FRUIT LOOPS WITH MARSHMALLOWS - We have a winner! I haven't seen these at any regular grocery stores, but ran across a few boxes at Aldi and picked one up. I have no idea as to why they didn't try this before.

What we have here is a rare animal: a marshmallow cereal that stands alone without hte marshmallows. In most marshmallow cereals, the marshmallow is the star attraction. The cereal might PAIR well with marshmallows, as with Lucky Charms, but no one's going to buy a box of those without any marshmallows in them. But Fruit Loops are good stuff by themselves.

Adding marshmallows, though, brings them up to a whole new level. Taste-wise, it reminded me of the long-lost Fruity Marshmallow Krispies, a Rice Krispy variation that deserves another shot.

I'm not sure how much effort they're putting into this cereal - my local supermarkets don't have it in stock, and I haven't seen any commercials or anything. But they did bother to make the marshmallows look like fruits (or, in one case, like Toucan Sam), which is a pretty solid indication that they put some thought into making this stuff.

When last we left the cereal report, I was bemoaning the criminal underuse of hazelnut in breakfast cereal. Today, I decided to put my money where my mouth was.

Cocoa Puffs With Hazelnut - I am not the kind of guy who puts extra stuff in cereal. I used to put bananas in my rice krispies when I was a kid, but that's about it, really. I don't even mix cereals that much, except for the occasional chocolate/peanut butter pairing. But they don't really make a lot of cereal with hazelnut, so I took matters into my own hands. Cocoa Puffs were on sale. So were hazelnuts. Mix in one bowl, add milk, eat. The result is one tasty cereal that is probably marginally more healthy than eating cocoa puffs by themselves.

My next step is going to be to add it to granola to imitate the hazelnut granola cereal Target has among their upscale cereals. Beating them on price is not going to be AS easy as I thought, as I was a bit off in my guess as to the price of granola. Turns out a box of the stuff runs a good 4-6 bucks even WITHOUT hazelnut in it. I was under the impression that granola was the sort of stuff you could buy in a barrel for under ten bucks - or at least in a container like Oatmeal for 2 or 3 bucks (if you shop the sales).

The other day, I noticed a handful of "upscale" cereals at Target - Archer Farms brand jobs in smaller-than-average boxes (the boxes have resealable tops - nice - and no bags inside). The smaller boxes actually hold about as much cereal as a regular cereal box, though it'd be hard to fit any decent prizes into them. But this is grown-up cereal. No toys included. They're probably organic or all natural or something (certainly there's more real chocolate in the chocolate stuff than there is in most candy bars nowadays), but a glance at the ingredients doesn't make them look much better for you than any other cereal. What makes these "adult" cereals is the flavors.

I splurged on a couple of boxes:

Chocolate Chunk Hazelnut Biscotti . This is basically a granola cereal that happens to have chunks of real chocolate (imagine someone freezing a hershey bar and smashing it with a hammer - the tiny chunks left after such an assault are the kind of chocolate in the cereal) and bits of real hazelnut. There are nut cereal in the world, but they usually go for almonds or just "nut" in cereals where the real attraction tends to be honey (honey nut cheerios, Nut'n'honey, etc). I can't think of another cereal with hazelnut in it, but it's about damn time someone thought of it. What biscotti has to do with this I have not yet realized, but this is tasty stuff. I'd like to see Choco-hazelnut Cap'n Crunch someday.

Vanilla Spice Squares. Somewhat less successful is the vanilla spice squares. I first imagined that it'd be about like cinammon Quaker Oatmeal Squares (which are tasty), but they're a bit different both in taste and texture. Spice in cereal is almost always just cinnamon, but this one uses cinnamon and ginger (and a tiny bit of cloves), which makes for an interesting taste unlike anything else in the cereal market. What hurts this one is the texture -the stuff is pretty well impervious to human teeth. Even after sitting in milk for a while, it's still tough.

