Ever wonder what a plain ol’ butter & jelly sandwich might taste like? What about simply sour chicken, an unadorned upside-down cake, or a pizza topped only with…pepper?
Yeah, me either. But that’s the Honey Vanilla Cheerios experience: like eating something extremely familiar, but without one of the signature, accenting somethings that define the dish. Granted, I’m exaggerating, and Honey Vanilla Cheerios don’t taste as bad as fouled fowl, but it’s palpably missing something.
See, I often claim that this is a blog about “cereal, Pop-Tarts, and oatmeal,” but I haven’t written a word about oatmeal since mid-2018—let alone other hot cereals. Sorry, Cream of Wheat, but I just don’t think we’re going to work out.
There are a couple reasons for my oatmeal abstinence. Logistically, I both don’t hear about new oatmeals often, plus in the breakfast aisle it’s way harder to notice new oatmeal varieties, since brands like Quaker will use the same box design with small element swaps.
But more importantly, I simply can’t get as excited about new strains of oatmeal as I can about new cereals. Oatmeal just lacks the crunch, potency, and childlike goofiness that makes cereal so fun—and don’t even get me started on how hard it is to take an attractive picture of beige mush. Like a school photographer, I find myself grimacing through the steamed-up lens, thinking “Oh. Great. You’re looking, so…eager,” as my oatmeal slogs its way through the $100 picture package its parents paid for.
Aesthetic tepidity aside, oatmeal is back in a sleek and minimalistic way with these RX A.M. Oats cups. Armed with four cutely cupped flavors—Chocolate, Apple Cinnamon, Maple, and Vanilla Almond—I’m here to take some moist glamour shots and see if these high-protein, low-ingredient cups can stand oat-to-oat with the feeble Quaker guy and his flimsy packets. Continue reading →
Let us all send prayers and psychic Gatorade to Cereal Life, who, as the online cereal correspondent with the closest connection to General Mills insiders, must be exhausted lately. For whatever reason, while Kellogg’s, Post, and Quaker have merely trickled out new cereal news, General Mills tips are spillingoutin torrents. The most likely explanation for this is that, since January is the biggest time of the year for new cereal, and since most of Cereal Life’s finds are still in the sales sample stage, he’s simply getting a sneak peek at a huge wave of news to come in a couple months.
Among these bountiful chronicles of cereals foretold are two new types of Cheerios. First, the above Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberry Pieces. As Cereal Life mentions in the caption, a Cheerios variety with strawberries (rather than flavored with) hasn’t been seen since the Berry Burst line in the early 2000s—which, on an interesting tangent, contained the scarcely documented Cherry Vanilla Cheerios, first documented as a Cereal Myth in The Empty Bowl’s first-ever episode.
Granted, 2003’s version of this formula didn’t use Multigrain Cheerios, so at least this (presumed) 2021 version can be considered less of a bland reboot and more of a remaster. Continue reading →
Shhh!! Do not move. Do not say a word. Quietly read the words I’m about to present you: he’s in the room with you, right now. But he can’t see you if you remain still and silent, like Christmas Eve’s unstirred mouse.
The Elf on the Shelf feeds on fear. An animistic Yuletide talisman capable of movement speeds greater than SCP-173 when not in view, this guy was clearly deemed too dangerous for Santa’s workshop and sent to a maximum-security Antarctic prison, where he easily slipped past inattentive penguin guards to asexually multiply across shelves worldwide.
Okay fine, a lot of people love the Elf on the Shelf. I think he’s creepy. And that’s why he finds me delicious.
I’ll admit, when Kellogg’s first released Elf on the Shelf Sugar Cookie Cereal last year, I didn’t expect it to return for 2020—let alone with offspring. For while Elf on the Shelf Sugar Cookie Cereal is just alright, it’s no Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch and never will be.
However it’s sequel flavor sounds a bit more permafrost-breaking. As the first mint cereal without chocolate, Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Cereal brings back those familiar crunchy stars but swap out the boring white pill marbits for cute peppermint swirl ones. Given 2020’s tepid track record with vanilla cereals, I’m hesitant to say whether EotS VCCCC will actually be good, but I’m giving it points for originality regardless.
Expect to see both Elf on the Shelf cereals on, well, store shelves starting this month.
…that’s right, dead serious about celebrating Día de Muertos!
Kellogg’s of Mexico is making headlines for a new trio of Panaderia (Bakery) cereals releasing in Mexico early this autumn—and not all the buzz is the good, sugary kind, either. With Twitter users and media outlets alike questioning whether this should be considered cultural appropriation on Kellogg’s part, these Churros, Rollos de Canela and Pan de Muerto cereals have already been spotted by some shoppers and reviewed by others.
Though they may sound extremely similar, Kellogg’s Panaderia Churros Cereal appears to be flavored with cinnamon and brown sugar, while Rollos de Canela uses cinnamon and vanilla. However, more unique than either is Pan de Muerto Cereal. Based on the popular sweet bread made for Day of the Dead celebrations, this cereal version boasts not only vanilla, but butter and orange blossoms as ingredients, too. Since the last orange-vanilla cereal we saw in America was named my favorite release of that year, Pan de Muerto Cereal might just be worth the cost of importing it.
