Well, well, well: here we are again, Shredded Wheat.
My first experience with one of Shredded Wheat’s new trilogy of flavors, which not-so-subtly tries top compete with Frosted Mini-Wheats by, well, frosting the brand’s iconic miniature wheat biscuits and stuffing (allegedly) flavorful stuff inside, was cosmically bland. I swore I wouldn’t try another flavor. I started smashing all square and/or thatched things in my apparent. I even told people I was allergic to wheat—just the sight of it, not the taste.
But after being coerced by a trusted source to give this Mixed Berry variety a try, and after (unsurprisingly) failing to find Count Chocula when it’s still hot enough out to boil swimming pools into holy water, I find myself staring at a bowlful of vaguely mauve biscuits.
Alright, Shredded Wheat. Let’s do this. Just don’t forget: bore me once, shame on you. Bore me twice, I’m going to start crank-calling the National Wheat Foundation out of juvenile spite. Continue reading →
Let me ask you a question I believe Socrates himself once pondered: what is the difference between a cinnamon roll and a cinnamon bun?
Google seems to think there isn’t one, but my heart tells me otherwise. To me, a cinnamon roll could mean anything from a half-eaten Cinnabon dropped on an airport floor to a half-eaten hunk of raw Pillsbury cinnamon roll dough, noshed straight out of the tube. A cinnamon bun, on the other hand, exudes homemade quality and must be baked with care. A cinnamon bun must be given the same craftsmanship as a sourdough loaf or an artisan pretzel bun.
Don’t believe me that cinnamon buns are raised with love? When’s the last time you heard a pregnant woman say “I’ve got a roll in the oven”?
Exactly. And this whole bun/roll rigamarole is further proved by Frosted Cinnamon Roll Shredded Wheat, one of three new Post cereals—alongside Mixed Berry and S’Mores—that tries revitalizing Shredded Wheat’s reputation of being about as flavorful as sand-dusted burlap. Frosted Cinnamon Roll attempts to turn wheat into treat by adding cinnamon sugar frosting and a filling of vanilla chips, but let’s just say there’s a good reason this cereal isn’t called “Frosted Cinnamon Bun Shredded Wheat.”
To quote the eminent wordsmith Will.i.am: “Where is the love?” Continue reading →
So naturally, this review is going to be unnecessarily long and rambling—but spoiler alert: not in a good way. Before we get to that, though, I figure a crash course in Oreo O’s 1O1 is appropriate. I’ve already exhaustively covered the cereal’s history in last year’s review of imported Oreo O’s, so head there for all the textbook-worthy details, but here’s an IMDB-worthy synopsis:
In 1997, Oreo O’s blessed us with its authentic Oreo cookie flavor in creme-sprinkled chocolate cereal ring form. Then in 2007, when the world needed it most, Oreo O’s (which had marshmallows by this point) vanished…everywhere but South Korea, where you could buy it until 2014 and then again in 2016. It’s finally back in America, 10 years after hibernating, and you probably heard about it 10 times from BuzzFeed in the past 2 hours alone.
And while I can’t prove that I am the world’s biggest Oreo O’s fan, that hasn’t stopped me from calling Guinness about it. So since this is my favorite cereal, and since I’ve spent enough on the South Korean stuff to rent an Aruban timeshare, you’d think I’d be beyond geeked to see Oreo O’s back in their home turf. But I’m not geeked. Nor am I freaked, piqued, or as the kids probably no longer say, “on-fleeked.”
Why not? Because like a Scooby-Doo villain, these Oreo O’s are not what they seem. Continue reading →
Okay, I love all things s’more, and I support the junk food craze of s’morifying just about everything. But if society’s going to continue its wonderful quest to inject graham-chocolate-marshmallow flavor into every cake, cookie, and cake-stuffed cookie crumble Frappuccino, we have to amke one thing clear: are we supposed to capitalize the “M” or not?
For so long, I treated the term “S’More” as an inflexible proper noun. Like any number of deities, to misprint its name as “s’more” was blasphemy worthy of campfires and brimstone. But now we do it all the time, as evidenced by Post’s new Honey Maid S’mores Cereal. Are we just supposed to accept this normalization of “s’more?” Is an artificially flavored s’more not subject to the same capitalized deification of the one true, fire-toasted S’More? Should I just stuff my mouth with this cereal so you don’t have to hear me babble about s’more theology?
Frosted Mini-Wheats, prepare to Frosted Mini-Meet your maker.
Post Shredded Wheat has been around for a while, but until now, Shredded Wheat hasn’t exactly been the more exciting brand of thatched wheat biscuits. Somehow, kids prefer Frosted Mini-Wheats’ caked-on frosting and oceans of saccharine detritus in their cereal boxes over sugar-free bran and glisteningly sticky roasted nut flavor.
But now all that is about to change. In the wake of what is perhaps Frosted Mini-Wheats’ greatest cereal sin, changing their classy biscuit mascot to some sort of SpongeBobian abomination, Post has debuted three new bite-sized Shredded Wheat varieties. Mixed Berry, Cinnamon Roll, and S’Mores Bites are already excitingly unique flavors on their own, but each new biscuity breed is also filled with flavored chips to (hopefully) make their dry wheat exteriors explode with bursts of berry, vanilla, and chocolate flavor, respectively.
