Tag Archives: holiday

Review: Gingerbread Toast Crunch

New Gingerbread Toast Crunch Review - Box

Just when I think I’m out…they pull me back in…like when a bad vaudeville actor gets pulled off stage with a cane…but in this case it’s like…a candy…cane…

Sorry, since I’ve been on a posting hiatus, I’ve forgotten how to smoothly start these things. Much-needed time off aside, I couldn’t just not break my break in order to review the cereal I’ve begged for the most over the course of this blog’s 8+ year existence. Seriously.

Simply put, I’ve been a gingerbread-loving lad since the day I first bit a man’s arm off (he was trying to steal my gingerbread cookies). That warm, molasses-soaked medley of spices…the fun of decorating and building elaborate edible architecture…the mythos of an uncatchable cookie cryptid…I just love it all to the point where you might as well call me The Gingerbread Dan.

And since I love cereal, too—especially the cookie-adjacent snickerdoodliciousness of the Toast Crunch family—combining gingerbread with Cinnamon Toast Crunch has always seemed like a no brainer. So while I’m surprised it took General Mills this long to pick the low-hanging gumdrop button, I’m just glad a box of Gingerbread Toast Crunch is finally nestled in my loving arms—just in time for Halloween to shamble back into its sarcophagus and the Thanks-mas-Year’s-Eve juggernaut to protect me from old man winter’s seasonally depressive ilk with festive cheer.

You are my talisman of power, Gingerbread Toast Crunch: now let’s find out if your taste is worth the wait. Continue reading

Review: Elf on the Shelf North Pole Snow Creme Cereal

New Elf on the Shelf North Pole Snow Creme Cereal Review.- Box

Ah, now that Thanksgiving—with all its bountiful feasts, plentiful horns, and wishful bones—is over, it’s time to dive into the holiday season with everyone’s favorite yuletide tradition.

Which one, you ask? Decorating the tree? Crudely icing gingerbread cookies to look like your most cannibalizable loved ones? Or perhaps foisting reindeer antlers on your soon-to-be ho-ho-homicidal cat?

Oh, no, we’re talking about the most treasured, timeless Christmas rite of all: hiding a wretched little uncanny creature around your home who will proverbially invade your privacy with its eerie omnipresence!

Seriously though, does anyone actually like The Elf on the Shelf? I certainly haven’t met anyone who does. I’m convinced the whole thing’s a psyop by The Elf itself, who’s collected enough damning nocturnal footage through its prying (beady, sinister, soulless) eyes to blackmail the global marketing elite into helping its species reproduce.

And reproduce it has. Somehow, 2022’s new North Pole Snow Creme is the fourth EotS cereal to hit shelves (and stay there, unsold). Between the earlier Sugar Cookie one, the Peppermint one, and the Hot Cocoa one, the quality of this Elf’s oeuvre runs the gamut from awful to alright at best, so I’m not going into this new one with high hopes. Let’s just hope that if I give him another bad review, The Elf won’t pour glue in my 2%.

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Review: Dominique Ansel Bakery’s Christmas Morning Cereal

Dominique Ansel Christmas Morning Cereal Review Box

Merry Christmas y’all!! We* here at Cerealously hope your day is merry, bright, oh-so-sweet, and just right.

*By “we” I literally mean me and my two cats, whose best approximation of “cereal” is salmon bits suspended in gravy.

For such a special day, naturally I’ve got a special review on deck. This aptly titled “Christmas Morning Cereal” is a premium breakfast product from Dominique Ansel Bakery—the folks behind the once infamously hyped Cronut phenomenon. Apparently Dominique Ansel Bakery has been selling this Christmas Morning Cereal in limited annual batches since 2013, but I’ll admit this is the first year I’ve even heard of it, let alone tried it. That’s probably because I’m used to $4 family sized boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, while Christmas Morning Cereal costs $15.50 for a demure carton that’s just about big enough for 2-4 bowls of designer indulgence.

However, this particular Christmas Morning Cereal carton was an incredibly generous gift from the kind John Riggs, who runs a gaming YouTube channel in addition to being a fellow cereal fan and historian. So my sincerest Yuletide thanks go out to him, as I dive into what may very well be the priciest per-bite review in this site’s history. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Reviews: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs & Cap’n Crunch’s Merry Berries Popcorn

The latest in my light/bite-speed review series of cereals that aren’t novel enough to justify full Tolstoyan treatises: two holiday season quasi-re-releases that, though they are both outstandingly simple, feel very cozy if you can enjoy them while watching flurries fall outside your window (earmuffs and electric blanket optional, but highly recommended).

