Wait, actually, this is probably the first time you’ve actually looked your age, like, ever. You’re telling me you were rocking that same ivory ‘stache from K–12? Must’ve made the chocolate milk cartons a nightmare.
Anyway, everyone’s favorite seafaring cereal mascot will soon be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the original Cap’n Crunch cereal’s 1963 debut with this colorful Birthday Crunch. And even though I infamously loathe birthday cake-flavored cereals, what with their historic lack of substantial taste and all, it’s hard to stay mad at ol’ H. M. Crunch when this box looks like a ’90s Taco Bell.
Since 60 years would suggest a 2023 debut, you won’t be able to find this Crunch on shelves just yet, but it’s already up on Walmart.com, so it’s only a matter of time before you can have the Cap’n’s cake and eat it, too.
Bite-Sized Review: Though I'd prefer if it were Superman ice cream-flavored, with an oat and corn base, this stuff pleasantly tastes like old-school Franken Berry! However, it could've gone from "just good" to "great" if that strawberry flavor were, ironically, a little stronger. pic.twitter.com/D66Bh4iaz0
Folks, I’ll admit: between my day job, other writing projects, and the *gestures vaguely at everything*, I still haven’t really been feeling the long-form blogging bug for the past couple months. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been slouching on new cereal news and taste tests. On both The Empty Bowl and my Twitter, I still regularly share my thoughts on everything new and crunchy (and in this case, soapy) at the breakfast table.
Here are a few of my recent itty-bitty breakdowns. Stay tuned for more (and hopefully lengthier) content soon!
Bite-Sized Review: I'll admit, I was wrong. Thought this would be another cheap reshaping a la CTC Churros, but the lil rounds work SO well.
They allow for safer high-velocity munching, plus the little perforated swirls allow more flavor dust to settle into their sweet crevasses pic.twitter.com/ZOVmSF54RM
Ok, ok: in all honesty, this stuff does smell like Fruity Pebbles….if you took the already artificially flavored Fruity Pebbles and made another recursively artificial version of it.
Not bad, but in general I'd prefer to not get hungry every time I smell my hands.
BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Cap'n Crunch's new Treats lack something I've come to expect from cereal bars—a gooey, binding sugar coating on the bottom. Without this cerebral sweetness, these are just ho-hum, milquetoast granola bars that add rice crisps to dilute any iconic cereal flavor. pic.twitter.com/dYeCn9AKy3
Sure, Cerealously was inspired by my lifelong love of breakfast cereal, but no other figure encapsulates the imaginative id of cereal culture quite like Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch. Maybe it’s because—unlike General Mills and Kellogg’s who have entire cinematic universes of familiar, oft-interacting mascots and the cereals they hawk—Quaker really only has the Cap’n’s self-contained, yet expansive, milky mythology (Life and the like don’t count to me because they aren’t character fronted, but full due respect to the based grain that is Quaker Oatmeal Squares).
Kooky characters like Wilma the Winsome White Whale, Chockle the Blob, and Crunch Berry Beast aside, Cap’n Crunch has also debuted an impressive arsenal of epic flavors across his many decades in the biz that’ve helped fuel his nostalgic legacy. You’ve got Oops! All Berries, sure—arguably the single most iconic definition of a hallucinogenically artificial cereal flavor—but I could go on and on honoring the Cap’ns service to tastebuds everywhere, from Choco Donuts and Sprinkled Donuts to Punch Crunch and my personal favorite, Orange Creampop Crunch.
Long history short, other cereals are appetizing, but only one is Crunchatizing, so I’m always excited to taste the Cap’n’s latest. But is Chocolate Caramel Crunch his greatest? Let’s break-fast it down. Continue reading →
Cap’n Horatio Magellan Crunch is a weird guy. In fact, I once wrote an op-ed about how the Cap’n is one of the last remaining bastions of cereal’s ’80s & ’90s golden era, back when off-the-wall breakfast gimmicks were a dime a chocolate-coated dozen. While other cereal brands were trying to remove artificial ingredients and promote active, on-the-go mealtimes, Cap’n Crunch was still wack-adaisically dropping Creamsicle and Cotton Candy cereals—not to mention atomically colored Slurpees and pancake syrup.