Not since Hidden Treasures Cereal have I been so geeked to get backhanded in the taste buds.
Shoutout to reader Austin K. for sending me this photo from Walmart. I look forward to collecting all three boxes like they’re semisweet-stuffed Pokémon cards, mixing all three into a single bowl, and playing a dangerous game of berry bushel/bakery/bonfire roulette.
If you’ve got a cereal photo of your own to share, snap, crackle, and pop right on over to our submissions page!
New Honey Maid S’mores Cereal (Left) with its Ancestors
Apparently cereal isn’t like baseball: there’s no “three s’mores and you’re out” policy.
Post, the Honey Bunch-slinging, Oreo O’s-reviving parent company of Malt-O-Meal, has announced that even after launching Madagascar S’mores Jungle Party, Canadian S’Mores Cereal, and Malt-O-Meal S’mores, they’ll be raising a toast(ed marshmallow) to one more graham–’mallow–chocolate cereal with new Honey Maid S’Mores Cereal.
Debuting this month (if not now in your local Walmart: check Post’s store locator) alongside a probably-far-more-popular-with-no-offense-to-s’mores-because-come-on-it’s-cookies-for-breakfast cereal, newly introduced Oreo O’s, Honey Maid S’mores combines ridged honey graham squares, chocolate puffs, and mini marshmallows to re-create everyone’s favorite campfire treat.
Well, almost everyone: I prefer roasting Cheez-Its for that extra extra toasty effect.
Though it’s unlikely that Honey Maid S’mores will taste any different than its breakfast aisle kinfolk, I’m sure I’ll still buy it anyway. If only so I can give my Teddy Grahams officially licensed honey graham surfboards to ride on.
I’m Oreo O-verjoyed.
I’m Oreo O-ver the moon.
I’m bellowing “Oreo O-h yeah!” to the skies, heavens, and great sandwich cookie cosmos above.
Yes, friends, neighbors, countrymen, and dunkers: Oreo O’s, your favorite ’90s cereal or probably favorite cereal ever, is coming back. In the year 2017.
On the 20th anniversary of its debut and the 10th anniversary of its tragic discontinuation in the States, news has broken—and subsequently broken the internet in two like a twisted apart cookie—that Post has brought its iconic, cookies and creme flavored cereal back from our nostalgic memories and into reality. Of course, the cereal has been around in South Korea for nearly a decade now—a fact that I’ve well-documented—but its high price of important made it out of reach for all but the most “devoted” (by which I mean “questionably sane” and by which I also mean me).
These new Oreo O’s should be hitting shelves in early June, so start prepping some garage space to stockpile boxes. Heck: maybe Nabisco will even re-release S’Mores Oreos so we have something to eat during our Walmart parking lot campouts.
Before I leave you all to bathe in a palpable sea of nostalgia, this new Oreo O’s news does come with a cumbersome (or “crumbersome,” if you will) caveat. Malt-O-Meal, which is owned by Post, already released a Cookies & Cream Oreo O’s doppelgänger. This taste-alike is pretty good, but it still can’t match the dense, buttery flavor of the Korean kind—which I consider to be the true original.
This new Post Oreo O’s revival looks eerily similar to Cookies & Cream, leading me to worry that “new” Oreo O’s are just repackaged C&C and not, in fact, the real Oreo O.G. A Post spokesperson claims that, “Fans of the iconic OREO O’s cereal will find the product has stayed true to its roots,” but as, arguably, the world’s biggest Oreo O’s fan (wait ’til I put that on my resume), I have one thing left to say:
Be ready to put your money where my mouth is. Or something like that.
Movie cereals are like grizzly bears. And Post’s new Trolls Rainbow Crunch cereal is living proof.
No, I don’t that movie cereals taste like salmon and ruin your campsite. Rather, they just like to hibernate—for very long periods of time. See, back in cereal’s Golden Age, movie cereals had heart: fortified heart. From double-crunching C-3PO’s to Reese’s Pieces-flavored E.T. cereal, these cinematic cereals were as innovative as they were memorably tasty.
But then the breakfast film industry must have crashed, or at least fell asleep. Because for what felt like decades, every movie cereal was basic and bland. Most were either cheap Lucky Charms knock-offs or some generically fruity or chocolaty puffed shape. No franchise was safe, from Shrek and Shrek 2 to Shrek and seriously why the heck were there so many Shrek cereals?
But very recently, matinee meals have been stirring from their slumber, returning once more to the creative concepts of their more marquee-worthy years. Minions Banana Berry cereal was a crunchy smoothie. Disney Princess cereal is rethinking the tired oats ‘n’ ‘mallows gambit. Batman and Superman fought with volleys of caramel-iciousness and fondued berries.
And now? Trolls Rainbow Crunch Cereal—based on a 2017 DreamWorks movie based on a bug-eyed, soft-serve-haired fad toy from the 1960s—is bringing peace to the world of fruity cereals. Continue reading →
