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Welcome to week 2 of the German cereals! Thanks again to our friend, Creature!

This week it’s Seitenbacher Kakao-Düsis, a turbine shaped cocoa cereal that smells really horrible and tastes equally so. That taste? It’s spelt, which Poppy can’t be bothered to remember from week to week, but thanks to wikipedia for the definition:

Spelt (Triticum spelta) is a hexaploid species of wheat. Spelt was an important staple in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times; it now survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain and has found a new market as a health food.

Seitenbacher is famous for its Müsli cereals, sold as health conscious and natural. Too bad their Kakao-Düsis smells like dog food… and tastes even worse. We might recall by now that Poppy loves healthy cereals in general, but not this one. Dog biscuits taste better. DOG BISCUITS TASTE BETTER, PEOPLE.

Nutrition information is as follows per 30 gram serving: 108 calories, 3 grams protein, 22 grams Total Carbohydrates, 3 grams Fruit Sugar, 0.9 grams Total Fat, 0 milligrams Cholesterol, 3 grams Dietary Fiber, and 2 milligrams Sodium. Ingredients: spelt, fruit sugar, and de-oiled cocoa.

Congratulations for being “100% spelt” (presumably, as in, no other grain was used in the making of this product), high in fiber, and containing real fruit sugar, but your cereal is so inedible that Poppy refused to eat a second bite.

The only bowl given is for the shape of the cereal — turbine!

Taste: Dog food
Box opening: No box, just a bag
Bag rippage: No rip, but I used scissors
Bag slippage: None
Sog factor: It sogged out on the edges only, the center remained crunchy, but no one wants to eat it either way
Allergy alert: Wheat

Poppy’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

NYCWD’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about Kakao-Düsis visit Seitenbacher!

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Annie’s Homegrown Fruity Bunnies is an All Natural toasted corn, brown rice, and whole grain oat cereal.

The idea of this cereal makes me very happy. The taste of this cereal made me spit it back into my bowl for the sog bite. Just no.

I appreciate the natural flavors, the whole grains, and the cute bunny concept, but the smell and taste of this cereal is seriously just like the cardboard box it came from. Sad, sad, sad. And, at $5.99 per box for a downtown Manhattan price, there’s no chance I’m buying it again even if it did taste mediocre or better.

Nutrition facts and ingredients:

Best Ingredients:Corn Meal, Cane Sugar, Brown Rice Flour, Whole Grain Oats, Colors (Annatto, Turmeric, Purple Carrot), Natural Fruit Flavors, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Sea Salt, Natural Vitamin E to protect flavor.

Vitamins & Minerals: Calcium Carbonate, Iron (ferrous sulfate), Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), Vitamin B3 (niacinamide), Vitamin A palmitate, Vitamin B12, Folic Acid, Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), Vitamin B1 (thiamin mononitrate) , Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), Vitamin D3.

Annie, I still adore your mac and cheese and I <3 Bernie the bunny, but Fruity Bunnies is a flop.

Taste: Tastes like cardboard.
Box opening: Easy
Bag rippage: None
Bag slippage: None
Sog factor: It didn’t sog out, but we both spit it out
Allergy alert: Oats for the gluten-freebies. Made on shared equipment that also processes milk, soy, tree nuts, and wheat.

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about Fruity Bunnies visit Annie’s Homegrown.

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Nature Valley® Chewy Granola Bars with a Naturally Flavored Yogurt Coating are a traditional chewy granola bar with a yogurt bottom.

The newest variety packs include a blueberry variety, but my box of bars was lacking the blue in the red, white, and blue motif, so you get Switzerland. (That makes more sense if you know what the flag of Switzerland looks like. I don’t mind waiting if you need to go look that up.)

The vanilla version of the bar was absolutely like wallpaper glue looks like it would taste. The strawberry version was like fireworks in my mouth. Talk about a world of difference…

And since I mentioned how hard it was to read the box, here’s what I was looking at during the video:

That’s the *full* size of the box, and that’s the crazy hard to read ingredients list.

Deductions on Strawberry for allergens and the box being hard to read. Even more deductions for Vanilla for being straight up awful.

Vanilla Bowls:

Strawberry Bowls:

For more information about Nature Valley Chewy Granola with Yogurt bars visit Nature Valley.