These guys run about five bucks a box. It's more-or-less worth it for the hazelnut, though I suspect you could make your own by taking a bag of cheap gralona, a bit of chocolate and some hazelnut. And that's my biggest problem with the stuff. Cereal is the kind of stuff that you really do have to buy, because, unlike most meals, you can't really make it yourself. I could no more whip up a batch of cheerios than I could build a time machine - but I could make my own chocolate hazelnut biscotti cereal that's every bit the equal of this stuff.

I do not like diet pop. All of it has that same "diet" taste that makes diet Mountain Dew taste about the same as diet Pepsi. Oh, they try to convince us it's still taste. Diet Coke used "Just for the Taste" as a slogan for years, though I can't imagine they ever fooled anybody. Then there was the whole "Diet Dr. Pepper Tastes More Like Regular Dr. Pepper" fiasco. I don't think they ever once said what it tasted more like regular dr. pepper THAN - I suppose it tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than, say, mud. But it still just tastes like regular, bad diet pop to me.

Now we have Pepsi Max, Pepsi's new ginseng-infused "diet cola for MEN." The commercial features blue collar-looking guys repeating rumors they've heard that the the stuff is made with pepper spray, scorpion venom, or the crushed-up bones of a viking. The slogan is "Zero sugar, maximum flavor, and maybe scorpion venom." I must admit: I'm charmed. That is, without question, the best slogan for a cola I've ever heard, diet or otherwise.

Now, as I mentioned, I'm not much of a diet pop person, and I'm a doubter when it comes to the effects of ginseng (never seemed to make any difference to me). But such a splendid commercial made me feel I should give them a shot. After all, it's not exactly the same stuff as diet Pepsi, and it can't be any worse than Crystal Pepsi, their clear cola (not to be confused with Crystal FROM Pepsi, the citrusy stuff that wasn't half bad and seemed like an apology for the medicinal-tasting clear cola).

As it turns out, Pepsi Max still has that "diet" taste. But on top of that there IS more of a sweetness and flavor than you get in regular diet pop; in fact, it's probably the best diet pop I've ever had (for what it's worth). Still, if there are guys out there who believe there's scorpion venom in this stuff, I'd hate to imagine what that same guy thinks is in REGULAR pepsi.

HONEY KIX
You don't see a lot of variations on Kix - there was that one a while back with the fruit-flavored bits, which ended up tasting like Kix mixed with Trix (yes, a kix trix mix), but while those were tasty, the fruit pieces really just got in the way. One of the best things about Kix is its distinct, lighter-than-air-yet-somehow-rather-substantial texture. I'm pleased to report that Honey Kix really does seem like Kix, only with a honey taste. The texture, and even the taste, you expect from Kix is unchanged, though they're a few shades darker in color and have a taste not unlike that of Golden Grahams. Excellent.

Hannah Montanta
The box shows Miley Cyrus with some jewels stuck on her face that make her look like a b-rate bounty hunter, and the box refers to the cereal as "multi-grain secret identity cereal." The secret is what the stuff tastes like, because the box doesn't specify a flavor at all - it just shows a picture of red and dark purple cereal bits about the size of Cocoa Pufs, only not so round. Well, red and purple are good flavors, and it was on sale, so I picked up a box. The taste and texture of the stuff is essentially that of a bowl of Crunch Berries - which rocks, because they hardly ever make the "all crunch berries" variety of Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries. Still don't get the face jewelry, but the cereal is good. Not QUITE as good as an actual bowl of Crunch Berries - I guess this is what the generic version would taste like.

Banana Nut Cheerios
Sometimes I wonder what's next for Cheerios. They've done so many kinds - will Peaches and Cream be next? How about Cheerios With Garden Veggies (TM)? Pomegranate Cheerios? The fact that pomegranate is taking so long to infiltrate the cereal aisle is kinda bugging me, seeing as how it's nearly taken over the juice aisle and even made headway into the pop aisle. I am a full convert to the power of the pomegranate. Anyway, Banana Nut Cheerios gets it half right - the banana and nut taste are dead-on and really rather tasty; enough so that I wonder why you don't see more banana flavored cereals (and those yellow Trix don't count). But the texture just doesn't do it for me - it seems more like generic cheerios than the real stuff. This is generally the case with cheerio variations in which they don't just toss some stuff in there with the regular Os. Actually, what these remind me of in terms of texture is Honey Nut Cheerios, which also normally don't have the same texture. That's what these really are: Banana Nut Honey Nut Cheerios. And not bad, at that.

