Tag Archives: toast crunch

News: A New Look for Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Yes, I was indeed only sent an (empty) miniature box. I guess now I can use it to hold…belly button lint?

When I got an email about a secret Cinnamon Toast Crunch surprise coming to my house, my mind swirled with possibilities:

Peanut Butter Toast Crunch’s return?

The early merriment of a new Gingerbread Toast Crunch?

Ooh, or maybe a personal Cinnamon Toast Crunch feeding trough, with two sides so me and the boys can chug some endmilk and also dispose of it baseball stadium style?

Unfortunately/hygienically, it was none of the above, but instead a rousing rebrand of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch we’ve come to know and love (by which I mean immediately recycle as the cereal inside evaporated into the no-longer-thin air of my esophagus).

My thoughts on the new design, including its now-emojified and less-sociopathic squares? It has its ups and downs.

The new mascots themselves just don’t sit right with me. I get that emojis are pretty much pictographic accents, but this looks like they were sort of pasted onto the box like a kid committing the mortal sin of slapping a few Goofy stickers on the side of his mom’s sedan.

May he rue the day he unleashed the scourge of residue.

But besides the boys in beige, I like the rest of what General Mills did with the Cinnamon Toast Crunch color palette. I’m getting serious Splatoon vibes from the iridescent puddles of liquefied CTC Pantone swatches, and I can only wish my own cereal milk was painted with such a powerful technicolor dream coat.

So what do you think of it? No word yet on how this branding might extend to the other Toast Crunch properties, but if Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch makes its triumphant return come December, I hope the Cinnamojis at least bring some of my favorite emojis over for dinner.

🥥🐌🍣🦑🍖🐄

Hmm, on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be in charge of the entrees.

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

Apr. ’19

News: BJ’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch Pizookie

The Cinnamon Toast Crunch Pizookie tops a buttery sugar cookie with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon sugar. No word on whether this will naturally evolve into a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch seasonal variant (but it should!).

The pizookie, a pizza-shaped cookie, is a dangerous concept, for it implies the existence of cookie-shaped pizzas, an impulse dinne-ssert hybrid I would gladly dunk by the dozen into a mug-full of marinara before slam dunking my noggin into the nearest plush throw pillow.

And BJ’s, a national restaurant chain of 200+ locations, isn’t tempering my snack-splicing temptations. The latest in their line of deep and decadently dished cookie-pies is the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Pizookie. I’ll admit I dropped the ball on bringing you this news in a timely fashion—the CTC PZ actually released early this March, but I’ll claim justifiable ignorance, since the nearest BJ’s location to me is more than half a Mitten State away.

But today’s perhaps a better day than any for a penitent pizookie post, because it’s apparently National Free Pizookie Day (so practically Easter 2), and BJ’s is giving away free pizookies with any purchase of $9.95 or more. This of course means you can double-fist some savory ‘za in one hand and a sloppily spicy-sweet handful of swirled cinnamon in the other. Just don’t let any anchovies flop into the ice cream.

If this post inspires even one person to brighten their Hump Day with a tall lump of cinnamon-sprinkled vanilla bean, then my whole week will have been worth it. So go forth, fellow pizookers: go forth and be free (with any purchase of $9.95 or more).

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

Jan. ’19

Review: Chocolate Toast Crunch (2019)

What cosmic breakfastian powers command the scales of cereal justice? Which ancient grain gods and granulated goddesses hold court over the eternal fates of discontinued cereal souls, reanimating some amd leaving others in cultically revered purgatory?

Well whoever they are, they’ve got some explaining to do: it’s been nearly half a decade since the heyday (and collapse) of the 2000s’ Toast Crunch empire, and the General Millsian pantheon has only just now resurrected a second member of that power trilogy.

Let me explain—I firmly believe the first of the Toast Crunch’s Y2K success stories to return was not reborn directly. No, Frosted Toast Crunch (2012-2015) must have had its powdered sugar-dusted soul reincarnated in the form of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch. By binding Frosted Toast Crunch’s might to a seasonally limited plane, this ho-ho-glow up made its predecessor frostier, butterier, and infinitely more loveable.

So now that we’re seeing the total return of the youngest Gen Z Toast Crunch, Chocolate (2013-2016), it begs an eternal question: where is the first among them? Where is my beloved Peanut Butter Toast Crunch? It debuted in 2004 to wide acclaim, even making a brief 2013 re-appearance after its first 2006 retirement. So while I’m ready to dive into these Chocolate Toast Crunch squares with cocoa gusto, it will inevitably leave me hoping for another spiritual successor to PB…

…one that merges its ghostly life energy with that of recently departed Strawberry Toast Crunch.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, general mills, toast crunch. 9 Comments

Dec. ’18

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros Cereal

There’s an old adage in the breakfast and breakfurious business of cereal: K.I.C.S., which of course stands for Keep It Cinn-ple Stupid.

The Toast Crunch family of cereals is many things: necromantic, with its obsessive reanimation of old products. It’s viral, as the cereal’s cinnamon-spiced squares infect products with only a tertiary connection to the cereal medium. And the Toast Crunches are borderline mythological, as one of their kin is seemingly set to rival Santa Claus in seasonal popularity (at least according to short surveys given to a small sample of IHOP parking lot-dwellers [my people!]).