And don’t even get me started on Canuck Crunch.
On one hand, it's sad there's no maple flavoring here. But at the same time, I love how this calls the geopolitical loyalty of the Cap'n's military service entirely into question https://t.co/rdBZOurYcI
As a result, I’m always eager to see what else this kooky Cap’n and his detached eyebrows has up his nonsensically nautical sleeves.
That said, I’ll admit Quaker’s latest Chocolate Caramel Crunch isn’t quite as inspired as the Cap’n’s other seafaring fare—the combo of chest pieces and flavored Crunch Berries reminds me of the lackluster Chocolatey Berry Crunch. But I am interested to see if there’s better caramel flavor here than in the likewise *meh* Cap’n Crunch’s Caramel Popcorn Crunch. Continue reading →
This review is a long time coming. In fact, it’s been brewing in my brain since before this blog was even a glimmer in my temporal lobe.
First things first: I’m a lifelong maple cereal mark, born and bred. I mean, my blood is practically golden syrup’d cereal milk—which is why I bring a satchel of leeches to Denny’s. It might not’ve been the very first cereal to spark a journalistic interest in the stuff (that title, incidentally, goes to Cinnamon Honey Bunches of Oats), but Waffle Crisp nevertheless is one of the foundational cereals whose never-fading nostalgic spirit drives Cerealously to this day. Seriously: eau de Waffle Crisp is a fragrance so potently sentimental, physicists are considering it as theoretical time machine fuel.
And though Waffle Crisp is gone—at least for now, I weep to myself—granularly analyzing other maple cereals still gets me through the day. From modern classics and bold pairings to the genre’s lowerlights, I’ve used just about every relevant adjective in the book to describe the breakfast aisle’s ever-shifting forest of maple tastes both authentic and sweetly synthetic. But ever since I first saw it on the side of my Brown Sugar Oatmeal Squares, one mythic maple cereal has eluded me.
Until now. See, I was always convinced that Golden Maple Oatmeal Squares was an antiquated, discontinued variety that Quaker forgot to take off the boxes of the line’s other three flavors. I searched and searched for years, even bookmarking Quaker’s product locator to no avail. But after Justin and I discussed the stuff’s scarcity during Episode Thirty-One of The Empty Bowl, a number of listeners confirmed that the stuff is still sold in stores—albeit only in very specific regional areas. One listener, Brooke from Wisconsin, was kind enough to send us both boxes to try.
So with my decade-old mission drawing to a close, one question remains: are Golden Maple Oatmeal Squares worth the long-fermented hype? Continue reading →
Oh, thank goodness. There’s a new Life out—this current one’s been getting pretty stale. I think 2020 was its expiration date. I can only imagine that living a chocolate life is gonna be a heck of a lot sweeter than the plain one I have every day.
Wait, you mean Quaker’s new Chocolate Life Cereal doesn’t include a free immersive Matrix pill as the prize inside? I have to just eat the stuff and pretend I’ve been thrown down a perspective-shifting rabbit hole? Yeugh. This new cereal ride is quite the lemon already.
That said, Chocolate Life is, from the outset, more exciting than the long-running, Mikey-beloved cereal brand’s other latest spinoff varieties. Because unlike the light flavor-glosses found on Vanilla or Strawberry Life, Chocolate Life actually features visible cocoa-infusion at the base grain level.
Talk about a redundant name. We all know that chocolate, much like ball, already is life. Ergo, when life gives you chocolate, it’s really giving you it’s all.
But do I trust Chocolate and Life to successfully meld in the same cereal? That remains to be seen, as I have a bit of a review backlog to clear before I go on the prowl for Quaker’s newly released cocoa-infused, multigrain thatched squares. I’ll admit, I’m a little apprehensive; I’m not the biggest Life cereal fan, simply because they lack a satisfying crunch, instead of crisping into kindling like a road-rolled Chex piece. Plus, Life’s latest new cereals didn’t blow me awayeither.
But with my dark outlook on Life, I might just be the eternal pessimist. If the idea of Chocolate Life has you ready to uproot yours in search of it, you can already find it listed on Walmart.com.
