled with cinnamon [or chocolatey] Neufchatel cheese.” The prospect of turning my oven (or countertop, as they can be thawed to eat, though who would want to risk the inevitable accidental face-plant into it) into a fudgy or cinnamon bunny cheesecake factory has me cheesequaking in my desk chair.

It makes me wonder what other cheeses may have cereal crossover potential. Cream Cheese Bagel Toast Crunch? Cottage Cheese Pebbles? Come on, Big Cereal, you have to claim this untapped potential before Doritos does!

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros, Cookies ‘n Creme Fillows, & XL Reese’s Puffs are Coming to Snack Pouches Near You!

Could this be the greatest cereal clapback since the birth of Malt-O-Meal and subsequent baggification of cheapened famous cereal formulas?

Let me explain: last month, Kellogg’s launched its redesigned Halloween cereals, the skeleton-marshmallowed Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Chocolate Frosted Flakes.

Call it hungry conspiracy-theorizing, but maltodextrin foil hat-wearers like me saw this as a potshot at General Mills’ recycled Monster Cereal theme, as the outfits and marshmallows of Kellogg’s creatively costumed characters directly mimicked GM’s full, albeit estranged, monster quintet.

While some were quick to dismiss this as another Cinnamon Toast ghost story, General Mills’ latest new product debut feels like more than a rebuttal to Tony’s trolling: it’s a brazen bombardment of breakfast counterintelligence.

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