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Cereal Review : Dreamworks Cereals

Posted by robbposch on July 20, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

In a nice change of shelf-aesthetics pace, Walmart and Malt-O-Meal have teamed up to create a line of cereals based on Dreamworks’ movies.

It’s a good news bad news situation.  The bad news – all the ingredients (I think – more on that later) are just sourced from other existing cereals.  The good news – cheap licensed cereals.  Also, for fans of Malt-O-Meal, you finally get to enjoy purchasing cereal in a box.

There’s four cereals in the line – I’ll go in order of least to most interesting.

01

Dragons – “Dragon Adventure Crunch”

I never saw How To Train Your Dragon.  I heard it was actually pretty good.  I’ve also heard a lot of other movies are pretty good, and I haven’t seen them.  Instead, I just watch Hackers and Demolition Man for the thousandth time.

Also, at some point I guess the movies changed the name to just “Dragons”?  I don’t know.  Sorry for the lack of research – it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t care.

Box-wise, it’s nice enough.  It has a dragon on it, so you can’t claim they’re ripping you off.  It’s also got some Jim Halpert-looking guy in armor.

02

Cereal-wise – it’s Crunch Berries.  I never loved Oops All Berries, because I found that flavor annoying after a while.  It’s a sad state of affairs when you need the already sweet Cap’n Crunch pieces to temper the berries’ sweetness in Crunch Berries, but at least that finds a good, albeit very sweet, balance.

By itself, the flavor reminds me of if you let Hi-C simmer and reduce, then drank that.  If you want fruity orbs, Froot Loops Bloopers are my go-to.

03

Shrek – “Ogre O’s”

This is arguably less interesting than the Dragons cereal, but at least I’ve seen Shrek, so that got it undeserved interesting points.

Box-wise, ugh.  Look at Donkey’s face.  Ugh.

04

Cereal-wise, it’s Froot Loops.  But with more green pieces.  Because Shrek.

05

Penguins – “Operation Chocolate Mix”

I’ve never seen Penguins, but based on their faces, I don’t think I want to.  Except the one on the left – he seems cool.  He looks like Howard the Duck.

06

Cereal-wise, it’s Cocoa Pebbles with little marshmallows.  I don’t know what Malt-O-Meal cereal these marshmallows might have been stolen from, but they’re awesome.  I am not a big fan of real marshmallows, with their creepy softness.  But dry cereal marshmallows, or those little dry marshmallows you get in a packet of hot chocolate?  Those I’m down with.

The marshmallows here are like hot chocolate marshmallows, just slightly larger and less dry.  In the grand scheme of cereal things, they’re not necessary here, but they don’t hurt the cereal at all.

Cocoa Pebbles are awesome, and the marshmallow addition is either easily ignored or kind of good, depending on how you look at it.

And Cocoa Pebbles – sorry, Operation Chocolate Mix – makes probably the best chocolate cereal milk in the business, so it’s good from beginning to end.

07

Madagascar – “S’mores Jungle Party”

As per usual with most of these, I haven’t seen Madagascar.  I hate all these characters’ faces, though.

08

I’d give this cereal way more credit if it didn’t already exist as Malt-O-Meal’s S’mores cereal.  Also, apparently Malt-O-Meal is called MOM Brands now.  I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

There have been plenty of S’mores cereals in the past, to varying levels of success.  Currently, you can find S’mores Krave, and less recently you could get a S’mores Pebbles, Smorz (awful name), and way back when – S’mores Grahams / S’mores Crunch.

Despite just being a rebrand of an existing cereal, S’mores Jungle Party is a solid cereal.  It’s got fake Golden Grahams – which are always great, fake Cocoa Puffs – which are always underwhelming, and marshmallows – which are creepy here.

The marshmallows used are oddly soft for a cereal marshmallow.  For this cereal, I’d have loved the hot chocolate marshmallows from the Penguins cereal.

But overall, this is at least a more interesting cereal than some of the lazier ones we’ve seen.

It’s nice to see some new cereals on the shelf, but I’d say the Dreamworks cereal line doesn’t really need to exist.  It’s got some colorful repackaging, and I guess that’s cool if you like the movies, but cereal-wise it’s nothing new.