Doug
Greg
Ryan
Wilhuff
Willy
Jean
Norm
Harrison
Chester

One day I'll solve this mystery. Perhaps I'll write a long, rambling book full of prose form experiments, deep insight (the kind I just can't get away with in YA, because you just can't have a Jr. High-age narrator be THAT profound). It will be a very serious book, except that Count Doug Chocula will be the protaganist.

Keebler Cookie Crunch Keebler Cookie Crunch is composed of miniature, cereal-sized versions of two of their cookies - Chips Deluxe and Fudge Stripe. How the individual pieces match up to their full-sized counterparts I can't really say, as I don't buy many keebler cookies (I'm not made of money!). Taste-wise, the cereal bits aren't much different. The difference is in the texture - the Chips Deluxe bits look (and taste) about like smaller versions of Cookie Crisp, while the Fudge Stripes looks sort of like mutli-colored Cheerios. The do taste marginally different, but only marginally. The taste difference between these and their obvious competitor, Cookie Crisp, is also pretty minimal.

But this stuff beats Cookie Crisp hands DOWN on texture. Cookie Crisp is one of those cereals that can really tear up your mouth. And, heck, who doesn't prefer soft cookies over stale, crispy ones? I sure don't. This stuff achieves a very chewy, easy-to-eat texture that does a much better job of recreating the effect of eating a cookie than Cookie Crisp. I hope this one is here to stay!

Rice Flakes This store-brand product turned up at Jewel. I was a bit amazed to see it. Say I'm not much of a dreamer if you will, but given how many OTHER ways they've made rice into cereal, I sort of thought that if rice could be made into flakes effectively, somebody would ahve done it by now. Other than a couple of expensive, new-agey "health" cereals that had rice in a sort of disc form, this is the only time I ever recall seeing rice flakes. They taste about like rice kispies, ony with a texture likened to a somewhat softer version of Frosted Flakes. They're still a bit puffier than corn flakes, and, thus, not quite so "flakey," but this is an interesting way to shake things up if you feel like plain cereal.

When I make fun of Indiana on a tour, Indianans get pissed. People from Wisconsin seem to enjoy a good Wisconsin joke, and Iowans are just happy you've heard of them (as long as you pronounce Des Moines correctly), but refer to Indiana as "Chicago's version of New Jersey," and Indianans jump right in telling me all of the famous and/or important Hoosiers who have made their mark. "Yes," I'll say, "a lot of good people have come out of Indiana. As fast as their little legs can carry them."

But I must give credit where it's due - Strack and Van Till, an Indiana grocery store, moved in near me recently, and it's GREAT. The prices are great, and the selection is fanTAStic. Finally, a place where I can get Count Chocula reliably - and for under three bucks a box! And, wonder of wonders, they had...

KING VITAMAN! I love this stuff. I hadn't had it in a LONG time - not so long that I didn't know that they'd changed the image on the box; when I was a kid, the mascot was some middle-aged dude in a crown. The good folks at the cereal company must have figured out that a iddle-aged weirdo made an unappealing mascot, because they eventually changed it to some goofy cartoon king. The riduculously easy "find the hidden picture" game on the back, however, remains (having replaced the series of masks you cut out, the previous long-running back-of-the-box gimmick, some years ago). The cereal itself is a corn cereal not QUITE as sweet as Cap'n Crunch, and shares with the Cap'n a real talent for tearing your mouth up. I always thought this was interesting, in that it was a generic cereal that didn't really have a name-brand equivalent. But I was wrong, because at the same Strack and Van Till run, I found...

