Well, you know what this means, folks. Now that I’ve reviewed Pumpkin Spice Cheerios and Pumpkin Spice Life, once I review this Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch, I’ll have tried every new pumpkin spice cereal, and 2016’s pumpkin spice season will be over.
Harvesters will cease harvesting. Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte taps will run dry. And maniacally grinning jack-o-lanterns will become mild mannered office workers once more.
Nah, I’m just kidding. We all know there’ll be a million new pumpkin spice breakfast bars, Greek yogurts, and Greek yogurt-filled breakfast bars on shelves before I even click the “Publish” button on this post.
But while we wait for that Nutri-Grain Bar Nutri-nitty-gritty to befall us, let’s fall into a bowl of pumpkin spice Special K instead. Continue reading →
Need something to Brite-n your day? Okay, do you need four things to brighten your day after that terrible pun?
Well you’re in luck, because there are four new episodes in cereal archivist Gabe Fonseca’s Cereal Time YouTube series. Longtime Cereal Time binge watchers know the drill, but I’ll catch everyone else up to speed on this series in one sentence:
One man spotlights one cereal every one week to produce three-to-four fun-filled minutes of breakfast nostalgia.
Intrigued? Let’s start somewhere over the rainbow with Gabe’s episode on Rainbow Brite Cereal. As he states in the video, this 1985 cereal was a tie-in with Rainbow Brite’s animated feature film, and it features a literal rainbow of fruity and crunchy…shapes?
The more logical would see them as Rainbow Brite’s hair curls or shirt sleeves, but I prefer to call them “Macaroni & cheese mixed with the colorful grubs Timon and Pumbaa eat in The Lion King.” Continue reading →
I know this cereal is called Pumpkin Spice Life, but in my mind, there’s an invisible equals sign in-between the last two words.
Pumpkin Spice = Life.
It’s the kind of thing a true autumn addict would get tattooed above their knuckles after getting sent to jail for building jack-o-lantern totem poles above the legal height limit. If that sounds like the plot of a gritty Goosebumps reboot, then I’ve succeeded.
But for these next 3-4 months, pumpkin spice really will be life for grocery store browsers and BuzzFeed editors everywhere. And the latest cereal staple to jump on this cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, Donner, and Blitzen bandwagon is Life. Continue reading →
Like Michael Meyers or Freddy Krueger, the taste of Halloween is already quietly creeping onto store shelves. But unlike Mike or Fred, pumpkin spice wants to please your taste buds instead of leaving them severed and bloody on the kitchen floor.
After all, pumpkin spice is addicting, and that’s why we keep inviting it back into our homes like dimwitted stock characters in a vampire movie. So whether you’re a pumpkin spice nut or a frustrated recoverer of “pumpkin spice fatigue,” please forgive me for disrupting your hot dogs ‘n’ lemonade days of August with General Mills’ new Limited Edition Pumpkin Spice Cheerios. Continue reading →
“Pumpkin Spice Life” doesn’t even sound like the name of a cereal. It just sounds like an accurate description of September through November these days.
From yogurt and doughnuts to dish soap and cat litter (nope, I’m not kidding), pumpkin spice takes no prisoners with its potent combo of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, sometimes cloves, and sometimes even actual pumpkin—but usually just an orange Starbucks squirt bottle labeled “P.U.M.P.K.I.N.”
Two years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find pumpkin spice in any cereal outside of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s. But now as the Great Pumpkin Invasion continues (not to be confused with the beloved holiday special Duck and Cover Charlie Brown: It’s the Great Pumpkin Invasion!), more and more breakfast classics are getting in on the fun.
Frosted Mini-Wheats and Puffins did it last year, Special K has already thrown its hat in the 2016 ring using its noodly red letter appendages, and now even the hip ol’ Quaker dude is investigating this hip trend all the young people are raving about.