I’d say that’s literal and not metaphorical, but I haven’t seen a MOM Brands cereal that is identical to the Penguins cereal.  They make a Cocoa Pebbles with marshmallows, but the marshmallows are larger and shaped, so that’s not exactly the same.  So I’ll say it’s literally the same, but with an asterisk.

Seal of Approval-wise, eh.  They’re a good price ($2.50), and you get a solid cereal with licensed characters.  So don’t go out of your way for these, but the most I can knock these cereals for is being occasionally dull and just repackaged.  Taste-wise, nothing wrong here.

Cereal Review : Ice Cream Pebbles & Caramel Popcorn Crunch

Posted by robbposch on June 30, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

After a few months of silence, two cereal lines that are some of the most reliable when it comes to new varieties have brought out their latest offerings.

01

Ice Cream Pebbles seems like it should be pretty self-explanatory.  But instead of an actual ice cream-flavored cereal, it’s Rainbow Sherbet flavored.  Which, you know, isn’t ice cream.  Oh well, I’m not too bothered by that.  At least they didn’t just repackage Cocoa Pebbles and call it Chocolate Ice Cream Pebbles.

02

The cereal itself is very bright – half neon, half pastel.  The colors are the same as rainbow sherbet, and the color hues and brightness match pretty well.  I don’t know if each color is supposed to taste differently – probably not – but I mostly just got “sugar”.

Overall, the flavor matches sherbet pretty well, but it mainly just seemed to taste like Fruity Pebbles but with something slightly wrong.  It’s like the dialed back on the artificial fruit flavors, and ramped up the sweetness a little bit.  Or it just tastes more sweet because you don’t get as much fruit flavor?  I don’t know.

It’s okay.  I’ll finish the box, and it’s a decent enough one-off novelty, but that’s about it.

[insert shrugging seal of approval here]

Like Pebbles, the good Cap’n is fond of a steady output of new products.  Many come and go, but the variety is always nice to see on the shelf.

03

I wasn’t too excited for Caramel Popcorn Crunch, since I was expecting just an onslaught of caramel flavoring, and nothing else.

04

Surprisingly, the cereal isn’t as completely one note as you might expect.  To be sure, it is one note, just… less than expected.  I don’t get much popcorn flavor, though I think I can get enough placebo effect popcorn-essence if I really try.  There’s absolutely no hint of salt, but that was pretty much a guarantee.

What makes the cereal pretty decent is that, surprisingly, it’s not grotesquely sweet.  But by the end of the bowl, I was thinking, “I kind of wish I didn’t have a gigantic box of this to get through.”

Not in one sitting, obviously – that would be ridiculous.  I only do that with the really good cereals.

[no seal of approval]

Cereal Review : Star Wars Cereal

Posted by robbposch on June 9, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

With all the excitement and hype for Episode VII, it’s not surprising that there is a new Star Wars cereal out.

01

What is surprising, however, is that this cereal has absolutely nothing to do with Episode VII, and is just an arbitrary Star Wars cereal.  That’s still cool, though.  It’s Star Wars, after all.

After the surprising twist on Cinnamon Toast Crunch of Minions cereal, here we are with another cereal piece and marshmallow effort.  Thankfully, I assumed no matter how good or bad this might turn out to be, it would have to be better than my previous Star Wars cereal experience.

There are two box designs – a Vader and a Yoda.  I went with Vader because, well, it’s Darth Vader.  That’s all the explanation necessary.  As supplementary reasoning, the Yoda was the CG Yoda, and no thanks to that.  Puppet Yoda is my Yoda.

The box design is very nice, blacks and reds for Vader, and a shot of the cereal and marshmallows at the bottom.  The only real downside is that it’s the Revenge of the Sith Vader suit and helmet, but as a cereal box mascot he still looks as imposing as ever.

Weighing in at a paltry 10.5 oz, we’re back in prime licensed cereal territory.  It’s a small, light box – but at least it has the decency to have an eye-catching design.  I didn’t take a picture of the back of the box because all it is is a game of Star Wars checkers.  Come on.

02

Since most of the time licensed marshmallows tend to look nothing like their “inspiration”, the side of the box provides a handy guide.  Yoda and Stormtrooper look good, but the others are just lazy.  The lightsaber is a decent attempt, but the stumpy shape makes it look more like a tube of lipstick or an ice pop.

I will move on from the marshmallow discussion, because I’m feeling very self conscious about sounding like an Onion editorial.