Quisp. Retro cereal fans go on and on about this stuff - so much so that I sometimes wondered how I could seriously consider myself a cereal guy if I'd never had it. But, never having tasted the stuff as a kid, it didn't awaken any nostalgic feelings in ME, so I never quite bothered with the stuff. Seeing it on the shelves at Strack and Van Till for the first time in my life, I coudn't resist what may have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance. To my shock, the stuff tasted almost exactly like King Vitaman, only, perhaps, a tiny bit sweeter (making it more akin to Cap'n Crunch, really). I thought for once shining minute that it might be a superior cereal, since the bowl-shape might tear your mouth up less than the star-shaped offering from the King, but, alas, the stuff was just as hazardous, and not QUITE as satisfying, texture-wise. Plus, it cost more than twice as much, and only came in a tiny little box half the size of King Vitaman, so, if you do the math, the stuff cost me about four times what I paid per ounce of King Vitaman. And the comic story on the back of the box was based around terrible, terrible puns, that made me long for the hidden picture game, even though I've known where the lance, the glove, and the bowl were hidden in the picture since I was a wee lad.

Sorry, Baby Boomers (or whoever it is that eats Quisp). I remain a loyal subject of his royal highness. Long live the king!

In addition to my cereal hounding, I also enjoy trying any and all new kids of pop (alias soda or what have you) that i see on the shelves.

Today's entry is MOUNTAIN DEW REVOLUTION, a pale, pastel blue form of Mountain Dew, described on the bottle as "DEW infused with wild berry fruit flavor and ginseng."

I don't care much about the ginseng; I've never had much reaction to the stuff. Early in high school I was taking ginseng capsules in the morning in an effort to get some more energy, but I noticed no difference.

Still, while I don't expect to get super powers from this beverage, I WILL say that it's tasty. It's an odd thing - it's as close as I've tasted to a blueberry soda; the taste reminds me of nothing so much as Square Star Shooters, these square lollipops I used to get at the concession stand after little league games that tasted like blueberry pie. Yet, at the same time, it still tastes like a mountain dew, making it that RARE name brand spinoff that actually does seem like a variation on the original, not just a different product with the same logo somewhere on the bottle.

This doesn't knock me out the way, say, black cherry vanilla coke did, or that spiced pepsi from a couple of holiday seasons ago, but it's good stuff. I think it'll taste better out of a can than it does out of a bottle, too, but that's just me. When you have to pick between a can or a bottle, the can will taste better. There's nothing about a can of pop I don't like - I like the weight of it in my hand, the feeling and the sound of popping the top, the condensation on a cold one...everything. Getting stuff out of a fountain is still usually better yet, but it doesn't have that FEEL, y'know?

While in Normal, we stopped at a Meijer that had Count Chocula. Score! Finding that stuff on the shelves this time of year is sort of a trick.

Today, I tried mixing up a bowl of half Count Chocula and half Peanut Butter Kids Crunch (the perfectly serviceable Aldi version of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch). I have to say - I'm a genius.

A strange thing about the combination, though, is that the marshmallows sort of work against it, providing too much of a sweet taste to a flavor that ought to be straight-up rich. They made the texture a bit awkward, too. But these are minor complaints - the world can never have enough variations on choco-peanut butter cereal.

Today on the Cereal Report, we'll examine Aldi's take on cheerios, and the "darkberries" variation on Fruit Loops (or, as my soon-to-be-stepson calls them, Fruit Poops).


ALDI CHEERIOS - there are some cereals that you can get the off-brand version of and never know the difference - Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Frosted Mini-Wheats and Sugar Crisp come readily to mind. Others can occasionally be better (certain off-brand versions of Cap'n Crunch are less likely to tear up the roof of your mouth than the normal incarnation), and others are hit and miss (frosted flakes, peanut butter crunh, lucky charms). Given the general simplicity of cheerios, one would THINK they would be hard to mess up, but I've yet to find a good off-brand version. The off-brands tend to be a bit...insubstantial compared to the real thing. Trader Joe's probably comes closest, but I can still totally tell the difference. Aldi generally does a fine job of duplicating name brands (it's often the stuff from the same factory as the name brands and happens to be in a different label), so I gave their cheerios a shot - no dice. I've had worse, but they lack the substance I expect from cheerios.


