Tag Archives: Cereal

Junk Food

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Limited Edition Cereal

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Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Cereal Limited Edition BoxCinnamon Toast Crunch has always been one of my favorite cereals. It’s one of those cereals that blows past guys like Lucky Charms on the unhealthy scale and lands straight on “I’m basically eating dessert for breakfast”. Cinnamon and sugar cereal that leaves you with cinnamon-sugar cereal milk – what’s not to like?

For the holidays, we now have a limited edition version, which is Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch! Wait, what the hell is sugar cookie toast? I guess just Sugar Cookie Crunch wouldn’t get the entire brand name across.

Besides the appeal of eating sugar cookies for breakfast, there was another obvious selling point for me on this cereal, and I’m pretty sure you can guess what it was. Sure, the Christmas lights and stocking are a nice touch, but the obvious draw here is googly-eyed cereal squares.

Well, more specifically, googly-eyed sugar cookie cereal squares wearing green Santa hats and looking absolutely overjoyed as they grin at each other over their drowned brethren. If there were actual googly eyes glued to each box of Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, it would be my favorite cereal of all time.

Unbeknownst to me, these squares have a name, and that name is Crazy Squares. I always associated Cinnamon Toast Crunch with a fat chef wearing glasses, but the times have a-changed. While I will always have a place in my heart for Fat Toast Chef, Crazy Squares are pretty awesome, and you will see why when I show you the activity panel on the back of the box.

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Cereal Limited Edition Box Crazy Squares

There’s a whole bunch of stuff to do on this wonderfully festive panel. Crazy Squares are super into the Christmas spirit, with gifts and a tree festooned with glowing lights and ornaments.

The best part of this whole picture, however, is the Squares themselves. They are so happy. Well, I’m not quite sure what the guy on the far right is. He’s…he’s Special Square.

Can you tell which Crazy Square is my favorite? If you immediately guessed “the guy that Square #2 is really hoping is about to eat Square #4”, then you are absolutely correct.

My favorite activity is called “Frosted Fun”, and is described thusly: “The Crazy Squares have licked some picture puzzles of their favorite holiday things on the frost on the window. Can you guess the word each picture is creating?”

I’m sorry, what? They’ve licked some pictures onto the window? I have to assume this is the work of Special Square.

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Cereal Limited Edition Frosted Fun

But what glorious work it is. Hold on, I got this:

a. “ninja bro”

b. “dapper old man”

c. “shitty birthday with vegan parents”

d. “squirrel rocking a snowboard…with bells”

No need to look at the answer key. Nailed it.

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Cereal Limited Edition

Here is the cereal itself. Look at it! You did a good thing, Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch. Each piece, to varying degrees, looks like it has been dusted with a heavy coating of snow. Of course, we all know that snow is actually sugar, which is almost as good as snow.

The underlying structure and texture of this Crunch is almost identical to Cinnamon Toast, although perhaps a tad thinner. But does it actually taste like a sugar cookie? I wouldn’t say so offhand. The sugar is definitely there – from the look and the taste, it seems more like confectioner’s sugar, which is very sweet but also has a nice, melty quality to it. There’s also a lovely hint of vanilla in there.

I could definitely see eating Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch on a cold Christmas morning and digging the snowy vibe as I ingest unhealthy amounts of sugar and solve holiday puzzles. And that sugar and vanilla combo makes for some excellent cereal milk. While the flavor itself isn’t exactly unique and could easily transfer over to a regular cereal, all the bells and whistles make Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch a fine limited edition Christmas offering.

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Limited Edition Cereal

  • Score: 4 out of 5 carnivorous Crazy Squares
  • Price: $2.99
  • Size: 12.2 oz.
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirk: At a surprisingly low 9 grams of sugar per serving, this cereal is way less teeth-rotting (and contains a lot more vitamins and minerals) than a can of soda.
Junk Food

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal

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General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal BoxesHappy Halloween! I celebrated the holiday in 2010 with a bowl of Boo Berry cereal. Having had a taste of the General Mills breakfast monsters, I was thrilled to hear that this year, they’re bringing back two retirees: Fruity Yummy Mummy and Frute Brute!