03

The cereal itself isn’t particularly attractive – the cereal pieces are a sickly shade of yellowish-tan, and feel very light for their size.  The marshmallows look pretty good, most of their advertised shapes held up, and the colors are relatively bright.

Flavor-wise, it’s quite good.  The cereal pieces are very lightly fruit flavored – or, more accurately, “froot” flavored.  The flavor reminds me a lot of Prince of Thieves cereal, or what I remember that cereal tasting like, anyway.  The Star Wars cereal pieces are a lot less phallic than the Prince of Thieves’ pieces, though.

It’s sweet enough, but definitely not overwhelmingly so – almost restrained, given that this is a sweetened Star Wars cereal.

Since this is a temporary licensed cereal, I won’t be too heartbroken when this cereal goes away – especially since a nearly identical cereal probably isn’t too far off.  But this was much better than it needed to be, given its “license to print money” Star Wars lineage.

[insert seal of approval here]

Cereal Review : Minions Cereal

Posted by robbposch on June 8, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Seeing a “Minions” cereal on the shelf just made me think, “Wow, it took that long?”  Timing it with the upcoming movie makes sense, but since the characters have blown up so big and long since escaped being tied with the Despicable Me license, it seemed like Universal would have wanted to milk that cash cow a while back.

As of now, I like the Minions.  They’re harmless, funny, and the humor harkens back to old slapstick more than modern Dreamworks humor.  Shrek’s humor always had that not-subtle coating of cynicism and mean-spiritedness, something that made it age very poorly for me.  But old school slapstick is timeless.

And the fact that these characters literally speak gibberish is fantastic.  I’m actually disappointed the upcoming movie has human characters.  I would have loved to have seen how far they could take a movie with no dialogue, and survived solely on the lunacy of the characters.  Like the first half of Wall-E on amphetamines.

I’m not too thrilled with those Minions memes on Facebook, though.  Those can go away as soon as possible.

01

It was surprising that the cereal didn’t involve marshmallows in some capacity.  Though I was grateful for the respite, given the terribleness of the last two marshmallow-containing movie tie-in cereals I’d had.

Instead, Minions cereal goes with a square cereal piece with Minion designs on them.  Whether the cereal pieces would be more Golden Graham or Cinnamon Toast Crunch was yet to be determined, but it looked like CTC was the front runner.

The box design is good enough – it gives you a giant Minion design and shows some of the cereal, so it gets the point across.  Other than that, there’s not too much on the box worth noting.  Oh, wait…

Ugh.  Oh, no.

Banana flavored?

Well, this is discouraging.  The presence of “berry” in the flavor didn’t do much to lift my spirits.  Oh well – on with the show.

Thankfully, upon opening the box, the banana smell was not overwhelming.  It was barely present, surprisingly.  Banana doesn’t tend to be a subtle flavor or scent, so I had a small glimmer of hope.  Just a small one, though – this is still banana we’re talking about.

02

Speaking of “barely present”, the Minion designs on the cereal are… unimpressive.

I mustered up all the courage I could, and took a bite.  And the flavor is… pretty good?  Wait, what?

This is a cereal based on hyperactive weirdos, with a flavor that tends to punch you in the face with its assertiveness, and the end result is a relatively restrained usage of banana?  Color me surprised.

03

The banana flavor is more akin to banana bread than the “BANANA!” flavor you tend to get in candy, ice cream, and other banana-flavored foods.  The “berry” aspect is there as well, but it is also not a strong flavor.

The end result is Cinnamon Toast Crunch with some back-end flavors of banana bread and some mysterious berry flavor.  Oddly enough, the berry aspect of the taste is the worst part.  It’s not bad, it’s just kind of pointless.

Given my fears, I’m as surprised as anyone that I not only finished the bowl, but actually enjoyed it.  Well, enjoyed it enough.  I’ll probably finish the box, but that’d be it for me.  For a banana-flavored cereal, the fact that it’s as good as it is – shocking, really.

[insert seal of approval here]

(Approval given mainly due to how impressed I am that they made this cereal so edible in spite of the uphill battle it faced)

Cereal Review : Marvel Avengers Cereal

Posted by robbposch on April 10, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

When Disney bought Marvel, there was a lot of concern.  It was mostly stupid concerns, usually akin to “Now Mickey Mouse is going to become a part of the Avengers LOLOL aren’t I original?”  But there were some genuine issues raised over Disney’s handling of Marvel licenses, especially in the cinematic realm.

