This review goes out to you, 54-year old Larry P. from Tampa Bay, Florida.
You don’t actually exist, Larry, but you are an archetype of consumer both I and countless underpaid cereal customer service reps have had to deal with for the past two decades.
You’re the guy who complains on every Monster Cereal post about how Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry just aren’t as good as they were during your childhood growing up in some rural place that resembles the house from Courage the Cowardly Dog. You’re the guy who lambasts the cereals’ change from oat flour to corn flour as borderline cataclysmic, a harbinger of dark times that probably brought us reality TV and bluetooth headsets, too. And you use General Mills’ blog comments section as your impromptu soapbox.
So even though you are a persistently vocal one, Larry: you’re right. Oat flour does rock, and Malt-O-Meal’s newest cereal, Double Brownie Crunch, proves it with a masterful blend of fudged flours. Continue reading →
Jetsons meet the Flintstones? Great. Scooby-Doo meets the Harlem Globetrotters? Awesome. Peanut butter meets jelly? Bodacious! Two different groups of my friends meet in the same bar and I respond by anxiously escaping to the bathroom? Fantas—wait, wait, no.
Okay, maybe Egon was right and some streams aren’t meant to cross. But that didn’t stop General Mills from capitalizing on Kellogg’s inability to trademark the too-vague term “Frosted Flakes,” pouncing on those two words like an enraged Tony the Tiger on a gazelle and making these Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes.
Seriously, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but this has to be a deliberate move to incite a little friendly cereal competition. I fully expect Kellogg’s to fire back with “Cinnabon Toast Munch” within the month.
But regardless of why General Mills did this, Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes are here. The lion of sugar-coated corn flakes has laid down with the technicolor sugar nugget lamb, and now our dental health’s reckoning must begin. Continue reading →
This may not be canon, but I believe General Mills’ new Canada-only Lucky Charms Oatmeal is from an alternate timeline in the cereal universe.
In this truly darkest timeline, those cartoon kids who cheerfully steal Lucky the Leprechaun’s sugary breakfast aren’t motivated by hunger or anything rational. No, these serial cereal sociopaths take Lucky’s marshmallowy horseshoes and shooting stars just so they can melt them before his eyes in a bowl of bubbling, magmatic oats.
In this somber universe, Lucky Charms are “masochistically delicious!”
Somehow, those bullies’ mealy instruments of destruction crossed through an inter-dimensional portal and landed on Canadian grocery shelves. It’s the only logical explanation for the grotesque scenes of marshmallowy immolation you’re about to witness. Continue reading →
With my right hand raised, I, Dan G. of Cerealously, vow to complete this review of Kellogg’s new Despicable Me Cereal without voicing any of my personal opinions about Minions, the Minion phenomenon, or the fact that Minions somehow still overpopulate my Facebook feed with sassy memes in the year 2017.
There, now that the hard part’s over, I can evaluate this cereal objectively. At first glance—once you get past those moon-sized, staring eyes—Despicable Me Cereal appears to be the latest square-shaped, marshmallow-stuffed entry in Kellogg’s cinematic cereal franchise, an anthology that includes Finding Dory Cereal, Captain America Civil War Cereal, and several others with identical flavors but laughably different source materials.
But look, look closer with your special, telescopic Minion eyes, and you’ll see that Despicable Me Cereal is actually Brown Sugar Vanilla-flavored! I feel like we need to celebrate this trend-bucking mix-up of Kellogg’s repetitive movie cereal formula.
Anyone down for a Return of the Jedi-style party with Ewoks, bonfires, and the grinning blue ghosts of several force-sensitive mentors? Continue reading →
In the distant future, when all food is eaten in pill form and my great-grandkids ask me to describe the magic of breakfast cereal, I’ll oil my cyborg jaw motor and tell them about Oreo O’s.
I’ll tell them about the 10 glorious years America spent eating those cookies ‘n’ creme flavored rings. I’ll tell them about Oreo O’s 1997 introduction, orange-sprinkled Halloween Oreo O’s from 2000, and 2002’s marshmallowy Extreme Creme Taste Oreo O’s. I’ll captivate them with tales of sunglasses-wearing milk glob mascots who closely resembled PSY from Gangnam Style.
Then there’ll be a brief intermission as I explain what the heck Gangnam Style was. Seriously: I don’t know how it got over 2 billion views either, children of the future.
Then I’ll tell them about the tragic 2007 discontinuation of Oreo O’s. I’ll pause to build suspense, and then I’ll tell them about the legal loophole that allowed South Korean food manufacturer Dongsuh Companies Inc. to keep producing Oreo O’s as the rest of the world mourned the loss of milk’s favorite cereal. With my own eyes glistening, I’ll tell them about the E. coli contamination that forced Dongsuh to recall Oreo O’s in 2014, as well as the two-year Oreo O’s drought that followed—known globally as “The Second Dark Ages.”