According to Wikipedia, Yummy Mummy has been trapped in his sarcophagus for 20 years and Frute Brute has been in hibernation for 29 years.

In addition to this, they also brought back the retro box designs. Oh, those marketers. They know nostalgia brings in the money.

Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal Box

Gotta love the insanely clashing colors on this box. Of course, if you want to get kids to start screaming at their parents that they will die unless they get some Fruity Yummy Mummy cereal, that’s the way to go.

Yummy Mummy is super psyched about his cereal. He also appears to have been wrapped in purple, pink and yellow ribbon by someone on their first day of training at the gift-wrapping station at JCPenney’s.

I guess the full name of this cereal is General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Artificial Orange Cream Flavor Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows With…MONSTER MALLOWS.

That is a lot of words, some of them redundant. Of course, the MONSTER MALLOWS are the important part, here. MALLOWS shaped like MONSTERS! Sold and sold.

Like any good kids’ cereal, there’s a little trivia quiz on the side panel of the box, including such questions as, “Finish this monster catch phrase, ‘Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy…”

The answer is, “Go yummy”.

Okay, that’s kind of weak.

I do like question #5 though: “Which of these mail-in premiums was not offered with monster cereals – glow candles, monster ink stampers or a monster mansion?”

The answer is “glow candles”, and now I want a time machine to go back and get some monster ink stampers and a monster mansion. Those sound fucking awesome.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal

Although this cereal is “orange cream flavor”, and also “mummy”-themed, we seem to have orange AND red cereal pieces that look much more like ghosts than mummies.

And as for the pink, yellow, purple and orange mallows? I have no idea what they are. My first thought was Frankenstein’s Monster head, but I guess maybe they could be the mummies? Heck, why not.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal Bowl

I’ve been carefully ignoring the flavor of Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal because the idea of orange cream-flavored cereal scares me, and let’s face it – the packaging is awesome and the actual taste of the cereal is secondary. I could frame the unopened box, hang it on my wall, and be happy.

But I guess I’m supposed to talk about the food, so fine.

I found the flavor a little off-putting at first, but it quickly grew on me. Yummy Mummy really does taste like artificial frosted orange cream, instead of just artificial orange. This is Mr. Mummy’s saving grace. I’m pretty sure I would have hated it if it just tasted like orange Runts.

The MONSTER MALLOWS have that great instantly-dissolving sugar taste common in so many cereal mallows, but only when eaten dry. Once you add milk, their taste and texture disappears almost immediately. Luckily, the ghost…mummies hold a good crunch.

I also didn’t hate the leftover cereal milk – an important aspect of all cereals. I think the milk really helped to make the whole thing taste like a 50/50 bar, and nowhere was this more prominent than in the orange-tinged leftover milk.

I can’t honestly say that I’d like to eat Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal every day – while it wasn’t the total disaster I thought it would be, there are a lot of other cereal flavors out there that I prefer over orange cream. But when you take in the whole package, I think most kids would enjoy a bowl of ghosts and mummy heads on a fine Halloween morning.

Frute Brute

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal Box

Frute Brute likes to keep it simple. He’s just an ordinary werewolf brute, happy to eat his frute cereal. To be more specific, his Artificial Cherry Flavor Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows.

Wait, why does Yummy Mummy get MONSTER MALLOWS and Frute Brute only gets the regularly-fonted Spooky-Fun Marshmallows? Frute Brute needs to stop eating cereal and start tearin’ up a certain gift-wrapped mummy using his sharp orange claws.

Nice overalls, Frute Brute. Those clashing stripes look like they belong on an old Geocities site, which truly is terrifying. Then again, he has been gone for 29 years. Wait until he hears what the Internet has done with cats!

Like Yummy Mummy, Frute Brute has a trivia quiz on his box. “What was Frute Brute’s original catch phrase?”

