Am I excited for KIND Cereal? Well, kind of.
Sure, creative new cereal ideas are always welcome, but at the $6.98 price point KIND and Walmart are asking per box, these suckers better include a pouch of truffle oil as the prize inside. Not to mention how, after reviewing 9 similarly concepted Cerealology cereals with exciting ingredients like matcha and figs, it’s hard for me super excited about four more (comparatively tame) super grain cereals. Continue reading
You had one job, Lucky. One job!
Lucky Charms is a cultural treasure of a cereal. So much so that I’d wager over 2/3 of TV jokes about cereal somehow involve technicolor marshmallows. But while the one-note marbits are Lucky Charms’ Wonder Bread and butter, the oat bits that complement every ‘mallow are just as foundationally important to the overall integrity of this cereal we love so much. After all, what is a burst of dreamy sugar without a little grainy realism to bring your orbiting taste buds back down to earthiness?
Contrary to what major breakfast manufacturers seem to believe (for no doubt cost-saving reasons), a cereal’s base grain choice is critical. This can make or break an entire product, depending upon how any given mixture of corn, oat, wheat or rice flours are forged into a certain shape and are given a certain flavor. And while corn definitely has its place in the cereal aisle, it works best when the cereal itself is a celebration of corn. Corn Pops? It sure does. Corn Bran? Why corn’t it? Oh, and Frosted Flakes (of Corn)? I’d expect them to be of nothing less.
But when corn is merely a cereal’s airy and craggy stage, instead of a lead actor, any nuanced flavor basted upon it has to fight for tasteful dominance against its own brazen, maize’n terrain—like sunflower rows growing from concrete. That’s Honey Lucky Charms’ mortal sin: just like Chocolate Lucky Charms and the especially mediocre Fruity Lucky Charms, oat is swapped for corn and then given a flavor, flavors that need oat’s grounding hug more than ever.
But there’s a bit more to this cereal than my rambling intro would have you believe: I’m gonna temper my corn vendetta for a moment and jump right to the honey shot: Continue reading
Just picture it:
After enduring enough reality-deforming Herculean labors to leave a Hydra’s heads spinning, you’ve finally got your calloused mitts on Lucky the Leprechaun’s pot of gold! With great care, you hoist it—boy this thing’s heavy—out of whatever hidey-ho—oh no.
It was full of honey.
And now you’re slathered in it.
And said hidey-hole is starting to look and sound like a hibernation hole.
I mean, can you blame Lucky for going to such carnivorous lengths to hide his new Lucky Charms with Honey Clovers cereal? News of this apian addition to the Charms family was leaked—slowly and viscously—by Cereal Life on Instagram (thanks for sharing!). While the very suggestion of uniting Lucky Charms with Honey Nut Cheerios is exciting, what’s really got me confident about this stuff’s quality is a single word on the above box.
No, not honey itself, but oat.
Whereas the likes of Chocolate & Fruity Lucky Charms were inexplicably defiled with a corn flour base, Honey Lucky Charms appears to keep with the cereal’s most based base grain. With that in mind, I’d happily endure a hundred stings to get my paws on a box of this stuff early. But until then, I guess I’ll just drizzle real honey on my leftover St. Paddy’s Day Charms.
It’s a welcome change from my maple syrup mainstay condiment, after all.
Why waste time eating many small things when one big thing does the trick?
Such is the philosophy that has plagued cereal sales for the past decade—and for understandable reasons: breakfast as a temporally restricted concept is not what it used to be. For me, entering a workday with belly bloated rarely sounds appealing, especially since I’ve optimized my morning routine to essentially get me from bed to door in thoughtless, uninterruptible, and Rube-Goldbergian fashion. And clearly I’m not alone, as cereal companies have scrambled like diner eggs to adapt classic flavors for on-the-go breakfasting, while rebranding cereal itself as the midnight snack it was always destined to be.
But while concepts like breakfast shakes and mobile cereal receptacles are comparatively recent innovations, the world of cereal bars has largely eschewed architectural change, in favor of the tried and true “cereal bits bound by sweet-cream glue and shaped into crude rectangles” approach. Though I will say that in the case of General Mills bars, like these *new* Honey Nut Cheerios Treats, they’ve been getting smaller and lighter when compared to certain sugary bricks of yore (that can still apparently be bought, albeit only in cafeteria-friendly quantities).
I deeply enjoyed those aforementioned Honey Nut Cheerios “Milk ‘n Cereal Bars”—even if the freeze-dried milk sandwiched in the middle could practically be repurposed as sticky tack—so I’m interested to see how 2020’s slimmed-down take on America’s favorite cereal compares. Continue reading
Would it be wrong to automatically give this cereal a 1 or 2 out of 10 without trying it? I mean, it’s the edible definition of <3.