 

I wasn’t worried about any of this.  Until now.  Thanks to Disney and Marvel’s synergy, the new Avengers cereal sucks.

 

01

 

I wouldn’t have expected Avengers cereal to be some ground breaking cereal, with all sorts of new marshmallow technology, or anything.  But I would have hoped it wouldn’t literally be the same cereal as Frozen’s cereal, with a few marshmallow dye changes.

 

Since you most likely already forgot, I hated the Frozen cereal.  The one saving grace that cereal had was a truly nice looking box.  Avengers doesn’t even have that – it’s perfectly serviceable for what it is, but it’s nothing particularly good.

 

The box also specifies it’s a “Hero Edition”.  One would assume that a Villain Edition can’t be far behind, but I don’t know how popular a weird-looking Ultron Prime box would be.  If they fill the box with his much better looking drones, then that could work.

 

It’s also possible they’re saving the Villain Edition for later on, in case they put a villain on the box that’s meant to be a surprise in the movie.  In any case, I won’t be buying the Villain Edition.

 

03

 

The marshmallows in Avengers cereal are pretty good looking.  I assume they’re meant to symbolize various members’ uniform colors.  But the odd shades of the marshmallows hinder this comparison.  Though I wouldn’t mind seeing Avengers 3 with Captain America in a teal and magenta uniform, or a pink and yellow Iron Man.

 

If you think of the marshmallows as round Bonkers candies, they look more appealing.

 

Other than the marshmallow color change (and removing the diamond-shaped marshmallows), this is Frozen cereal.  Same cheap cereal pieces with the weird and vaguely unpleasant fake vanilla aftertaste.

 

02

 

On the bright side, if you stick with it like Calvin eating Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs to get his beanie, you can eventually get a free movie ticket.  The movie ticket requires six boxes of Avengers cereal, unlike Calvin’s four boxes – so he got the better deal.  But for about $18, you can get six boxes of cereal and a ticket to see the movie.

 

That’s probably a pretty legit deal if you have a kid who will eat anything with Iron Man on it, or you are a fan of bad cereals.

 

[no seal of approval]

Cereal Review: French Toast Crunch

Posted by robbposch on January 7, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I have been addicted to cereal since the age of whatever age you are when you start chewing solid food.  Even as a kid I tried to get every new cereal possible, but apparently I missed the hype of French Toast Crunch when it was originally out.

 

Since Cinnamon Toast Crunch has always been one of my favorites, I can’t imagine not having French Toast Crunch.  However, I can’t ever remember having an opinion on it.  I didn’t like Waffle Crisp or Eggo Cereal – so maybe I just lumped French Toast Crunch in with the other syrupy cereals.

 

That exciting personal anecdote serves to reintroduce us to French Toast Crunch.

 

01

 

Like with Surge, it seems that companies are realizing that the internet’s loud and annoying voice sometimes indicates an actual void for a product – not just our usual desire for our stupid opinions be heard by any means necessary.

 

Since I was never into French Toast Crunch originally, the apparent clamoring for its re-release was something I was only mildly aware of, but obviously didn’t partake in.  My “Please re-release this!” efforts have been focused more on other items, including Bonkers and Crispy Wheats ‘n’ Raisins cereal.  Bonkers actually are making a return, which will be amazing.  Crispy Wheats ‘n’ Raisins, not so much yet.

 

The packaging for French Toast Crunch is nice in its simplicity.  A bold red box with basically just a logo and the cereal pieces on a spoon gives the box a retro charm without seeming pandering.  No matter how old I get, I don’t think I will ever tire of Cinnamon Toast Crunch  and its offshoots’ logos, with the variety of simply-colored letters.

 

This box design is almost identical to one of French Toast Crunch’s older designs, but with the “You asked, it’s back!” proclamation taking the place of Wendell the baker.

 

General Mills might be using this design to distance themselves from Wendell, due to the growing belief that he killed Bob and Quienno, the other two bakers, in order to have the spotlight to himself.