“The Howling Good Taste of Frute.” I enjoy both the pun and the commitment to using the non-word “frute”.

Brutsie’s #5 question is much like the Mumsters: “Which of these mail-in premiums was not offered with monster cereals – bubble bath, bike safety flag or laboratory kit?”

The answer is “laboratory kit”, which makes me sad, because that would have gone great with my monster mansion. However, it does delight me to the bottom of my black heart that, at some point in time, you could get General Mills Monster Cereal Bubble Bath. I am trying so hard right now to finish this review and not go trolling on eBay.

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal

Okay, there’s no real way I can find to connect Brute to his cereal shapes. He’s rocking both the Pac-Man ghost cereal shapes and the “is that a skull?”-shaped marshmallows that Yummy Mummy had. Even the colors are barely different. Throw me a fang-shaped marshmallow or something.

General Mills Frute Brute Cereal Bowl

I thought I would hate Yummy Mummy’s orange cream cereal, but once it actually turned out to be not repulsive, I was less nervous about Frute Brute. It turns out I was lulled into a false sense of security.

Okay, so it wasn’t that bad. The sadly-not-MONSTER MALLOWS had the same qualities as the Mummy’s mallows, in that they were great dry but disappeared when milk was applied.

The ghosties were crunchy, but the cherry flavor just didn’t work very well as a cereal. It didn’t have that cough medicine taste that can plague cherry candy, but it was just a little bit unsettling. I would have bet that I’d like cherry over orange, but this time, that was not the case.

Frute Brute seems to be pretty into it, though. Whatever makes him happy.

Oh, and on the back of both cereal boxes, there’s a whole cartoon story to entertain you while you eat!

General Mills Monster Cereal Box Back

Love love love it. Love the story, love the drawing, and most of all, love the Halloween puns. I love you, General Mills Monsters.

General Mills Fruity Yummy Mummy Cereal and Frute Brute Cereal

  • Score (Fruity Yummy Mummy): 3 out of 5 gift-wrapped mummies
  • Score (Frute Brute): 2 out of 5 overalls that would make Fruit Stripe gum proud
  • Price: $2.50 each
  • Size: 9.6 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains no actual dessicated corpse or werewolf hair
Junk Food

Boo Berry Cereal

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Happy Halloween! I chose Boo Berry to represent on this day because, while he’s an old standby, I’ve also never tried Boo Berry Cereal. I also refrained from using its true title, “Boo Berry Artificial Berry Flavored Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows”. I figured y’all had gotten the picture by this point. I do like the bold statement of “spooky-fun”, however. I’m holding you to that, Boo Berry.

A little history lesson, largely provided by Wikipedia, which is my primary healthcare physician, attorney, and monster-themed cereal expert: Boo Berry was introduced in 1973 and was supposedly the first blueberry-flavored cereal. Ambitious! Resting on its laurels, these days Boo Berry claims to be only berry-flavored, but I’m still okay with that. After 37 years, a ghost can sit back and take a break. From the look of it on the front of the cereal box, a ghost can also make creepy, eyebrow-raised facial expressions and grabby postures that look less like he’s going to steal your soul and more like he’s going to do something to your children that would cause Elliot Stabler to punch him in the face.

The back of the box delivers more innocent fun. I tried to capture images of the whole thing, but the text would have been too small to read, so I’ll spell it out for you: Count Chocula and Frankenberry are playing a racing game that looks like it was made in 1986. “One more lap and I choc up another Monster Truck Racer WIN!” Says Count Chocula, who is presumably hanging upside-down, which would make his win even more impressive until you realize Frankenberry is probably just mashing the buttons with his nerveless, pieced-together thumbs. “Not so fast, Count! I’m a turbo boost away from TASTING SWEET VICTORY.” Apparently they are playing a very shitty video game based on the 2008 television remake of Knight Rider.

