I think now they’re just going out of their way to disgust us.
Food Review
Another day, another new flavor of M&M’s.
I thought Birthday Cake M&M’s might be to coincide with some landmark anniversary of the candy’s release, but the packaging indicates nothing. The pastel blue gives off an “Easter” vibe, or even might make you confuse it for M&M’s Minis, due to the similar shade of blue. But nope, it’s different.
Sorry for this obvious filler, I just have nothing to really say about these. I guess I’ll talk about the candy itself? That’s always a good topic when reviewing food.
Opening the bag, you are absolutely punched in the face with a sugary smell. Birthday Cake is almost never a flavor I like, because companies tend to just think, “What does Birthday Cake taste like? Weaponized levels of sugar? Okay, go with that.”
The M&M’s come in red, yellow, and blue. These are, apparently, the official colors of birthdays.
If you’ve ever had anything artificially “Birthday Cake” flavored (ignore the fact that most real birthday cakes are artificially flavored), you know what these M&M’s will taste like. A little bit of the average chocolate flavor they are known for, mixed with an overwhelming fake cake flavor.
Similar to their Gingerbread variety, the fakeness of the taste is off putting. If you’re a huge fan of the Birthday Cake flavor of sweets, you’ll probably find what you’re looking for here. For me, bleh.
The Cap’n Crunch lineup of cereals has never reached the highest echelons of cerealdom for me. Even Crunch Berries, by far my favorite offering from the Cap’n, is a secondary choice for me.
But one thing I certainly can’t fault the good Cap’n for is his lack of effort. There seems to be a new “Crunch” cereal maybe twice a year. Some come and go, some stick around longer than you’d think, but the Cap’n likes to spice things up and keep things fresh. Mrs. Crunch must be a very happy lady.
Cap’n’s newest offering, Sprinkled Donut Crunch, prompted a rousing reaction of, “Oh.” when I saw it. I wasn’t sure if it would be good or bad, it just seemed like one of those cereals that would just taste like pure sugar.
As an unabashed fan of purple, I like the box design. It’s a bold color and has a big donut on it. That works.
One thing I’ve noticed with some of the newer Cap’n cereals is that the boxes are gigantic. They’re approaching Honeycombs territory. As long as the cereal is good, I’m fine with that – more sugar for your dollar. But it’s always a bit sad when I have my first bowlful of something mediocre and think, “Good thing I’ve got twelve more bowls of this to go!” That’s when I fill up my dog’s treat basket with cereal.
Opening the box, my fears about the cereal were strengthened – just a pure wall of sugary scent. Pouring the cereal, I was impressed with the Cap’s commitment to the donuts being sprinkled. Oftentimes what you see on the box, when it comes to cereal decoration, doesn’t exactly translate into the actual product. But almost every donut piece had multiple sprinkles, some with their donut holes jam-packed with them.
Taste-wise, I was surprised by how good it was. The flavor is nothing revelatory, or even particularly amazing. I was just impressed that the cereal was quite good, considering I figured it would just taste like circular pieces of corn syrup.
It’s a sugary, slightly vanilla flavor – basically just a sweetened dough flavor. And it works for the cereal. The sweetness level is nowhere near what you might expect – sweet, for sure, but not offensively so.
The resulting milk was also lightly sweetened, unlike the thick sludge you can often get with the regular Cap’n Crunch.
While I don’t see myself buying this too often, I would buy it again. So that’s a compliment, I guess.
[insert seal of approval here]
In the first paragraph of my first article ever for this site, when it somehow looked even worse than it does now, I mentioned Raisin Mini-Wheats.
This was always one of my favorite cereals, which is sort of surprising. When you poll kids for what they love to eat for a snack, “wheat” and “raisins” wouldn’t rank very high. In order to answer “wheat stuffed with raisins”, you’d have to go with the “Other – please specify” category.
And still, when Raisin Mini-Wheats went away, I was depressed. When fruit-stuffed Mini-Wheats made a return a few years back, I was very happy. They didn’t have my beloved Raisin flavor, but what we got would suffice. The fact that they came back “Frosted” was a bit worrisome, but they were so lightly frosted that it didn’t alter the flavor much. But surely Kelloggs figured the only people who wanted non-frosted wheat cereal would be old people and health weirdos. So they went with the “Sugar = $$$” theory.
Seeing the return of Raisin to the fruit-stuffed Mini-Wheats lineup was a glorious day. Unless they completely forgot the recipe, it was almost guaranteed to be awesome.
