Tag Archives: toast crunch

News: Cinnamoji Toast Crunch

Woof. I think I’ve typed the phrase “Toast Crunch” enough times in the past month that my fingers are starting to develop tastefully swirled auburn calluses.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but I can only stand to see its namesake flavor blasted on so many products in such a short time before those three words start to lose all meaning. Heck, I’ve long since stopped seeing “cinnamon toast” as an actual breakfast confection people enjoy on its own—let alone the entirely absurd likes of “Frosted Toast” and “Apple Pie Toast.”

But now, General Mills is making “Toast Crunch” mean even less than ever, with an extensive new line of “Cinnamoji Toast Crunch” cereals. With a total of six different boxes already planned, this veritable cinn-ematic universe of cinnamon sugar is a little hard to parse, but I’ll try my best.

See, first of all, you’ve got the origin story: Cinnamoji Toast Crunch. The gimmick here is that, while CTC has long been known for having the swirled “taste you can see,” Cinnamoji Toast Crunch will have a taste that can see you, too, as they’ll feature little Cinnamoji faces baked into each piece.

However, that’s just the beginning, as Cinnamoji Toast Crunch will be joined by a number of other limited-edition boxes fronted by ‘moji likenesses of various celebrities I’ve never heard of…and SpongeBob? Snowboarder Chloe Kim will kick off the line with Chloe Toast Crunch, with releases to follow including:

SpongeBob SquarePants in Cinnamon Toast Crunch Squared – with a spatula fit for flipping patties or chowing down on a bowl of cereal
Professional football star Justin Jefferson in Griddy Toast Crunch – named after the iconic touchdown dance – with a custom Under Armour sweatshirt
Popular Urbano singer Manuel Turizo in Manuel Toast Crunch – with a flat-brimmed cap with Manuel’s Cinnamoji
Actress and Music Recording Artist Leslie Grace in Leslie Toast Crunch – debuting with a NEFF beanie embroidered with her Cinnamoji

Best of all, anyone can visit CinnamojiMe.com to enter for a chance to win a box of Cinnamoji Toast Crunch bearing your own name and likeness (additional entries can be earned by entering codes with participating cereal purchases). And as much as I’d rather see a brand new, unique Toast Crunch flavor—Gingerbread, Nutella, or PB&J Toast Crunch, hello??—boy would I still be satisfied to see a floppy purple pompadoured Cinnamoji on the front of a Dan Toast Crunch.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: toast crunch. 1 Comment

Jan. ’22

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms MIX

Ah, looks like General Mills and I both have the same mindset for 2022: “just f*** it, who cares.” I mean, why ideate a new cereal when you can just reroute the pipes in the cereal factory and call it a day?

Sorry if I sound bitter, but as a sprightly and imaginative hobby cereal mixologist, it irks me a bit when cereal companies take the brainstorming fun out of dreaming up your own cereal combos—though they’ll have to pry the “Honey Nut Bunches of Cheeri-Oats” out of my cold, spoon-gripping hands.

This trend started with the Frosted Failure of Kellogg’s Mashups, and now GM clearly just wants their own cut of the low-hanging fruit harvest. It’s no surprise that they’re starting with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, since these are two of their most iconic brands, plus they get paired up time and time again when it comes to cross-branded cereal infusions. However, I have to imagine this won’t be a particularly satisfying MIX! (their excited emphasis, not mine; I’d’ve used a glum ellipsis…), as combining these two cereals doesn’t really evoke any common flavor pairings (would it’ve been so hard to just give us like, PB&J Reese’s/Trix Puffs or something?). Plus at this point, why not just bring back Cinnamon Lucky Charms?

Sorry if this blog post comes across as aimless and disordered—I wanted it to be lazy as the subject matter. But whatever: Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Lucky Charms MIX! is hitting stores now.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, lucky charms, news, toast crunch. 2 Comments

Jan. ’22

Review: CinnaGraham Toast Crunch

*Extremely Ferris Bueller voice*

You’re still here? It’s over. Go home—then get in your car and go to the store and buy this cereal!

Seriously, you need a review to tell you that CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is good? You’d think it would only take one look at the box above to stoke the very same deep, primal hunger for cinnamon-coated graham goodness that helped early humans evolve beyond simple hunter-gatherers and into sophisticated graham miners, their crude pickaxes chiseling away at vast veins of golden grain.

I joke, but seriously: there’s something about graham, be it crackered, pie crusted, or Teddy’d, that just gets my motor runnin’, directly counterintuitive to the anti-prurient origins of the foodstuff itself. And since, two years ago, we already got a spiritual predecessor to this CinnaGraham Toast Crunch in the form of Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal—which I called my Cereal of the Year—I went into this review beyond confident that General Mills’ latest Toast Crunch crusader couldn’t possibly fail.

But what if I told you…I was wrong? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, general mills, graham, toast crunch. 5 Comments

Dec. ’21

News: Betty Crocker Cinnadust Desserts

Why use one word when four gets the idea across more laboriously? Like, why call it “water” when “cold distilled cloud sauce” sounds so charmingly clunky? Why settle for “walking” when “dual-legged ambulatory self-propelled motion” is right there? And why simply call your dessert “cinnamon” flavored when “Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cinnadust” offers so much candy-colored cross-branded opportunity?

Just kidding: how could I be upset that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is creeping its cinnamon sugar-swirled tendrils all across the Baking Needs aisle?

