Tag Archives: non cereal

Review: Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies

Milk? Never heard of her. Is that some fermented barnyard beverage, like a cow-bucha?

I mean, it’s 2020: we’ve got more viscous things to pour over our cereal. While many make a New Year’s resolution to get thinner, there’s a skim-to-none chance that I don’t spend the year progressively thickening my breakfast additives.

Case in point: new Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies, two chuggable recontextualizations of popular cereals that are likely not meant to join their namesake noshes in bowl-y matrimony—though I am hellbent on doing so anyway. These bottles come four to a clumsily constructed cardboard pack (seriously, put these in a separate bag or you’ll end up bungling a liter of chilled Trix sauce down your front steps), and conveniently contain exactly enough smoothie to douse a bowl of cereal.

But of course, I must slug ’em back raw before any experimentation. So forgive me as I make whatever wretched noises accompany the process of “opening up one’s throat.” Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, non cereal, toast crunch, trix. 1 Comment

Jan. ’20

News: Good Humor Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts Ice Cream Bars!

Look, I know I’ve always said it’s my dream to one day be credited on Wikipedia for a distinguished contribution to cereal-kind—I’m picturing a front-page New York Times piece on my exhumation of the Lost Tomb of Yummy Mummy. But now I’m starting to think finding a place in Pop-Tarts’ extended mythos might be easier. I can see it now:

“Noted breakfast influencer and Fillows fill-anthropist Bran Goubert [of course I’d change my name for the clout] was the 21st century’s strongest advocate for the freezing of Pop-Tarts, a technique now so commonplace that Kellogg’s has relocated their entire retail pastry inventory between the shredded hash browns and single-serving pot pies.”

Now I know, I know: freezing Pop-Tarts has been a thing for a long time, but I certainly got a lot more flak from toaster troubadours in my early blogging years for explicitly condoning the practice. Maybe I just need to be bolder about my advocacy. Choreograph a Gurdjieffian dance around a giant cooling coil or something.

While I wait for my sluggish notoriety to thaw, I can nevertheless celebrate Pop-Tarts’ latest validation of frozen Pop-Tarts as a concept, ideal and life philosophy. Kellogg’s pastry-smiths have teamed up with the agreeable folks at Good Humor to launch Brown Sugar Cinnamon ~~Ice Cream~~ Technically ‘Dairy Dessert’ Bars. To say I’m excited for this is an understatement, and to say my lactose intolerance disagrees with this excitement would certainly be an easy-to-ignore statement. Given how famous Good Humor’s Strawberry Shortcake Bars already are, it makes sense for them to tackle the brand’s other biggest spokes-Tart. We’re treated here to two layers of (presumably vanilla) and brown sugar cinnamon-infused cow product, but what’s really got me ready to put sole to pavement for these bars is that beautiful gravelly coating.

Looking like the inside of my bag after a brief sojourn to the beach, these crispety-crunchities are almost sure to be what makes these Good Humor Pop-Tarts Bars so good you can taste them in your humerus. As they’re already on Good Humor’s website, these bars should be popping up in stores any time now. Guess it’s time to start parceling out my Lactaid pills until the next ice age—if I tragically can’t go down in Pop-Tartian history, I at least want my tear-diluted dairy delicacies to go down easy.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cinnamon, ice cream, non cereal, pop-tarts. 2 Comments

Jan. ’20

Review: Chocolatey Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites

Anybody else got weird, yet oh-so-satisfying ways to eat food? And I don’t mean any particular combination of foods—though I will proudly die on the Pringles with Ketchup Hill, as it’s where my family plot will be.

No, I’m talking unconventional approaches to the physical act of eating something. Sure, there are classics, like unscrewing and licking an Oreo clean or consuming Snickers with a fork & knife. And there are more disturbing ones, like those who eat kiwis with the fuzzy flesh on, or the worryingly confident breed of Fun Dip consumer who eats the sticks totally unadorned.

Personally, I like to eat completely around the cookie part of a Twix to save it for last, consume a handful of popcorn like an apple, and more-than-occasionally swallow pasta noodles whole for the unique tracheal imprint left by each respective shape. Oh, and I used to unknowingly eat Reese’s Cups with the paper still on until an embarrassingly mature age.

Pop-Tarts are far from immune from this sort of nuanced noshing. While my formerly frowned-upon habit of freezing toaster pastries has now been largely normalized (you’re welcome), I still know many who will nibble around the crust before handling the sweet meat of the matter. This may be less barbaric (albeit less creative) than eating the insides before the crust, but either way these folks are depriving themselves of the blessed balance struck at the baked-in slip fault between frosting and crisped crust.

No, now that I’ve eaten Chocolatey Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites, I believe there is a better way: one that may be difficult to scale up to a regular Pop-Tart, but which ought to nevertheless cleave your breakfast time traditions in twain. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, kellogg's, non cereal, pop-tarts. 2 Comments

Dec. ’19

News: Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts Bites

Fact: Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts are inherently the most nostalgic to me.

Are they my favorites today? Not a chance. But they were the only ones my parents ever got, and the memories of eating them with my sister are unparalleled in their neurologic detail. In fact, it’s because of my mortal youthful sin of microwaving my Pop-Tarts for 15 seconds to cook them that today I feel a phantom guilt hugging my soul so tightly that I’ve become an ardent crusader for the true method of Pop-Tart preparation: freezing.

Such a technique likewise works wonders on Pop-Tarts Bites, which debuted right around this time last year in Brown Sugar Cinnamon and Strawberry. By bringing a thicker crust and more permeating frosted sweetness to portable breakfasts everywhere, these Bites are worthy successors of Pop-Tarts Mini Crisps and Go-Tarts.