For some reason, the “Raisin” Mini-Wheat person is female. I don’t want to go down that weird M&M’s “Do they have sex? How?” rabbit hole, so moving on…
There’s not too much to say. This cereal is awesome. Since the frosting is very light, it doesn’t affect the flavor very much, so as far as I can remember the overall flavor is very similar to the original.
Even with the frosting, it’s only very mildly sweet. By default, raisin isn’t usually one of the sweeter flavors, unless they’re coated with sugar like Raisin Bran’s raisins. So there’s a little sweetness, a little… uh, wheat-ness, and a “just enough” raisin flavor.
The one thing with the Touch of Fruit In the Middle line that seems different is, which makes sense given the name, there seems to be less fruit inside than the original line. The ratio seems a little less satisfying than I remember, but it’s still awesome.
[insert recommendation with the strength of a thousand minotaurs here]
Kellogg’s Krave has been one of the new-ish cereals that I liked, and that liking hasn’t really died out. With a lot of new cereals, I’ll really be into the first bowlful or two, then the excitement is gone. I don’t by the box of regular chocolate Krave anymore – I found it a bit blah. But Double Chocolate Krave is still awesome.
The potential to expand the line, either with permanent additional flavors or rotating flavors, is huge. The idea of “cereal pouches stuffed with some random flavor” is limitless. For their first new flavor, they went with S’Mores.
I was hesitant about this, because fake marshmallow usually creeps me out. I don’t like real marshmallows, either, unless they’ve been lit on fire and become encased in black carbon. But that marshmallow stuff they put in Rocky Road ice cream, etc? Blech.
One thing that is immediately clear when looking at the cereal is that they took a little poetic license with how full their cereal pieces are. Biting one in half, you can’t really see anything that’s supposed to be chocolate or marshmallow. The other thing you immediately notice is the incredibly strong graham cracker smell.
Thankfully, the marshmallow flavor isn’t too intense. There’s enough where you know what the flavor is, but it’s more of a background player. The cereal is really the graham cracker show, with guest appearances by chocolate and marshmallow. The overall cereal-eating experience at first seems like it may be a bit too intense to enjoy for long.
But after a few bites, the graham-octity calms down a little bit, and it settles into a nice flavor. I was wondering if I’d even get through a whole box of it, but once you “get” the graham flavor, it’s very good. The graham isn’t really like Golden Grahams, where that’s sugar and honey and a little graham action. S’Mores Krave tastes like little graham crackers pressed into cereal pieces.
Like regular chocolate Krave, the cereal doesn’t want to give up any of its flavor into the milk. You get a very light graham flavor if you are really looking for it, but otherwise its just slightly sugared milk.
I don’t think this is a cereal that could become a staple, but it’ll be a nice plug-in once in a while. Until it’s inevitably discontinued, anyway.
[insert seal of approval here]
Eager to shed their reputation as a boring, healthy cereal, Fruity Pebbles decided to take the next logical step – add candy.
The description of Poppin’ Pebbles makes it sound like Fruity Pebbles mixed with Pop Rocks. This either sounds amazing, or horrifying. Or both, I guess.
The “Fizzes in your mouth” description puts me off, a bit. It immediately reminds me of Lotsa Fizz, that candy you’d get from the ice cream man. It was a strip of five or six hard candies, filled with “fizz”. I’m not sure what the effect was supposed to be – it wasn’t like Pop Rocks, it was almost like a very weak Alka-Seltzer going off in your mouth. It tasted like that, too.
What is immediately noticeable upon opening the box is that the cereal smells terrible. I thought the “poppin'” pieces would be “Burstin’ Berry” flavored, and the cereal would be its normal, Fruity self. Instead, the Pebbles pieces themselves are berry flavored, as well. And it smells awful – like children’s medicine. And not the good, chewable grape or orange baby aspirin, either. Like the medicine they try just hard enough to make appealing to kids, but you still can’t avoid the fact that it’s medicine.
Pouring the milk in, I was disappointed with the silence I was greeted with. Your box brags of all of the “Poppin'” that’s going to be happening, yet your cereal would easily be drowned out by the cacophony of Rice Krispies? Amateur hour.
The cereal doesn’t taste as bad as it smells, but it doesn’t exactly taste that good, either. It’s that awkward middle ground where you think, “I can make it through the rest of the box.” – but you’re not thrilled about it.
As for the “Poppin'” aspect, it’s interesting. It’s not overly distracting, but it’s definitely noticeable. I am not disappointed that “Poppin’ Basic 4” doesn’t exist, but for what it is, it’s a nice novelty. When you bite one of the green “rocks”, you don’t get an immediate burst of Pop Rocks-esque crackling. It’s a delayed release, so when you get a green rock every few bites, it keeps a steady, mild popping throughout.