And boy howdy is Betty Crocker going all out with the Toast Crunch touch. We’ve got Cinnadust Frosting of course, ideal for all-purpose icing and all-setting spooning directly into your Cinnamon Toast Maw. Then there are two cake mixes: Coffee Cake and Crunch Cake, so you can have a slice of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the morning and after dinner. There’s Cinnadust Cookie Mix, when dunking cereal in milk just isn’t enough. Then there’s a Cinnamon Toast Crunch Complete Pancake Kit, which sounds like the ultimate mouthfeel gauntlet of crunchiness, stickiness, and fluffiness.

And if that wasn’t enough mouthwatering, molar-tingling sweetness for your day, Lucky Charms is joining the pancake mix too—this one, I believe, would pair beautifully with Mrs. Butterworth’s Fruity Pebbles Syrup (and by “beautifully” I mean “an abstract tie-dyed performance-art abomination”).

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

Nov. ’21

News: A Pantry’s Worth of New General Mills Cereals

Y’know, they say imitation is the sublimest form of flattery.

Yes, General Mills unleashed a mouthwatering downpour of new cereal news this week, and the twinkling, golden, Luciferianly tempting lightbringer leading the firestorm is CinnaGraham Toast Crunch: a game-changing union of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams that pairs the former’s sweet cinnamon sugar swirls with the latter’s hearty honey base grain.

To be honest, I’d’ve preferred if GM made this a variant of Golden Grahams instead of a Toast Crunch. I totally understand how CTC has more cult appeal, but poor Golden Grahams never gets limited edition variants, whereas there are enough members of the Toast Crunch family to start a mafia, inspire an Ancestry.com commercial, and clean out an Olive Garden. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cheerios, general mills, news, reese's puffs, toast crunch. Leave a comment

Nov. ’21

The Empty Bowl Episode Sixty + Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats

Happy Ho-Ho-Hovember! Not to be confused with Yo-Ho-Hovember (only celebrated in international waters), H-H-H-vember is my go-to name for the late-autumn parts of November that are cannibalized by the coming Christmas season (i.e., every day in November except for like, three).

I highly recommend you celebrate with either a) strict defiance and rigid adherence to Thanksgiving tradition with a “come and take ’em” on your mashed potatoes, b) the kind of dastardly combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities that results in cranberry sauce leaking out of a stocking, or c) a new episode of The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast from myself and Justin McElroy.

I won’t lie: I do a very bad job about remembering to tell y’all when we have a new episode. In fact, it’s been an embarrassing 5 months since I’ve done so. But nevertheless, Episode Sixty is a darn good one, even if it gets a bit off topic into the rich realms of s’mores and doughnuts…and shoddy Halloween costumes.

We also discuss these new Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats, which thankfully aren’t exclusive to the Sam’s Club 53-count box after all—and instead can also be found in this 35-pack at Walmart stores, even though that’s still enough sweet little rectangular prisms to leave Santa too stuffed to slide out of your house the way he came in. Forgive him for tucking and rolling out the living room window…and taking the head clean off your front yard reindeer sculpture.

Anyway, if you want to hear all the Empty Bowl episodes I forgot to tell you about, you can find them at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but each one is like a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treat injected directly into our veins.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: empty bowl, holiday, news, toast crunch. Leave a comment

Oct. ’21

Review: Apple Pie Toast Crunch

Picture this epicurean odyssey: it’s the day after Thanksgiving, and you’ve just finished a delightful franken-wich of fused leftovers—gravy-braised turkey suspended in cranberry sauce topped with a mashed potato schmear, all on a bun made from waffle-ironed stuffing.

And now it’s time for dessert, so you make Grandma’s classic: a fat slice of toasted bread thickly buttered with the puréed result of cramming an apple pie slice into your food processor.

At least, that’s what I picture when I think of “Apple Pie Toast,” the latest naming convention-transgressing foodstuff implied by the people who brought you “Frosted Toast” Crunch and “Sugar Cookie Toast” Crunch. I mean hey, I understand that it’s just the name of a cereal and therefore it doesn’t need to conform to reality, but c’mon, they did this flavor already with Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a name I had no trouble accepting.

But whatever, I’m just grasping at semantic straws. If Apple Pie Toast Crunch is good, I’m willing to forgive its eponymous sin. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: apple, cinnamon, general mills, toast crunch. 9 Comments

Aug. ’21

Spooned & Spotted: Apple Pie Toast Crunch Cereal

Welp, so much for a slow news week.

Having bemoaned just yesterday how no show-stopping new cereals in some time, the breakfast gods must’ve heard my cries. Appearing entirely without warning, fanfare, nor heralding angels, Apple Pie Toast Crunch is apparently hitting shelves.

This stuff was found at Albertson’s by Chris’s Cereal Crusade, and its wintery branding seems to suggest Apple Pie Toast Crunch is either a companion or replacement for long-time seasonal specialty Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch—here’s hoping it’s the former, so I can mix the two.

Toast Crunch devotees will no-doubt notice how similar Apple Pie Toast Crunch sounds to now-discontinued Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the key difference being the older of the two used French Toast Crunch’s bread-shaped pieces instead of these crazy squares. To be honest, I dearly miss the dense ‘n’ crunchy era of adorably sliced Toast Crunches—especially the sugar-dusted ones—but it’s hard to get mad about something that sounds as good as, well, Apple Pie Toast Crunch.

I’ll certainly be on the lookout for this stuff as it hopefully pops up in more stores soon. If you’ve tried it, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: apple, spooned & spotted, toast crunch. 4 Comments