Hi there, it’s your favorite terminally inconsistent cereal blogger here with a quick look at all the latest and crunchiest cereal headlines from the past week or so.
First up we have limited-edition Star Wars Frosted Flakes, releasing this July to commemorate the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series releasing later this month. The actual constituent concept behind these Frosted Flakes isn’t particularly groundbreaking—mixing Chocolate Frosted Flakes with like, yogurt or honey-coated ones would be more exciting than this, which will inevitably just taste like diluted Chocolate Frosted Flakes—but I gotta give props to whoever did the box art: imagining Darth Tony slaughtering younglings is one heckuva visceral mental image. Continue reading →
We have a favorite saying over at The Empty Bowl podcast—when it grains, it pours. Which is just a cheeky way of saying that after long bouts of little new cereal news, the milky floodgates tend to open all at once, and my ever-slowing bloggin’ fingers have especially struggled to keep up lately. So instead of fumbling my way through filler-some 200-word posts for every topical breakfast blurb, I figured I’d just wrangle ’em all into this post and blaze through each headline—so you can spend less time reading and more time zooming to whichever grocery store, doughnuttery, or Foot Locker has the line item you’re most interested in. Continue reading →
Look, I know I’m a little behind on posting all the latest cereal news to come out of the last week—and I’ll get to it, don’t worry—but I think you’ll forgive me for jumping the queue here: because this is a code orange, folks.
Long squeeze short, on May 4th, Tropicana is releasing Tropicana Crunch—the first cereal designed to be eaten with orange juice instead of milk—exclusively at TropicanaCrunch.com. Apollonianly blasphemous, I know.
There are a lot of problems here, foremost of them being, who asked for this? Tropicana’s justification is a survey they held, boasting that 15 million people out there have tried OJ and cereal before, and “Half of the adults who poured OJ over their cereal did so because they thought it looked like it would taste good,” while “more than one in three who tried it did so because they love OJ and thought it would be a good combination.” The key operating word in both data points, of course, being thought, with conspicuously little evidence that any of these people actually enjoyed it.
But yeah, taste, texture, and possible pulp problems aside, I’m also just curious what makes this a cereal designed to be eaten with OJ. You want me to believe that the folks at Tropicana, who really only make juice, have the industrial machinery and gastro-engineers to develop a high-tech juice-complementing cereal? No, I think it’s far more likely that Tropicana Crunch, billed as a honey almond clusters cereal, just pulled a Timbits and had Post send them a butt-ton of leftover Almond Honey Bunches of Oats to reskin.
Assuming I can get my hands on a box, I’m prepared to be disproven, if not pleasantly surprised, though—a lot of people in my Twitter replies attested to having tried and enjoyed OJ in cereal after all, plus Cap’n Crunch’s Orange Creampop Crunch was one of my all-time favorite cereals, so anything’s possible.
What do you think? Will this be a juicy breakfast revolution, or a Sunny D-saster?
Alright, I think we’ve heard about enough from the Cinnamon Toast Crunch folks. They’ve clearly stopped trying.
Granted, it’s probably our collective fault for still buying these “new” cereals, but am I the only one who’s getting a little sick of seeing the same Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor basted onto some newfangled breakfast geometry? Cinnamon Toast Churros was one thing, Cinnamoji Toast Crunch was merely a cosmetic re-dusting, and CTC & Lucky Charms Mix was….Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms mixed. If all those sound like lazy releases to you, then I doubt these Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will be any better.
Not to be confused with actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnamon Rolls, of course, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls Cereal just seems like General Mills’ take on Kellogg”s Cinnabon Cereal. I expect nothing more than classic CTC flavor glazed atop a crunchier, airier, and ultimately less satisfying cereal shell.
Is it really too much to ask for another Apple Pie Toast Crunch, or dare I say, the return of the Tiny Toast model of cute lil powdered bread slices? I don’t know, y’all—as cereal innovation continues to flatline, it’s getting harder and harder for me to care. Anyway, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls will arrive on shelves this May. Otherwise, defibrillate me if you hear from my ol’ pal Peanut Butter Toast Crunch.
Sorry for lacking excitement on this one, but Snickerdoodle Pop-Tarts, debuting this May, just seem…redundant? I mean, what will they be able to do that P-T’s deuteragonist Brown Sugar Cinnamon hasn’t been doing so iconically for decades? And why do the sprinkles look like petri dish cultures? And why does the snickerdoodle cookie on the packaging simultaneously look like a cookie and, from a warped perspective, a loaf of bread?