FRUIT LOOPS with DARKBERRIES - the "darkberries" look lke blue-and-purple versions of the regular cereal bits. When I had a bowl of this stuff, I THOUGHT I detected a slightly more black-berryish taste than you normally get from Fruit Loops. It may have just been my imagination, but, in any case, here we have a cereal variation that's actually at least as good as, and possibly even a tiny bit better than, the original. That's not something that happens every day! Sure, now and then you get that rare off-shoot, like the late, lamented frosted version of Rice Krispies that had marshmallows in it. Often you can't tell the difference, like when they add a new charm to Lucky Charms. This may be like that, but without a bowl of the normal stuff to compare it with, it's impossible to be sure. Worth a shot, though!


Next time on the cereal report.....well, it depends on what's on sale next time I hit the store. Rule number one of cereal buying: never pay full price for the name brand stuff. Wait for it to go on sale!

Adam here with your Cereal Report. Today, I tried two new cereals: Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops, and Dino S'mores Pebbles. Both of these are flavors that I adore; to quote a book of mine that isn't out yet, I don't know who first thought of putting chocolate and peanut butter together, but I hope he won a Nobel Prize or something.

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER POPS
The logo here implies that these are a chocolate peanut butter flavored version of Corn Pops - they left the "corn" out, perhaps wise to the fact that the mixture of chocolate and corn wouldn't turn people on much. The best cereal of this flavor is still the late, lamented E.T. cereal. The recent champ, of course, is the Reese's Cereal, which is pretty good. This new entry from Pops doesn't look like Corn Pops at all, and doesn't have that chewy texture, either. Instead, it looks, feels, and, frankly, tastes about like Cocoa Puffs. There's to MUCH of a peanut butter taste - even less than there is in Reese's, in fact. There IS, however, a corn taste. If you want a good choco-peanut butter cereal, your best bet is still to mix peanut butter Cap'n Crunch with Cocoa Puffs; doing it that way has the added benefit of letting you control the chocolate to peanut butter ratio.

DINO S'MORE PEBBLES
Back in the 80s, there was a smores cereal that was essentially Golden Grahams with some chocolate and marshmallow added. It was GREAT. But eventually it went the way of O.J.s (the cereal that tasted like orange juice) and the Ice Cream Cones cereal (YUM!). Some years back, it was replaced by another S'mores cereal that really screwed up the graham cracker part. I LOVE Smores. But smores flavored stuff is hard to nail - the Smore candy bar is awful, and even the Ben and Jerry S'mores ice cream leaves a little to be desired. The get the chocolate, all right, but the marshmallow lacks the necessary "toasted" flavor, and the graham cracker taste gets drowned out by everything else. So I wasn't that hopeful about Smores Pebbles, which are mostly chocolate shaped chunks a bit more substantial than your average pebbles, bone shaped graham cracker pieces, and "marshmallow boulders." And, in fact, the stuff is terrible. The bone shaped pieces don't taste like anything, and the chocolate pieces taste more like cardboard than anything else. The marshmallows DO have a pretty good taste, but they're few and far between and so tiny that I don't know who they think they are calling them "boulders." One bite had the perfect Smore taste, but the rest of them didn't taste like much, and the texture is more like gerbil food than fruity pebbles.

I'll finish the box of pops. I'm not sure about the pebbles yet, but I won't throw them away immediately, like I did with the sugar-free alpha bits a couple of years back. Someone had BETTER have gotten fired over that one.

Next time on the Cereal Report, I'll be seeing what this "darkberry froot loops" business is all about, and try Aldi's take on fake cheerios, which no one YET has managed to do well.

Target is selling cereal in RETRO BOXES!!!




Mind you, these aren't totally authentic - the bowl of lucky charms pictured on the box has purple horseshoes, rainbows, and pots of gold, none of which are "period," but why nitpick? This RULES!