Yes, these cereals are a complicated brood set on cereal domination. But they’re also clever, because they always keep things cinn-ple. Whether it’s actual Cinnamon Toast Crunch products or a fruity family tree outcrop, every T.C.-ereal know what strategy works for them, and they stick to it: sticking a flour sack’s worth of confectioner’s sugar-textured flavoring formula to pieces that are already mildly (but not distractingly) sweet, a 1-2 combo that could make even an End Piece of the Loaf Toast Crunch sound appealing.

Butt, I digress. New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros are interesting by design, because you, like I, may think on the surface that it’s just a lazy reimagining of an old flavor, stolen from Post. Yet its fascination comes from the question of whether Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s heavenly ghost of cereal dust can survive on an airy puffed piece without its decades old shell of squared crisped wheat/rice. If so, how long before these noodly Churros grow arms?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, cinnamon, general mills, toast crunch. 21 Comments

Dec. ’18

Rumor Mill: Fruity Lucky Charms & (Boxed) Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros Cereals!

Photos via sega_retro_revival

(Update: We reviewed both!)

What does Franken Berry do for the 10.5 months of the year he isn’t slinging spooky strawberry cereal and reclining seductively in plain view of traffic?

Trading secrets with Lucky and Mario, apparently.

Thanks to tips from sega_retro_revival and cereal compatriot Gabe Fonseca on Instagram (thanks!), we now know that General Mills is at the very least testing a new Fruity Lucky Charms cereal. While the cereal hasn’t been confirmed to be hitting stores, the “not for resale” boxes sega_retro_revival received directly echo four cereals play-tested by General Mills about this time last year, all of which ended up coming out. So I think it’s safe to say that those specifically nostalgic for 2006’s Berry Lucky Charms will have something to look forward to soon.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, lucky charms, toast crunch. 4 Comments

Nov. ’18

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch

There are a lot of things that separate a good cereal from a great cereal: unique flavor, creative theming, brand evolution. But there’s only one thing that separates great cereals and legendary cereals—you know, the kind of breakfast fare you need a Master Bowl to catch.

And that’s accessibility.

Yes, while you’d expect to only encounter legendary cereals on the secluded shores of the Whirl Islands, true morning myths know no borders. They aim for deliciousness for all, and now Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is joining that wanderlusting pantheon.

Once considered extinct, the Toast Crunch family member I’ve called “the greatest seasonal cereal of all time” has returned this season with full confidence and Canadian citizenship. Spotted by Junk Food Jeff (thanks Jeff!) alongside General Mills’ other, less exciting holiday 2018 release, Canadian Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch boasts exclusive box art, too.

This bluer and more frigid design seems to harken back to the cereal’s original, 2014 art, but now one of the squares wears a pair of floating mittens, frighteningly suggesting rapid mutation and evolution in the Toast Crunch species.

So enjoy Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch while you can, Canadian neighbors, because if this cereal keeps growing new limbs, it might be humankind that’s Limited Edition.

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

Oct. ’18

Coming Soon: Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch & Cocoa Puffs Bars from Pillsbury

Pillsbury Soft Filled Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars

Image via General Mills

What’s with General Mills and thermal activation? First we got the infamously inscrutable Toaster Strudel, essentially a high-maintenance Posh-Tart, and now a pair of Soft Filled Cereal Bars. Is the whole company a puppet operation run by a shadow council of Pillsbury Doughclerics, hellbent on igniting the world and ascending to the breaded plane?

Or am I just really lazy and hate waiting for the toaster when I could be eagerly and beaverly carving into a Pop-Tart?

Image via General Mills

Despite my aversion to exertion, I’m excited to try Pillsbury’s latest “ovenable” cereal-pastry crossover. According to General Mills, both are a “Frozen soft bar filled with cinnamon [or chocolatey] Neufchatel cheese.” The prospect of turning my oven (or countertop, as they can be thawed to eat, though who would want to risk the inevitable accidental face-plant into it) into a fudgy or cinnamon bunny cheesecake factory has me cheesequaking in my desk chair.

It makes me wonder what other cheeses may have cereal crossover potential. Cream Cheese Bagel Toast Crunch? Cottage Cheese Pebbles? Come on, Big Cereal, you have to claim this untapped potential before Doritos does!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cocoa puffs, general mills, toast crunch. 5 Comments

Oct. ’18

Review: Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch (2018)

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a breakfast star.

Our dearly departed Cinnamon Star Crunch, who will remain in our hearts, minds, and stomach memories forever, lived a short life. Only on shelves for the 2016 holiday season, the tragically young crunchy cinnamon stars have now died a second death.

To paraphrase Banksy, who, like the palate-tearing stars, enjoys shredding things, “They say you’re discontinued twice. Once when you stop crunching and the second, a bit later on, when somebody mentions your limited edition existence for the last time.”

You see, now that Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, the ivory-sugared golden boy of holiday seasons 2015 & 2016, has returned to the delight of many, its deliciously

raw (yet processed) yuletide impact will likely wipe Cinnamon Star Crunch from our collective cultural memory. It’s up to we few remaining cereal historians to preserve the cereal’s name, and its sort of, well, uniquely, umm…it tasted like cinnamon, right?

Wait, what am I doing in this black suit and tie? I’ve got Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch to eat! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, holiday, toast crunch. 3 Comments