And yet, this review need not include much critical thought at all, as it’s more of a news post with photographic evidence. To illustrate Honey Nut Cheerios’ heart-healthy commitment, General Mills is releasing these Happy Heart Shape boxes starting next month. You’d think this would be a Valentine’s Day promo to give to your sweetheart, but Buzz the Bee would prefer if you used chunks of ivory to grind it to an acidic pulp and pump the spoils into your beatin’ heart. Romantic, right?
Of course, these Honeypie Cheerios don’t taste any different than the regular rings. In fact, only like 30-50% of the pieces are even heart shaped, making them look more like, um, naturally endowed thiccheerios. Worth a kiss on the cheek, right?
If you already love Honey Nut Cheerios, this charming novelty is probably worth it for the cuteness factor. Otherwise, there’s nothing HNC can do that Honey ‘N Oats Cheerios Oat Crunch can’t do better. Buzz the Bee may have my heart, but those granola shards have my soul.
The Bottom Line: 8 gloateous maximuses out of 10
More wishes. Boom, that was easy. And for the other two, bring back Waffle Crisp and the phrase “how’s tricks?” but don’t let the Trix Rabbit trademark it. Thanks.
Oh, wait, you weren’t asking, were you?
I wish you would’ve told me. But while my dreams of a colloquial world seen through amber-tinted glasses may have to wait, I’ll instead get the three wishes I’d never ask for out loud, but which will still appear under my Christmas tree between the socks and the Seinfeld box set (you can never have too many): a healthy cereal, that’s made by a small family, without the primary benefit being fiber content so high it’d give my small intestine a 1000mb/s connection.
Three Wishes is a newcomer in a specialty cereal niche that seeks to challenge the highs and lows of the low-sugar/low-everthing category. Created by the Wishingrad family, Three Wishes Cereal offers enough healthy specifics that it’s easier to quote them than type ’em out myself: “Grain free, plant based, vegan cereals made from chickpeas and pea protein,” with “More protein, less sugar, zero grains,” plus “No peanuts, no corn, no wheat, no rice, no dairy, no oats, and no soy. Our cereals are Kosher, Non-GMO and gluten-free certified.”
But hey, I’m just the taste test jockey, so I’ll be giving the three-flavor variety pack they kindly sent me a layman’s perspective. Please note that I am not on any restricted diets, so while I will be honest when clarifying my thoughts compared to sugary mainstream cereals, those looking for a nutritionist’s opinion can take mine with a grain of anything but actual grain. Let’s go! Continue reading
Forget Star Wars and assorted superheroes: this is the most-anticipated sequel of 2019.
For many moons now, Cinnamon Cheerios Oat Crunch has been a sleeper hit amongst wizened breakfasters—in fact, it’s tied with Chocolate Peanut Butter for the title of my favorite Cheerio variety currently on shelves. With the kind of crispety crunchiness that could earn a lawsuit from Butterfinger, the Cheerios Oat Crunch lineage was practically begging for a breath of fresh heirs—the flavor potential is pretty much endless.
And now, over a year later, we’re finally getting a new taste. While it may be the most obvious variety the folks behind Honey Nut Cheerios could do, and while it’s pretty oat-vertly redundant in concept, the only thing I can fault Oats ‘N Honey Cheerios Oat Crunch for is its questionable use of a single apostrophized capital N in lieu of just about any other symbolic or textual conjuration of the word “and.”
(I get it, it’s technically grammatically acceptable, but flanking one side and not the other really has me peev’d.)
But hey, I break writing conventions by the bowlful, so I should stay excited for what may be 2019’s brightly honeyed dark horse—which has already been spotted on shelves!
Let’s talk turkey. Or bunnies, to be seasonally appropriate.
When you’re reviewing breakfast fare, a scale is necessary. I won’t feign presumptions on how those who write about lesser foodstuffs manage to assign numerical ratings. What constitutes a perfect 10 in, say, pizza? Are there dual systems for thin crust and deep dish? Such are the fodder phantasms that haunt my countertop in the night.
Comparatively, then, I’m grateful for pantry paragons that act as polestars. We know that no cereal on the market today can, however mighty, topple Cracklin’ Oat Bran from its lofty position—even if matched by other exceptional staples. But it’s hard to compare everything against the crème de la crunch. Once in a while, we need to be reminded that superb bowls (heyoo!) exist only in light of normal, unremarkable cereal. We grade Gaussian around these parts, folks, no matter how much one may love log.
So Annie’s released a new cereal. Sort of. Remember Annie’s Homegrown? They make feel-good versions of classic favorites, like organic boxed mac and cheese, organic graham crackers, and organic fruit gummies, all in the shape of their lagomorph mascot. It’s a cute concept, often with a nightmare-conjuring price tag. This one, for instance, runs over $4 USD at my local Walmart for a relatively dinky box.
Naturally, one assumes that quality costs more. And although that hasn’t been the case historically, hare hops spring eternal. Continue reading