Poppin’ Pebbles mostly does what it claims, but the weird flavor puts me off getting another box. I’d definitely buy Poppin’ Regular Fruity Pebbles – and that emboldened text would be required on the packaging. But for these Poppin’ Pebbles – buy a box for the novelty, but that will probably be the only one you buy.
[Insert sort-of-seal-of-approval-but-read-the-paragraph-above here]
I’m sure General Mills’ goal was achieved, with my reaction to their new release. When I saw Chocolate Toast Crunch, my immediate reaction was, “Oh.”
I initially really liked Peanut Butter Toast Crunch, but got sick of it pretty quickly, and haven’t bought it since. I’m all for cereal companies trying brand extensions, but for a cereal like Cinnamon Toast Crunch – come on. It’s one of the best cereals ever. Let its greatness stand on its own without sullying its good name with brand dilution, and say “Enough!” to these weak Toast Crunch brethren.
So I bought a box of Chocolate Toast Crunch.
There’s nothing much exciting about it to say, so jumping right to the cereal…
The cereal has a somewhat artificial chocolate flavor – not bad, just not “real”. Like a strange chocolate milk mix.
Chocolate Toast Crunch actually has a pretty solid chocolate flavor. But there’s this one note of flavor that doesn’t sit right. It’s 95% good, then there’s this strange aftertaste that somewhat turns you against what you’ve been eating. Overall, it’s good. But that’s really all I can say about it – I probably wouldn’t get it again, if only because there are so many better options for a chocolate cereal.
And it did nothing to turn the milk into chocolate milk. Ridiculous.
[Insert shrug here]
Apparently, 2013 was a down year for Christmas cereals. We still had Christmas Crunch holding down the fort, but other than that, there wasn’t much. Even stretching, and trying to find “winter” or “holiday” cereals, the shelves were pretty dry.
Today, I was able to find one last minute addition to the season’s assortment. Instead of being in the cereal section, Target had tucked this away next to Christmas cookie decorations in their seasonal section. But fear not, because it didn’t remain hidden forever!
Sugar Cookie Pebbles, or Pebbles – Sugar Cookie Flavored, depending on how you want to read the packaging, is Post’s latest “Limited Edition” cereal. This makes sense, since it would be odd to see a box of cereal with Pebbles and Bam Bam wearing gloves and earmuffs during the summer.
When I saw “sugar cookie”, I was expecting it to taste like an industrial-strength version of “frosted” cereals. Rice Krispies Treats Cereal exposed to TCRI mutagen.
Opening the box, my theories were confirmed. It had a sugar / “frosting” flavor that was so strong, it was almost disgusting. The scent would put those horrifying “Christmas Cookie”, etc. Yankee Candles to shame, or at the very least make those seem subtle by comparison.
The smell didn’t exactly entice me to eat the cereal, but for science, and all, I soldiered on.
Surprisingly, and more accurately thankfully, the taste is nowhere near as strong as the smell. The smell also dissipates greatly in the bowl, rather than coming from the smell-funnel of the box.
Taste-wise, it’s about what you’d expect. Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, or any “sugar” or most “vanilla” flavored cereals taste about the same.
Except with this, it comes in Pebble form. Which means being vigilant and constantly scraping down the sides of your bowl to keep the cereal in the milk. Otherwise they will harden and permanently affix themselves to your bowl, possibly forever.
Thanks, Post, for doing your part and giving us a seasonal cereal. It was pretty good.
Merry Christmas to everyone – don’t look at the bottom of the box in the first picture, or it will spoil the surprise that I am getting you a valuable seventy five cent discount off cereal for your present.
One of the things I look forward to most during Christmastime is seeing what new candy will be released. I haven’t had much luck this year, due to two swing-and-a-miss Gingerbread chocolates, but I still kept my eyes open.
I would say that the lessened importance of receiving presents is some sign of maturity in myself, but there is also the fact that I introduced this by saying that finding new candy is basically the most important thing to me. So we’ll call it a wash.
In what can only be described as a Christmas miracle, I found three new (to me, anyway) chocolate bars that have redeemed the previous lackluster candies this year. Only one of them is “Christmas-y”, but all three were in the same display box, so I’m counting them.
According to the packaging, Wild Ophelia is younger sister of Vosges Haut-Chocolat. Or, in less pretentious terms – “Vosges Fancy Chocolate”. I assume the Vosges part is the same in both cases.