 

02

 

I’m very happy that General Mills went with the red box, instead of this other version it used to have.  This version is actually more in line with the aesthetics of the current Cinnamon Toast Crunch box, but if you’re going to bring back an old product, you might as well make that as obvious as possible.  Also, the red box is just so much more awesome.

 

The back of the box is something I’ll get to at the end, so as not to break up the cereal discussion.

 

03

 

Since I don’t remember actually eating French Toast Crunch, I don’t remember the cereal pieces.  Or, to be more accurate – I don’t remember how freaking awesome these cereal pieces are.  French Toast Crunch could have been a lazy cereal piece – give people a vaguely slice of bread-shaped piece, and that’d be good enough.  Instead, General Mills goes all out – the pieces are distinctly bread-shaped, it has a crust, it has visible cinnamon, and the cereal piece’s coloring makes it look like French toast soaked in syrup.

 

Cereal pieces are often underwhelming, and are rarely flat-out impressive.  French Toast Crunch’s cereal pieces deserve an award for accuracy.

 

The visuals are a great start, but more important is the taste.  And French Toast Crunch is good.  I know I will let some long time fans of the cereal down by not being over the moon about it.  But I’ve never been a syrup-cereal guy, so the fact that I enjoy this says a lot for the cereal.

 

French Toast Crunch is enjoyable, to be sure – the pieces have a nice crispy yet airy and slightly chewy texture.  Best of all is the fact that the sweetness isn’t at violent levels.  An artificially-sweetened cereal meant to taste like a very sweet breakfast food could be disastrous.  Instead, French Toast Crunch is relatively restrained, and has a very appropriate level of sweetness.

 

So while French Toast Crunch won’t rank as one of my favorite cereals, it is quite good.  I’m happy that fans of the cereal have it back, and I’m happy that a once-extinct cereal has returned.  That bodes well for other potential cereal returns.  Well played, internet.

 

[insert seal of approval here]

 

As mentioned above, the box’s design is very well done – until you flip it to the back.  On the back of the box, you will find one of those stupid “Only 90’s kids will get this!”-type quizzes.

 

04

 

So, for the sake of a thorough French Toast Crunch review, I will take this quiz.

 

You played grunge or hip hop jams on your boom box.

Fun Fact: This is literally the stereo I used to listen to “Nevermind” with, because I had to hide it from my disapproving parents:

05

I guess I’ll count that one for me.

You remember gas being under a dollar.

Fair enough.

You insisted that people “Talk to the hand”.

No.

You had clothes that were either baggy, backward, or neon.

Guilty on all three counts.  Though wearing backwards clothes is absolutely acceptable on National Kris Kross Day, a holiday to pay tribute to an important part of our nation’s history.

You secretly prepared for Y2K.

I didn’t, but my parents did.

You went to the video store to rent VHS tapes.

That seems like a gimme, but sure.

You knew the Macarena dance by heart.

Nope.

You tight-rolled your jeans.

I have no idea what this even means.

You practiced doing the “Running Man” in the mirror.

No.

You had a poster of your favorite boy band on the wall.

I had a metal army tin originally meant to hold ammo that I filled with New Kids on the Block cards.  But no poster.

You played video games at home more than the arcade.

Eventually, this was probably true.

You used the term “Chillin’ at my crib”.

No.

You frosted your hair.

Dyed blue, yes. Frosted, no.

You totally ate French Toast Crunch for breakfast.

Nope.

You occasionally threw the word “NOT” at the end of a sentence.

This is true – NOT.  But seriously, I never did this.

 

So according to the score chart, my 90’s-ness ranks as “Don’t Go There”.  Oh well.

Cereal Review: Disney’s Frozen Cereal & Froot Loops Bloopers

Posted by robbposch on December 30, 2014
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

After letting the movie go through the indie circuit for a while, Disney has finally decided to release a little marketing effort for Frozen.

 

In case you haven’t heard of it, Frozen is a small little movie from Disney.  The studio has its fingers crossed that they will turn a profit, and it looks like they will have a good chance given the fact that the box office and merchandising have brought in approximately eleventy skillion dollars.

 

01

 

The cereal’s release is a bit odd, since it seems like they’d have put this out a while ago to coincide more directly with the movie’s release.  But I guess this is one of those “tying in with home video” cereal releases, which are usually reserved for when a movie did insanely well in theaters but they forgot to release a cereal back when it first came out.  I’m completely guessing with that whole thing, and using only this movie as my evidence.