So while it was such a no-brainer to bring chocolate into the mix—even if it took 365 days of face-palming obviousness—and while I have no-doubt these will be tasty enough to take permanent residence in my car’s glove box, I again hope Chocolate Fudge isn’t the Rise of Skywalker to an ending Bites-sized trilogy. If we’re gonna milk this pastry franchise for what it’s worth, I want Cookies & Creme, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Wild Berry too—it’d practically be this series’ Baby Yoda!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: chocolate, kellogg's, non cereal, pop-tarts. 1 Comment

Dec. ’19

News: Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies

Thought Trix Yogurt, the delightfully swirled nectar that is to Trix cereal as ultra-premium gasoline is to crude oil, was pretty much gone off shelves everywhere but spider-webbed school cafeteria giga-fridges? That would be a pretty silly thing to think, wouldn’t it. Very preposterous, even.

While you may have to get your LLL (lunch lady license) to order true Trix Yogurt in Olympic pool-sized volume, we solo spooners can at least skip the silverware and slug back a yogurty Trix smoothie. Yoplait is releasing this “Citrus Flavored Cultured Dairy Beverage” alongside a complementary Cinnamon Toast Crunch variety. So no matter where you drink this cereal ichor, you can tell your spouse, boss or defense attorney that “I couldn’t have possibly stolen cereal milk from a baby: I only drink cultured milk products!”

Works every time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6AGhYBhBdP/

So far, these smoothies have had sightings at H-E-B and Kroger, so check your local chain for a chance at filling a Cinnamon Toast Chalice with viscous beige splendor.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, non cereal, toast crunch, trix. 1 Comment

Dec. ’19

News: Pillsbury Lucky Charms Cookie Dough

C’mon, Doughboy, stop kneading around the bush and drop your own cereal already.

We get it, you got the Trix Rabbit to sign on for a strudel à deux, and you lent your brand to an admittedly cinna-mondo Fillows variety. Now you’ve stolen Lucky’s Charms—probably tucked ’em in your amorphous abdomen and giggled all the way to the bank, huh?—to make marbit-ized cookie dough. But when will you step up and front the Biscuit Bites Cereal I’ve been dreaming of for the past 100 words? Show Snap and Crackle who the real Poppin’ Fresh is!

But fine, if you want to stick with sticky sugar pucks, be my guest.

No, really. Be my guest for dinner tonight. I’ll do potato salad if you bring dessert.

Whether these Lucky Charms Cookies (12 big honkin’ ones, to be specific) will actually taste like its cereal forefather seems up for debate. Not only does the packaging simply call them “Sugar Cookie[s] with Marshmallows Bits,” but I’m still deeply shattered by the sheer audacity of Magically Delicious Lucky Charms Marshmallows, which were accurate to only one of those five words.

So will Lucky Charms Cookie Dough have golden oat undertones and the dense crackling sweetness of a cereal marshmallow? As these are hitting Walmart soon, I plan to find out without ever turning my oven on. You can pathetically ask me to “Please” not eat this stuff uncooked, Mr. D. Boy, but my momma always said that humans can have a little raw cookie dough as a treat.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, lucky charms, non cereal. Leave a comment

Nov. ’19

News: Coffee Mate Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer

New Coffee Mate Cinnamon Toast Crunch Coffee Creamer Cereal

Ignore the Funfetti—on this blog, we’re about done with generically vanilla-flavored things for a while.

Coffee 👏 creamer 👏 should have 👏 a built-in 👏 straw.

Or at least a strapped-in cereal straw.

As my comfort with consuming crude coffee creamer over cereal has only been emboldened by this blog, I’m worried that by the time I get my misty palms on a tankard of Cinnamon Toast Crunch coffee creamer, I’ll be fine with thoughtlessly transferring it into a Big Gulp cup.

General Mills is teaming up with Coffee Mate for this one, though it remains unclear how different CTC coffee creamer will be from, you know, any other cinnamon coffee creamer. It’s very much the same situation we just faced with Market Pantry Cereal Bowl Ice Cream, which ended up bringing in gingerbread vibes out of the leftmost corn & rice field, so I wouldn’t put it past General Mills to somehow make this coffee creamer taste like liquefied cookie butter…or liquefied regular butter.

If you find Cinnamon Toast Crunch coffee creamer, let us know what you think of it in the comments!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cinnamon, news, non cereal, toast crunch. 1 Comment

Nov. ’19

Review: Target’s Market Pantry Cereal Bowl Ice Cream

Cereal and milk have a deep, cosmic soul bond. This is known.

Naturally, we’ve seen enough cereal-infused milkshakes and ice creams to leave us brain-frozen ’til the cows come home.

But where’s the cerealized justice for other dairy delicacies? Sure, Trix basically defined the cereal–yogurt game so hard that it discouraged all competition and ultimately discontinued itself—except for one place, I guess? But despite my mildly discomforting, yet nevertheless ignored lactose intolerance, I demand more. I want Cocoa Krispies Kefir. Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch Butter. Heck, give me Frosted Flakes Cottage Cheese, I’ll eat it. But only if it’s large curd, of course.

It’s not that I’m tired of cereal-flavored ice cream, it’s just that, in cases like Target’s new store-brand Market Pantry Cereal Bowl Ice Cream, the concept can easily feel uninspired. Like, “oh, this cereal tastes like pieces of bootleg Cinnamon Roast Munch? Gotcha, so it’s Cinnamon Ice Cream.”

Err, maybe I’m not giving enough credit to a potential “cereal milk” factor here. I’d better reserve judgement until I’m doubled over on the couch, looking for the right adjectives in between stomach-garglings more intestinally eviscerating than swallowed mouthwash. No pain, no bloggerly gain! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, ice cream, non cereal. Leave a comment