I’ve got a fresh theory for you. Pull up a chair, imagine me seated backwards in one, and tell me what you think of this:
See, I’ve been thinking. With 9(!) years of cereal journalism quite literally under my belt, what am I even looking for from the cereal industry any more? While I still love cereal, it’s hard to deny that I’ve lost a lot of hope that Big Cereal will ever do the right thing and release thoughtful, heartily formulated new products that will put a smile on my face and intestines alike—y’know, like they used to, back in the day.
Lately it seems like General Mills, Kellogg’s, and their ilk (though Post is the closest to upholding quality standards [hint hint about this review’s conclusion]) have been in a race to the bottom, rehashing existing cereals or covertly cheapening their recipes to save a little money at the expense of edibility and consequent enjoyability.
So, naturally, I should be praying for bombastic breakfast innovation, right? That’s what I thought for a while. Why, then, has every recent attempt at taking cereal to brave new frontiers kind of, well, flopped like a fish in a tank of New Coke?
It’s pretty simple: from cereals that do in-mouth climate control to flavors that could generously be described as “unique,” these innovations aren’t anything anyone is actually asking for! (Now that’s what I call dissonance amongst assonance.)
What do I want, then? Well if bland reskins and vulgar palate fumigants are on opposite ends of the objectionable cereal continuum, perhaps the apex of golden, agreeable achievement lies somewhere in the middle—and there is perhaps no better cereal to support that hypothesis than new Salted Caramel Honey Bunches of Oats.
(Well, maybe there’s one better cereal. But we’ll get to that!)