 

Frozen cereal is a yin yang of effort – a fantastic cereal box with an extraordinarily lazy cereal inside.  Frozen goes the route of lots of licensed cereal, with the whole “slightly larger than variety pack-sized” box size – 8.4 ounces.  Going off memory, The Amazing Spider-Man Cereal was the smallest licensed cereal box I’d seen in a long time, and Frozen goes even smaller than Spider-Man’s 8.7 ounces.  Insert shrinkage joke here.

 

While the box itself is small, it looks great.  The box is covered front to back in a shiny, winter-y sheen.  My usual horrible pictures don’t nearly do the box justice, as the box is legitimately really well designed.  It’s bright and reflective, with a nice balance between showing the characters and still giving the nice background imagery a chance to shine through.

 

02

 

Disney hedged their bets between letting the Anna and Elsa star on the box, and showing the whole cast, by doing a double A-side box.  Instead of having a pointless maze or something on the back of the box, they just had two fronts of the box.  This way they get to have the two main characters again, but also show Olaf, red-nosed human guy, and Moosey the moose.

 

It’s a dumb thing to get excited about, but this really is the nicest cereal box I’ve seen in a long time.

 

Now, the bad news.  The cereal kind of sucks.

 

03

 

I mean, the cereal isn’t bad, it’s just lazy and boring.  It’s cereal pieces with marshmallows.  And yes, most movie tie-in cereals nowadays goes this route.  But Frozen used these grimy cereal pieces – puffy without being puffs, sort of crunchy without being nice Lucky Charms-esque pieces.  They’re in this unpleasant middle ground, and have a distinctly cheap “store brand” appearance.

 

Like the texture, the taste is also in a middle ground.  For a sweetened cereal with marshmallows, it’s bizarrely restrained when it comes to sweetness.  Not sweet enough to be an indulgence, not not-sweet enough to taste healthy.

 

The cereal pieces are almost as pale as the white marshmallows.  I know it’s a Frozen cereal, but this pale, washed-out color palette reads as depressing, not wintery.

 

Obviously, Disney didn’t have to put much effort into the cereal, because all they had to do was slap “Frozen” on a box of bran flakes and kids would be violently grabbing the boxes off store shelves.  But since the box is so well done, it’s a shame the inside didn’t match the outside.

 

[no seal of approval]

[but I wouldn’t begrudge you buying it just for the packaging]

 

 

Froot Loops have always been a minor-league call up cereal for me.  I never go out of my way for it, but occasionally I’ll get a box and remember that it’s awesome.  Then Kellogg’s released Froot Loops Treasures last year, and the Froot Loops name has stayed among my upper echelon of cereals.  Froot Loops Treasures are one of my favorite cereals released in a while.  So while the Froot Loops brand gained favor with me, regular Froot Loops has still sort of hung around in the background.

 

04

 

Kellogg’s seemed to struggle with a unique brand extension, and finally just said, “what if we made the loops into spheres?”  After the rest of the people in the meeting presumably shrugged and responded with, “I guess”, Froot Loops Bloopers were born.

 

Naming your product after a term that means “error” or “hilarious mistake” doesn’t seem like the best start.  Then bragging on the box about your “Out of this world new shape!”, when referring to a bowl of uniformly-shaped circles doesn’t seem like a strong follow-up decision.

 

Despite Froot Loops Bloopers being off to a very unimpressive start, I soldiered on.

 

 

05

 

Bloopers seem to keep the same shades of colors that the regular Loops have, making for a nice-looking bowl of cereal.  The colors themselves are a little more subdued than the almost-neon colors of Trix or Oops! All Berries, and the pastel shades make for a nice change of color pace.

 

I was surprised at just how good the cereal was.  Going from loops to spheres has improved the cereal’s taste.  Not that Froot Loops don’t taste good, but I just seemed to like the flavor better in this – dare I say – out of this world shape.

 

I’ve never been a fan of Trix – something about the flavor of it always seemed unpleasant to me.  And while Oops! All Berries is okay, I don’t particularly want a whole bowl of the berries without some of the blander Cap’n pieces to balance them out.  Bloopers seems to be the best compromise of fruit (froot) flavor in a spherical venue, without comically high levels of sweetness.