Lots of quibbles and questions here, and my complaints are surely arbitrary, but in a world where we’ve still never seen like, a Honey Pop-Tart, it is a little disappointing to see Kellogg’s re-tread old sweet-breaded territory. Oh well! We all know I’ll still be cramming my Tart-hole like a sentient VCR come May.
Wow-wee, golly-gee! Changing the color and flavor of milk? You mean the thing every single cereal ever does?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally excited for these new Frosted Flakes flavors. I just think it’s a little silly that in-milk alchemy is the principle selling point, since unless your cereal is changing the milk an entirely different color from the cereal pieces themselves, the flavor and pigment infusion of endmilk is pretty much an expected feature at this point.
Rather, it’s the actual Frosted Flavors here that have piqued my interest. Sure, Chocolate Frosted Flakes are far from new, but it seems Kellogg’s is aiming to improve the formula, calling it “better than ever, with traditional corn flakes, sweet cocoa and vanilla flavor.” As far as I know, the titillating promise of vanilla is new here.
The real interesting ones are Strawberry Milkshake, packing “a ripe and juicy strawberry flavor coupled with rich, creamy notes,” and Cinnamon French Toast: “the perfect combination of caramelized brown sugar and maple syrup flavor with warm cinnamon spice on golden toasted corn flakes.”
Though simply sugared Frosted Flakes don’t immediately strike me as the ideal vessel for such nuanced flavors, I’m intrigued enough to check give this whole tasty triumvirate a try when it hit shelves in May.
Finally, finally: a licensed cereal willing to do at least the very bare minimum to relevantly connect its composition to the property it’s promoting. I mean, a Sonic the Hedgehog cereal…shaped like golden rings! Not since Buddy the Elf’s syrup-slathered slop have we seen such a thoughtful not entirely thoughtless movie cereal.
Sure, a cereal based on the Blue Blur could’ve gone for a slightly more inspired flavor—blue raspberry and cherry Sonic Popsicle flavored clusters, anyone?—but at least honey-flavored rings are better than some bland birthday cake or vapid vanilla. And sure, the marbits could be shaped a little more lovingly—the green Chaos Emeralds I get, while the blue ones “representing Sonic swirling around” are a little iffy—but I’m ready to call this upcoming release a red-sneakered step in the right direction (and hopefully the Genesis of a new, tastier era for movie cereals).
Interestingly, this isn’t Sonic’s first foray into the breakfast aisle. From appearing on Honey Nut Cheerios boxes alongside Buzz the Bee to getting a FunkOs variant, an odd Golden Rings promo seemingly sent only to journalists, and…whatever this one is, Sonic is well travelled at the breakfast table, but this is his first time headlining a mainstream supermarket cereal.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will hit theaters this April 8th, while Sonic the Hedgehog Cereal will hit stores in March.
Ah, looks like General Mills and I both have the same mindset for 2022: “just f*** it, who cares.” I mean, why ideate a new cereal when you can just reroute the pipes in the cereal factory and call it a day?
Sorry if I sound bitter, but as a sprightly and imaginative hobby cereal mixologist, it irks me a bit when cereal companies take the brainstorming fun out of dreaming up your own cereal combos—though they’ll have to pry the “Honey Nut Bunches of Cheeri-Oats” out of my cold, spoon-gripping hands.
This trend started with the Frosted Failure of Kellogg’s Mashups, and now GM clearly just wants their own cut of the low-hanging fruit harvest. It’s no surprise that they’re starting with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, since these are two of their most iconic brands, plus they get paired up time and time again when it comes to cross-branded cereal infusions. However, I have to imagine this won’t be a particularly satisfying MIX! (their excited emphasis, not mine; I’d’ve used a glum ellipsis…), as combining these two cereals doesn’t really evoke any common flavor pairings (would it’ve been so hard to just give us like, PB&J Reese’s/Trix Puffs or something?). Plus at this point, why not just bring back Cinnamon Lucky Charms?
Sorry if this blog post comes across as aimless and disordered—I wanted it to be lazy as the subject matter. But whatever: Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms MIX! is hitting stores now.