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NYCWD and I are bringing you more Love’s Truck Stop treats! This week it’s a battle between Golden Grahams Treats Peanut Butter Chocolate versus Chocolate Marshmallow. The cereal is made by General Mills but they sell these treats under a smaller company, probably a convenience store company, and I have yet to find it. No matter, we can still taste them and tell you if they’re good or bad.

Both of us agreed: The Golden Grahams Peanut Butter Chocolate bar was absolutely disgusting. It looked and tasted like CRAP. Off camera we let Georgie take a whiff of just a peanut butter chunk of the Peanut Butter Chocolate bar with no chocolate attached (note to everyone: NEVER feed chocolate to cats) but she wouldn’t even entertain the idea of being interested in it. But that Chocolate Marshmallow bar was delicious! We finished that one after filming. Loved the consistency, it was sweet but not sickeningly so, and it wasn’t messy! Yes, tons of sugar in both. But the sugar in the Peanut Butter Chocolate is completely overwhelming, the bar is sticky, and it just doesn’t taste like you’re supposed to eat it.

I couldn’t find any official General Mills information about these bars so, just like with Lucky Charms Marshmallow Treats, I had to scan in the wrappers:

Click each image to view the larger size.

Lots of allergens, so be careful. Also, gelatin is not vegetarian.

When NYCWD joins us we throw nutrition out the window and just care about taste and the shiny package.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

Chocolate Marshmallow Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about the Golden Grahams family of products visit General Mills.

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This week’s Marbits review is Kellogg’s Ice Cream Shoppe Frosted Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts. That’s a really long name for a product I end up hating. Since I don’t drink my milkshakes hot I chose not to heat up this pastry for the review. I kind of regretted putting the Pop-Tart in my mouth at all, actually. The texture once I got to the filling was like eating paste, it didn’t taste good, and it had way too much pastry around the filling to merry the flavors properly.

There are a lot of processed ingredients in the Pop-Tarts, as well as very low vitamin or mineral counts, lots of types of sugars, and allergens (wheat, milk, and soy to be specific). But don’t take my word for it, take Kellogg’s:

Bad taste, bad texture, no good ingredients, and high in fat and non-complex carbohydrates while low on protein. Not even the 25% less sugar than 75 out of the top 100 toaster pastries could redeem this product. I counted 6 different sugars that are in Frosted Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts, so it really doesn’t matter to me that there is 25% less than another product… why so many sugars?!

Also, vegetarians: There is gelatin in this product! And it doesn’t specify that it’s vegetable gelatin so we have to assume it’s animal based.

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about the Frosted Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts bar visit the Pop-Tarts Ice Cream Shoppe.

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Holy cinnamon, Batman! My guest host today is my mullet-loving sidekick Robin!

(I need a better joke writer than myself. Anyone want the job? It pays in leftover, sogged out cereal.)

Today we’re reviewing Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Simply Cinnamon. If you’ve never in your life had Corn Flakes Proper then I highly recommend you try those first so that you have a frame of reference.

Corn Flakes Simply Cinnamon is a corn based cereal, as the name implies. It taste unfortunately like its plain parent cereal, Corn Flakes, which are very delicious but we didn’t buy a box of cinnamon cereal to have it taste like the plain variety. A little too far on the simple scale, not enough on the cinnamon scale.

Nutrition was so-so, but not enough to make us stand on our chairs and start screaming “DONNIE!” at the top of our lungs:

Here’s a tip from Robin: Use this cereal to coat your chicken then pan fry or bake it. The cinnamon will give it a little bit of zing in heated up form, we assure you.

Taste: Disappointingly not like the Cinnamon Toast Crunch smell that wafted from the box
Box opening: Way too hard
Bag rippage: None, but it opened hard
Bag slippage: Fell into Robin’s bowl – FAIL!
Sog factor: Who ordered the oatmeal?!
Allergy alert: Traces of soybean

Guests first!

Robin’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

Poppy’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about Corn Flakes Simply Cinnamon please visit the Kellogg’s site.

For more information about the cereals recalled by Kellogg’s on June 25, 2010 please visit the Cereal Wednesday news page.

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Welcome to a second week in a row of cereal straws! Maybe this week’s cereal straw will be completely and radically different than last week’s one-bowl worthy straw…

Apple Jacks Cereal Straws are a new product on the market. Emulating their parent cereal, the straws themselves are green and orange, but are filled with a sugary milk-like substance so that when you drink milk through the straw you hypothetically will taste sweet yumminess as you drink. Unfortunately, my experience was that the straws themselves tasted a little like cinnamon but mostly like the cardboard the straws were boxed in. Anyone who has ever eaten Apple Jacks cereal knows that this is not the experience I should have had. I should have had an explosion of cinammony goodness in my mouth! But… nope. And after only a few minutes soaking in the milk the straws seem to shred and fall apart in the glass. True disappointment.