Have you tried any of these three yet? Let us know in the comments below!
(I cropped this one tall solely so you could see Benny’s head)
Do not read this review in the Alps.
Do not read this review while hunting or fishing.
And certainly do not read this review with any sleeping children in the house, because the seismic sigh I’m about to release could make avalanches, ripples, and crybaby dribbles:
*SIGH*
There, that feels better. Hopefully your pets haven’t been spooked and you weren’t in range of my sugar corn-scented breath—that stuff’s Gru-some. Heh, see what I did there? Just a little Despicable humor from Me.
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Please laugh with me. I need something positive to come out of this review. I’m going to keep it quick, because Minions Vanilla Vibe is just an awful, terrible cereal. And no, I’m not saying that in the classic dad joke sense of “oh, these taste horrible! I’ll get rid of ’em for you.” No, Minions Vanilla Vibe cereal—pardon my crudeness here—sucks. From both a flavorful and ideological point of view. Allow me to (briefly) elaborate: Continue reading →
It’s 2020, and as if you didn’t already have enough to worry about, we’re about to see the most pointless cereal war of the century come to a head: yes, I’m talking about The Great Fun–Dunk Dispute.
Bad vanilla and birthday cake cereals aren’t uncommon—in fact, I feel like I have to mention the burgeoning blight of them in every other blog post at this point. But with the recent announcement of Funfetti Cereal, things have gotten…confusing. See, many traditionally associate Pillsbury and its giggle-some Dough Boy with General Mills, who do indeed manufacture many of the brand’s most familiar products, like cinnamon roll tubes and those shaped holiday cookies. But when General Mills first acquired Pillsbury, anti-trust laws required that they sell off the rights to Pillsbury dry goods—rights that have since been secured by Hometown Foods, makers of other peripheral grocery store mainstays like Sunny D and Hungry Jack.
So Hometown Foods—who, to my knowledge, has never made a cereal, a fact made more complex when you remember that General Mills did make a Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll Fillows Cereal—is making Funfetti Cereal, potentially with the help of Post, who also made a very similar looking cereal for Tim Hortons. I know this because I was (somewhat curtly) told so by a General Mills representative when inquiring over email.
But now that Dunkaroos are back, and acting as a banner nostalgic reboot for General Mills, it only makes sense for it to be turned into a cereal inspired by the iconic cookies & frosting duo, right? Or could it be that General Mills’ upcoming Dunkaroos Cereal is a direct clapback to Hometown Foods for weaving sugary layers of uncertain breakfast brand ownership?
Maybe it’s both, but what matters is that, according to Cereal Life on Instagram—who appears to have a very close and very trustworthy contact in General Mills’ cereal production wing—Dunkaroos Cereal is coming soon. While this is labeled as a rumor here, we can pretty confidently say this stuff will hit shelves, probably just with different box art—hopefully box art that brings back Duncan the Kangaroo, who has a history of obscurely interacting with cereal mascots.
Just as Hometown Foods’ Funfetti Cereal strongly resembles Timbits Cereal, so too does this first look at Dunkaroos Cereal call to mind General Mills’ Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp. And as someone who has long begrudged that stuff’s existence despite its mediocre presentation alongside the vastly superior Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, I sure hope Dunkaroos Cereal can bring a whole lot more authentically iced flavor to the breakfast table. Because if it doesn’t, it’ll just be another forgotten facet on the faceless, tastelessly saccharine mass that is vanilla cereal’s past.
I’ve written about a lot of battered & baked cereals in my time, but this one takes the confetti cake.
Coming soon from Pillsbury, Funfetti Cereal promises to be ‘the fun and only’ birthday/vanilla/angel food cake cereal you’ll ever need. Just how it will be “bursting with fun” remains unclear, but as Funfetti Cereal’s release trails a full Chuck E. Cheese itinerary’s worth of birthdaycakeflavoredbreakfastproducts, these sprinkled spheres are going to have to work really, flavorfully hard to avoid being just another boring, exponentially sugared cereal.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit over vanilla and birthday cake in the breakfast aisle, because its typical one-note sweetness feels like a cheap cop-out to avoid paying for richer, more imaginative flavors, but hey: at least Funfetti looks pretty (pretti?).
What’s especially strange here is that General Mills is not producing this cereal, despite Pillsbury being their subsidiary brand. This tip comes from longtime friend Gabe Fonseca, who suspects Post might be producing the product, as they were the ghost writers behind the similar-looking Canada exclusive Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal.
Though it already appears on Walmart’s site, Funfetti Cereal’s release date is as of yet unknown. Hopefully Pillsbury & their mysterious co. take their time with this one, because unlike a real gooey cake, a half-baked cake cereal is like a trick candle: it blows, and never grants our wishes.