But then I’ll finish with the story of Fall 2016, when an unexpected tweet from a Korean food account alerted me that the dawn of a new age was upon us. Continue reading →
The world would be a much happier place if there were skeleton-shaped things in every food.
Spaghetti with skeleton meatballs. Pistachios with skull-shaped nuts inside every shell. Or here’s a really crazy one: chicken wings with actual bones in the middle!
Wait: one of those things is not quite like the others. But it doesn’t matter, because the point is that Kellogg’s newest Halloween cereal is Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Skeleton Marshmallows. It’s the logical next step up from this summer’s Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows, because when you’ve already paired a sugar-coated cereal with concentrated bits of sugar, the only way to make it sweeter for the sweetest season of the year is to add another glaze of corn syrupy malted cocoa.
At this rate, Kellogg’s will be selling Frosted Flakes with complimentary maple syrup bottles and sugar beet seeds in every box by the time Christmas comes around. Continue reading →
Deep breaths, Dan. It’s only August. It’s still not socially acceptable to wear a vampire costume into work, and if you try trick-or-treating tonight, you’ll be lucky to post bail by October 31st.
But oh, brother, is it hard to not get swept up in Halloween spirit already, especially when Kellogg’s latest press release announced their full Fall lineup, including the new Frosted Caramel Apple Pop-Tarts & Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Skeleton Marshmallows cereal seen above.
The lineup also includes the previously leaked Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch and Pumpkin Spice Nutri-Grain Bars (maybe we’ll finally see a Nutri-Grain review on this blog?), and it also confirmed that Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats, Special K Apple Cinnamon Crunch, Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts, and Pumpkin Spice Fudge Stripes will all be returning this year.
But these two new, fruity and skeletal treats are easily the most exciting products of the bunch. All these snacks are hitting shelves this month, and I look forward to rapidly eating them to the point of satisfied nausea. Just like I did with my candy on Halloween night.
Back in April, I scored an exclusive photo of a Caramel Apple Pop-Tart, and now we have the box art to match the rumors. I commend Kellogg’s for choosing green Granny Smith apples for their neon icing drizzle (which reminds me of the carpet in a bowling alley) instead of Red Delicious, and I hope it brings a puckering, tart bite to pair with the sweet caramel.
The box art also confirms that the filling comes in ribboned shades of brown. I have no idea what the implications of this are, but I do know that come October, I’ll be filling an old-timey bucket with these pastries and bobbing for them while blindfolded.
As for Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Skeleton Marshmallows, they aren’t actually new so much as they are a Frankenstein combination of old cereal bits. Chocolate Frosted Flakes (also known as Choco Zucaritas) aren’t the easiest cereal to find on shelves, but they do exist. The skeleton marshmallows, meanwhile, made their debut last Halloween in Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.
I wasn’t terribly thrilled with normal Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows, but this cereal has me happily envisioning pillow cases full of Mallo Cups. Better yet, all I’d have to do is toss in Golden Grahams (and maybe a little liquid smoke) for a taste of late summer s’mores.
Cereal aside, I’m excited about the mail-in flashlights teased on the Frosted Flakes box. They appear to come in 4 varieties, with each beaming an image of Tony the Tiger, a Pop-Tart, our lovable Rice Krispies boys, or Toucan Sam. I hope we get to choose, because I’ve never wanted anything more than to fall asleep under the grinning glow of an iridescent, anthropomorphized toaster pastry.
It would take “sweet dreams” to a whole new level.
(Product images via Kellogg’s. And once again, special thanks to Candy Hunting for tipping me off about the photos.)
Welcome back to another edition of Marshmallow Monday. This time around, Marshmallow Fruity Pebbles is our guest of honor.
Marshmallow Monday is a day to honor all of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s millions of children, who must soldier on as orphans in s’mores and cereal aisles alike, with only charred memories of their long exploded and molten father.
Never thought you’d shed a single tear for a bag of marshmallows, would you?
But back to these Fruity Pebbles with marshmallows. They’re exactly what they sound like, which means Post went down the sugar family tree, skipped past sprinkles and nonpareils, and found the other two sugariest cereal ingredients they could afford: technicolor crisped rice and marbits.
It’s a recipe for disaster that sounds straight out of a cheap Sci-Fi Syfy Channel disaster movie. And speaking of over-the-top disaster movie concepts: this cereal has Sharkasaurus marshmallows!Continue reading →