I had included two Vosges bars in my chocolate bar assortment review a few years back. Both were very good. Hopefully, their sister company’s output would be as solid.
To be honest, I wasn’t super excited for these three bars. I’ve had plenty of dark chocolate with chilis, peppermint chocolate is usually underwhelming, and the “BBQ” aspect of the chips sounded disgusting.
With that exciting intro out of the way, let’s dig in!
First up was the New Orleans Chili. I would have preferred a red beans and rice chocolate bar, but chili bars are usually very good. Some err too light on the chili pepperss, some too much, but even when companies get it wrong, it’s usually enjoyable.
The bar itself is… not exciting at all. No fancy design, no chunks of pepper, so strong chili smell – it just looks like a standard bar of chocolate.
Thankfully, the chocolate itself is very good. Personally, the aftertaste is the weakest part. The packaging describes it as “underlying tones of earthy red pepper.” The “earthy” part is accurate – I get a very mild aftertaste of what can only be described as “dirt”.
Which isn’t to say this bar isn’t good – the chocolate itself is fantastic And it’s got just enough heat where the spice is rising in your mouth and you think, “Okay this is getting spicier, hopefully it stops…” and the heat stops rising just when it seems like it should. The dirt flavor does compliment the slightly bitter 70% chocolate, so all in all the dirt aftertaste works out.
Wild Ophelia has my full permission to include my dirt comparisons on any future packaging, should they choose to do so.
Despite being mildly creeped out by the “BBQ” aspect, I was looking forward to the Smokehouse BBQ flavor the most of the three.
The “chocolate & potato chip” aspect wasn’t creepy, in fact it’s awesome. Chocolate-covered potato chips are fantastic. I know that the sweet and salty go together wonderfully. But adding the barbecue flavoring to the mix raises my suspicions.
It seems like similar logic to if Klondike thought, “Boy, those Cool Ranch tacos are selling like crazy over at Taco Bell. Call up Doritos and ask them to let us make Cool Ranch Choco Tacos!”
Looking at the bar, you’d be hard pressed to tell there were chips in there. It looks more like crisped rice. Although I knew there wouldn’t be entire chips in there, so I’m not actually sure why I feel the need to specify they’re small pieces. Ignore this last paragraph.
They use the same 70% dark chocolate from the chili bar, so I already knew the chocolate would be good. What was shocking was just how well the barbecue chips work.
I was expecting more of a sweet and salty flavor, with either (hopefully) a hint of barbecue or (no please) a large, gimmicky barbecue punch to the face. Most surprising is there isn’t even much of a salty flavor to the chocolate. I don’t know if they just used mostly barbecue chip spices and didn’t salt them, or what.
In the reviews of the two previous gingerbread chocolates, I complained about a strange, savory aspect to them. In the Smokehouse BBQ bar, there’s no strangeness about them, because the savory flavor belongs, and somehow makes sense. There’s not a lot of barbecue, but just enough to mix well with the chocolate, and leave you with a surprising, and possibly shameful, very enjoyable aftertaste.
The last bar is the one I was looking forward to the least. Chocolate and mint bars usually just taste like peppermint extract, and the ones with candy cane pieces are annoying to chew. According to the packaging, this bar contains both peppermint oil and candy cane pieces. Yay!
What is immediately different about this chocolate is the texture. Where the previous two bars had a snap to them, and a nice tough bite, the Peppermint Bark bar is much softer. It’s like a firmer version of Ice Cubes chocolate.
Despite my not liking candy cane pieces in chocolate, it can’t be denied that it makes this bar very nice to look at – especially compared to their other, simple bars.
While I wouldn’t choose this as one of my desert island foods (metaphorically speaking, any chocolate would be a terrible choice for a hot and unrefrigerated climate), their Peppermint Bark bar made me come around to this flavor more. The fact that the peppermint didn’t taste fake, and somehow the candy canes didn’t get stuck in my teeth definitely helped.
After trying all three bars, I went on their site to see what other flavors they have. Unfortunately, most of their other flavors that sound awesome are white chocolate based – AKA they don’t sound awesome anymore.
But they have two varieties of chocolate bars with beef jerky in them, both of which must be immediately acquired by me. Given my overwhelming journalistic integrity, I will let you know the results of those bars. Unless I forget.
Considering how M&M’s consistently have about forty different varieties in their rotation at any given time, it’s odd how Twix has never managed to consistently keep supporting flavors around.