It looks a lot like normal Life, but it claims to be “Naturally Flavored with Other Natural Flavors.” This is in sharp contrast to the spicy superstars of Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch, but I, for one, am looking forward to Pumpkin Spice Life: “the cereal so natural they named it twice.”
Limited Edition Pumpkin Spice Life cereal popped up on product review site Influenster the other day, and our ever-vigilant friends at Candy Hunting blew the story as wide open as a chunky gourd on an episode of Punkin’ Chunkin’. Thanks again to Candy Hunting for being a regular Encyclopedia Brown when it comes to all things brown: be they chocolate, caramel, or peanut butter.
While we we wait for Pumpkin Spice Life to hit shelves, we can just squirt a bunch of that P.U.M.P.K.I.N. syrup on our Cinnamon Life.
While we were all prancing about in the summer sun, hatching Pokémon eggs and frying enough real eggs on the scalding pavement to give Denny’s a run for their money, Kellogg’s silently let slip their first 2016 pumpkin spice breakfast product.
It’s Limited Edition Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch, and Kellogg’s isn’t messing around with the pumpkin spice authenticity. Taking a spicy page from 2015’s Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats‘ ingredients list, Pumpkin Spice Crunch combines the rice and wheat Special K flakes we all know and love tolerate with nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and cinnamon clusters.
Always the pumpkin spice bridesmaid, cloves was unavailable for comment.
It looks like this Pumpkin Spice Special K uses the same type of soft, yogurt-ish clusters as last fall’s Special K Apple Cinnamon Crunch. Since that cereal was one of the season’s tastiest surprises, I’m already excited enough for Pumpkin Spice Crunch to paint a grinning jack-o-lantern on my stomach.
(My belly button will be the candle.)
Huge shoutout to our friends at Candy Hunting for the photo above. It was found on Influenster with no additional release date information, but given how much earlier pumpkin spice products are released each successive year, you should expect to see Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch on shelves 3 days ago.
This is not a drill! Red alert! Err…I mean…orange alert!
As part of their ongoing efforts to revitalize the Cheerios brand, General Mills just announced an autumn debut for Pumpkin Spice Cheerios.
Set to hit stores around Labor Day, Pumpkin Spice Cheerios will bring an iconic seasonal flavor—which has already hit lattes, toaster pastries, dish soap, and much more—to your breakfast bowl. Since General Mills is committed to removing artificial flavors from its cereals, I’m willing to bet that this cereal will be stuffed with real pumpkin, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and hopefully fan favorites cloves and allspice.
Of course, Pumpkin Spice Cheerios won’t be the first pumpkin cereal: Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s, Pumpkin Puffins, and Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats have already broken that farm-fresh ground. But since those three cereals are cinnamon-y, squash-y, and pumpkin pie-y (in that order), Pumpkin Spice Cheerios could still easily claim the title of most authentically spicy pumpkin spice cereal,
Between Pumpkin Spice and this summer’s Strawberry Cheerios, I’m excited for the “revival” of a cereal line that I never really considered to be “dying” to begin with.
Keep up the good work, Cheerios: as long as you’re around, I can get my O-shaped breakfast food fix without having to pour milk on my SpaghettiOs.
Pumpkin season might be over, but flax season has just begun! Get ready for Flax Spice Lattes, Flax-scented hand soap, and flax-o-lantern seed carving contests.
Okay, I definitely just made up “flax season” for the purposes of this review, but it makes sense. If we eat healthy things with flax in them now, when it’s time for summer barbecues and pool lounging, we can feel justified in going Kobayashi on a pack of hot dogs.
How does that old saying go? Oh yeah:
“April flax brings Lay’s Stax!”
Flax isn’t the most common things to find in the breakfast aisle, especially outside of Canada, but if you’re feeling the need for seed, Sweet Home Farm has you covered with their Pumpkin Flax granola.
I’m definitely going to try it: half because I want to, and half because my hand won’t fit any deeper into my can of Lay’s Stax.