The Empty Bowl Episode Sixty + Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats

Happy Ho-Ho-Hovember! Not to be confused with Yo-Ho-Hovember (only celebrated in international waters), H-H-H-vember is my go-to name for the late-autumn parts of November that are cannibalized by the coming Christmas season (i.e., every day in November except for like, three).

I highly recommend you celebrate with either a) strict defiance and rigid adherence to Thanksgiving tradition with a “come and take ’em” on your mashed potatoes, b) the kind of dastardly combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities that results in cranberry sauce leaking out of a stocking, or c) a new episode of The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast from myself and Justin McElroy.

I won’t lie: I do a very bad job about remembering to tell y’all when we have a new episode. In fact, it’s been an embarrassing 5 months since I’ve done so. But nevertheless, Episode Sixty is a darn good one, even if it gets a bit off topic into the rich realms of s’mores and doughnuts…and shoddy Halloween costumes.

New Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats Box

We also discuss these new Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats, which thankfully aren’t exclusive to the Sam’s Club 53-count box after all—and instead can also be found in this 35-pack at Walmart stores, even though that’s still enough sweet little rectangular prisms to leave Santa too stuffed to slide out of your house the way he came in. Forgive him for tucking and rolling out the living room window…and taking the head clean off your front yard reindeer sculpture.

Anyway, if you want to hear all the Empty Bowl episodes I forgot to tell you about, you can find them at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one is like a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treat injected directly into our veins.

News: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Bullying works!

See, when Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs debuted way back in 2017, I made fun of the name for being redundant and clumsy to say. Now, the concept of wintery marshmallow’d Cocoa Puffs is back from its four-year embarrassment-induced hibernation, and with a less tongue-twisting name. Sure, “Hot Cocoa” is still the flavor descriptor—despite no one in their right mind actually eating hot Cocoa Puffs—but “Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs” sounds a lot neater.

Sadly, the cereal itself will probably be more tongue-tiring than tempting. Looking back at my Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs review, it’s clear I need to get at least halfway through a box before giving it a full review, for while the charm of marbits and cocoa-powdered puffs was cozy at first, I remember getting really bored of the cereal’s one-note adequacy long before I finished it. Cocoa Puffs as a corn-based cereal has simply lost its luster in the face of other, better-base-grained chocolate cereals, plus the marbits are boring and Cocoa Puffs’ recent reformulation has left me distrustful of Sonny the Cuckoo and his bowl-gripping feathers…

…even if I happen to love his sweater, which makes the bird look like a Fat Albert side character.

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs have already been spotted at Sam’s Club.

News: Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal

New Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal Box

Hallo-who?

Oh, sorry, that silly old October 31st holiday is so last August. Get with the times—it’s the holiday season already! Which, for some ungodly reason, means we’re getting another Elf on the Shelf Cereal.

First came Elf on the Shelf Sugar Cookie Cereal in 2019. It was an over-simplistically sugary cereal, far more forgettable than the accursed eldritch Elf-scourge whose name it bears.

Then last year we got Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch Cereal. In addition to its criminal abuse of consonance, this stuff tasted terrible. Like a mint Lifesaver scraped off the bottom of someone’s snow boot.

Now to complete this tepid trilogy (at least, dear most holy Saint Nick, I pray this is the end) comes Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal. From the looks of its cocoa stars and marshmallows, this stuff is unlikely to surpass General Mills’ similar Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs, which was, in itself, exceptionally mediocre. In fact, EotS Hot Cocoa will probably be worse, since this cereal family historically has the worst marbits ever. Seriously: these chewy, pill-sized marsh-molars could sink a cereal brand ten times mightier than Elf on the Shelf.

Sorry if I sound hopelessly pessimistic, but I am. That devilish shelf-sitting sprite has every right to try proving me wrong, but given his putrid precedent, he’s guilty until proven innocent.

Review: Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch

New Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Cereal Review Box

You know those quasi-popular memes that contrast one’s grieving friends & family with the reality that one is in the underworld as Doomguy, looking for vengeance? Yeah, that’s gonna be me in the bowels of H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, aiming to double-damn the infernal blight of the Elf on the Shelf. Of course, I’d never find him, since that well-hidden Elf resides either high in Satan’s castle or in some abstract negative space unreachable by human souls.

All that to say, I don’t like Elf on the Shelf. I don’t like his silent menace, his plasticine face, or his chaotic-neutral mischief. But since Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch is one of only two new Holiday cereals this season, I’m obligated to give this wintertide rascal his due bloggerly diligence.

Because if I don’t, he’ll probably curse me into endlessly wandering his snowy pocket dimension’s gingerbread labyrinth. Continue reading