PB Twix is around in limited distribution, but that doesn’t really count. They have become the weirdo brother of Caramel that makes random appearances once in a while. The only one you see on store shelves on a regular basis is Caramel Twix.
This is a shame, since when Twix was fully represented by four flavors in the early nineties, Twix was a force to be reckoned with. Chocolate Fudge Twix was mediocre, Cookies ‘n’ Cream was awesome, and the other “standard” two were as good as always.
Then, Chocolate Fudge and Cookies ‘n’ Cream died unceremonious deaths. And Peanut Butter Twix was forced into retirement, brought out of retirement, put back, and its sad cycle continued.
Given Twix’s sordid history, I was excited about Gingerbread Twix. After my recent, “meh” experience with Gingerbread M&M’s, my hopes weren’t super high, but I still held out hope.
As you can see, they didn’t go especially wild with the packaging. No red and green, gold, or any of the super Christmas-y color palette. Instead they went with the bold artistic vision of “it’s like our normal brown packaging, except more brown!” At least they threw a couple gingerbread men on there.
I like the “Gingerbread” font – something about it reads slightly Wonka-ish. The individual wrappers are more of a brownish-bronze than the outside packaging is, and this looks a little better. But in the end, it’s still a shiny brown wrapper… yay?
Upon first bite, there’s not much there – similar to the Gingerbread M&M’s. Then, eventually you get a wave of gingerbread. And that wave of gingerbread flavor is… not very good.
My biggest complaint with these gingerbread-flavored candies is that the gingerbread flavor has an offensively artificial taste. With a flavor like this that can easily go wrong, the added flaw of fakeness amplifies the overall strange flavor.
All of this adds up to a very mediocre Twix.
Christmas is almost here, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing any more new gingerbread candy on the shelves for a while. If I did see one, I would think to myself, “I have not had good luck at all with that flavor this year, I shouldn’t buy this.” Then I will buy it, because I am an idiot.
Feel free to head on over to the review of Pumpkin Spice M&M’s for a refresher on my ambivalence towards M&M’s. Then, I guess, come back here, since telling a reader to go somewhere else in the first sentence probably isn’t a great tactic.
Despite this just being another seasonal M&M’s flavor, the concept of “new flavor!!!” supersedes the blandness of M&M’s, and still manages to pique my interest.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the packaging is Red’s weird, almost lewd gesture. I’m not sure why I’m sexualizing his facial expression and suggestive point. But what other reasoning would there be to point at a gingerbread man like that. You wouldn’t slyly tell someone “Hey, guess what I’ve got. Shh – not so loud! This is a secret!” It’s just a lazily-decorated cookie.
I’m not particularly surprised by the perverted gestures of Red on the packaging, since based on their commercials the M&M’s lead very deviant lifestyles. They are lusted after at parties, where humans either want to mate with them or simply consume their insides. Then when the parties they apparently frequently attend get extra wild, they proceed to rip off their own flesh. Sickening beasts.
So before even trying the candy, I was a little put off.
There’s also the matter of – do you know what gingerbread-flavored treats taste good? Gingerbread. You know what gingerbread-flavored treats taste mediocre to bad? Mostly everything else that’s gingerbread-flavored.
Still, I was grateful the flavor wasn’t “Egg Nog” (especially since that would probably white chocolate-based – UGH).
The Gingerbread M&M’s come in three colors – red and green for Christmas, and brown for the gingerbread. Or there was just a surplus of brown at the factory.
Immediately, the flavor just sends signals to my brain saying, “Something is different, and I don’t understand if this is good or bad.” There’s some chocolate, and shortly after some gingerbread spices. But what is really confusing me is there seems to be some notes of something savory. Like at the factory they thought, “What’s in gingerbread, again? Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove… poultry seasoning? Is that in there?”
It’s not an overtly savory flavor – M&M’s didn’t release the equivalent of a Jones soda novelty flavor. There’s just enough of a hint of it to make you uneasy.
After about five of them, I was sort of wishing I didn’t have an entire bag left to consume. This is where I get to look like a generous person, by leaving out a candy dish filled with them. People will get to enjoy these, all while consuming germs from everyone else who has touched them – win win!
If you want a good “wintery” M&M, Mint Chocolate M&M’s are the go-to. Gingerbread are a pass.
Whether you’re a fan of Cheetos or not, I think we can all agree that they are far from the most natural-seeming of foods. So I was quite disappointed when I saw the display box for the trick or treat bags of Cheetos that read in large letters, “Glow In The Dark”.
It turns out only the bag glows in the dark, not the Cheetos themselves. I was so excited for a moment.
Diet Coke-Babies 