 

I can’t imagine this cereal lasting too long, only because of how pointless this product seems – at least until people try it.  Then again, I assumed Treasures wouldn’t last that long, and they’re still around.  So hopefully Bloopers stick around for a little while, because they’re awesome.

 

[insert seal of approval here]

Cereal Review: Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch & Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp

Posted by robbposch on November 17, 2014
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Holidays. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 10 Comments

Since the good Cap’n has yet to release Thanksgiving Crunch, it seems – like the rest of the world – the cereal world is skipping right from Halloween to Christmas.

 

The first two holiday offerings that the cereal world has put forth (that I’ve seen, anyway) are Christmas cookie-themed variations of existing cereals.

 

01

 

The first, Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, is a sugar cookie-flavored twist on Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  I’m going to go ahead and assume you didn’t need me to explain that.

 

First off – the packaging is awesome.  Bright, pale, snowy blues make a great wintery background for the Christmas decorations that make up the bulk of the box.  I also like the cracked-out cereal piece guys.  They are alarmingly excited at the prospect of what appears to be a bowl full of family members about to be eaten.  So maybe they’re on meth, not crack.

 

Drugged out, cannibalistic cereal pieces would normally be a turnoff, but since they’re wearing cute little elf hats, I’ll let it slide.

 

02

 

Visually, the cereal is very similar to Frosted Toast Crunch.  The cereal pieces seem a little lighter in color, and the coating looks more sugary, less cinnamon-y.

 

And taste-wise, that’s essentially what it is.  Some of it may be placebo effect, but the cereal pieces themselves do seem to have a “sugar cookie” flavor to them.  The coating dials back on the cinnamon, almost entirely, and amps up the surface sugar.  Despite the clear increase in sugar flavor, the cereal itself is no more sweet than any of the other Toast Crunch varieties.

 

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is very well done, and is one of the new best holiday cereals in a while.  Sweet enough to resemble a sugar cookie’s flavor, but not as sweet as you may fear from something made to resemble a sugar cookie’s flavor.

 

[insert seal of approval here]

 

 

Following with the Christmas cookie theme is Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp.

 

03

 

Like Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, the packaging is well-designed.  I prefer Sugar Cookie’s, simply because of my preference for the blue shades.  But the shades of green, along with a different Christmas decoration on the logo, but keeping the lights to tie the cereals together, all make for a cohesive and good looking box.  Together, the cereals make for a very good pair of Christmas cereals, from a visual standpoint.

 

04

 

The cereal looks about what you’d expect, though the color saturation on the sprinkles leaves a little to be desired.

 

Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp is immediately at a disadvantage compared to Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, because it doesn’t have a clear idea of what kind of cookie it’s supposed to be.

 

If anything, it seems like they took a cupcake with sprinkles and decided, “That’s good enough, I guess.”  Except “Christmas cupcakes” aren’t really a thing.  But the cereal has more of a flavor of yellow cake than sugar cookies.

 

This is clearly just a red and green repaint of Sprinkles Cookie Crisp.  Though I’ve never actually had that, so this winds up being a new cereal to me.

 

So I’m not exactly sure what cookie this is meant to be.  So as a cookie cereal, I can’t really consider this a success.  However, its yellow cake flavor is nice – not overwhelming, just enough to make it sweet but make it easy to eat a whole bowl without getting sick of it.

 

One strike against Holiday Sprinkles I have to give it compared to regular Cookie Crisp is, oddly enough, something it does better.  One of my favorite parts of Cookie Crisp is when all the little chips wash off the cookies, so when you drink the milk you’ve got hundreds of tiny chips in there, as well.  The Holiday Sprinkles cereal held on to the sprinkles much better, so there wasn’t that much in the milk.

 

While it’s a questionable “cookie” cereal, Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp is an admirable effort, and a good cereal.

 

[insert seal of approval here]

 

I’m all for holiday themed cereals, so well done to General Mills for introducing two solid cereals (along with two very well done cereal boxes).  Though Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is the much better of the two.

 

Next year, bring these back, and maybe introduce another one.  But if they bring these back next year, and include an ornament as a prize inside, these cereals could reach late 80’s / early 90’s Christmas Crunch and Super Golden Crisp levels of Christmas cereal awesomeness.

 

And “cut out the ornament from the back of the box” does not count, General Mills.  There’s no cutting corners to greatness.