Boo Berry then shows up out of nowhere and says, “Argue all you want, fiends, but when we’re talking cereal, my BOO BERRY ALWAYS WINS!” They were not talking cereal, and you are being an asshole for interrupting them with your cereal talk, Boo Berry.

Apparently they don’t mind, however, because they immediately stop playing to have a Monster Cereal SHOWDOWN! This involves a “scare-off”, wherein the scariest face wins. Frankenberry’s all like “MMMRRRRR!” with a face that looks more developmentally disabled than scary, Count Chocula goes “Blah-Ha-Ha-Ha!” looking more like he just ate something gross (I’m guessing Kroger Jelly Belly Pudding) than anything resembling scary.

Finally, Boo Berry says the traditional “BOO!” which is not in and of itself scary, but…HE’S WEARING A MASK THAT LOOKS LIKE WHAT MONSTERS APPARENTLY THINK HUMAN CHILDREN LOOK LIKE!!!!! Frankenberry jumps into Count Chocula’s arms and they both shit themselves out of sheer terror. Boo takes his mask off, flashing his classic pedo smile in victory, which is actually more scary than the mask of a child’s face with the expression of someone who just snorted about six lines of meth. Boo wins this round, but I’m sure the other guys get their own moments to shine on the back of their own cereal boxes. I wish I’d looked at the store.

Here’s the cereal! Yes, there’s actual food inside the box! Here’s your players:

From top to bottom:

  • A Pac-Man ghost in eatable form Boo Berry himself, presumably, more purple than blue, but an impressive purple nonetheless. I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten something this color. I approve of both the shape and the color.
  • Purple bat guys. Or gals, whichever. Suitable for the season and the cereal.
  • Blue blobs. I think they’re supposed to be skulls? Poor execution, but skulls are cool. When’s the last time you ate a skull? That’s right. Don’t be so judgmental.
  • Pink Cthulhu and baby pink Cthulhu. I honestly don’t actually know what those are really supposed to be, but Cthulhu was the first thing that came to mind, and I’m going with it. Eldritch gods are spooky fun.
  • Apostrophe marks White ghosts. Two ghosts in one box! These are just generic ghosts, though. I assume they are Boo’s minions. I like eating minions.

The cereal itself has a subtle berry flavor that doesn’t really taste like any specific berry. It’s sweet, but not cloyingly so. It also has a definite “whole grain” aftertaste that I don’t remember from eating sugary cereals in my childhood. It’s been forever since I’ve had any kind of cereal, let alone corn-grain-and-marshmallow cereal, but I seem to remember them being way sweeter and less whole-grainy. I’m assuming the whole child obesity epidemic has pressured cereals into making them less sugary and more healthy than they were in 1989. Boo Berry cereal is chock full of vitamins and minerals, and has only 12 grams of sugar per 1 cup of cereal. I have no idea if that is any different than Boo Berry circa 1989, but I’m sure someone does. Feel free to comment.

The marshmallow pieces taste just like I remember them from olden times, which is basically like sugar and more sugar. They’re still firm yet tacky, and melt in your mouth in a delightful way. Marshmallows make any cereal better.

Boo Berry Cereal gets the honor of showing up on Halloween because it’s a classic. I don’t know how I never had any of the monster cereals before now, but I definitely remember loving their presence in commercials around Halloween when I was a kid. I’ve heard from friends that Boo Berry was always the hardest to find (excluding the short-lived Fruit Brute and his later equally short-lived and stupidly named incarnation, Fruity Yummy Mummy), so that makes him extra special. The cereal itself is your typical whole-grain with marshmallows fare, but the shapes are wonderfully Halloweeny and the box offers lots of fun for kids and adults like me who act like kids, even more so around this time of year. Boo Berry gets two thumbs up, even though he looks like a creepy pedo.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 spooky-fun pink marshmallow Cthulhus
  • Price: $2.50
  • Size: 9.6 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains 8 vitamins and minerals that have 25% of your daily value in one cup of cereal.  I now consider Boo Berry Cereal health food.