The straws are also not so pleasing healthwise. Per 3-straw serving there are 140 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbohydrates with no dietary fiber, and only 2 grams of protein. There is 10% of the Guideline Daily Amount of vitamins A, B6, B12, and D, as well as Thiamin, Riboflavin, and Niacin, which really isn’t much to be proud of.

Considering the high calorie count per serving for very little nutritional benefit and a ton of allergens in a product that tastes absolutely horrible, I recommend taking a pass on Apple Jacks Cereal Straws. No redemption from last week’s Marbits! Oh well.

Taste: Like cardboard
Box opening: No problem
Bag rippage: No problem, but the tray foil packaging is not easily re-sealable
Bag slippage: N/A
Sog factor: Anything greater than 5 minutes and it starts to shed its outer layers like a snake
Allergy alert: Contains Wheat, Milk, Eggs, and Soy ingredients. It may (which means it is processed in a plant and these items may fall into the product therefore you should assume it does) contain Tree Nuts and Peanuts

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about Apple Jacks Cereal Straws please visit the Kellogg’s website.

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It’s our first ever Battle of the Cereals review where you get to learn about two cereals in one and we get to duke it out to see which cereal is superior!!!! That sounds like fun, but how was it actually?

One cereal wins by a landslide, let’s just put it that way.

Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter POPS

NYCWD thought that Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter POPS was tasty, easy to get into, and chock full of goodness! Poppy thought it was pretty tasteless and didn’t particularly care for it. We both notice it is a very chocolatey pop, with a hint of peanut butter. A 3/4 cup serving contains 120 calories, 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of protein, and 21 grams of carbohydrates. It offers 25% recommended daily value of Iron, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, and Vitamin B12.

Taste: Cocoa-y with a hint of peanut butter
Box opening: Easy
Bag rippage: Hard to open, but no actual rippage
Bag slippage: None!
Sog factor: It didn’t really get the chance while we were filming. The outside sogs out, but the center doesn’t sog out for a very long time.
Allergy alert: Contains peanut, wheat, and soybean ingredients

NYCWD’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

Poppy’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

Market Basket Peanut Butter & Chocolate

Poppy thought that Market Basket Peanut Butter & Chocolate was only tasty during the very last bite, pretty nasty before that, and hard to get into. The vitamins compare perfectly to NYCWD’s cereal, but he gives it the big thumbs down. We both notice it’s the peanut butter that dominates the smaller two-puff variety. Each 3/4 cup serving contains 120 calories, 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of protein, and 23 grams of carbohydrates. It offers 25% recommended daily value of Iron, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, and Zinc.

Taste: Peanut buttery if you wait until you get to the center
Box opening: Easy
Bag rippage: Also difficult to open, but no ripping
Bag slippage: Complete slippage out of the box
Sog factor: It didn’t really get the chance while we were filming. The outside sogs out, but the center doesn’t sog out for a very long time. (Hmm, this sounds familiar…)
Allergy alert: Contains peanut and wheat ingredients

Poppy’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

NYCWD’s Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

And The Winner Is…

Kellogg’s Chocolate Peanut Butter POPS!!! Who’s surprised?

For more information about Market Basket PB&C please visit one of their stores.


For more information about Chocolate Peanut Butter POPS please visit the Kellogg’s website.

Please note that there is a recall notice for certain product codes of the Market Fresh PB&C. Check your box carefully to make sure yours does not fall in the range of the notice (ours did not!). Safe cereal eating!

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We all knew NYCWD wouldn’t like this cereal because apparently he had some Tony the Tiger trauma in his childhood, but I kinda sorta liked Frosted Flakes as a kid so I really thought this would be good!

And then I took a bite and realized that I was very, very wrong.

Frosted Flakes Gold is a new cereal by Kellogg’s. The cereal is comprised of a whole grain corn and wheat flake thickly coated with “honey” that is actually a combination of honey, malt flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup. The coating is very slick to the tongue, similar to my Fiber One experience, and so coated in fact that it makes the flake itself seem like stale cardboard. Also, the flakes are of varying sizes, some of them so large that they could actually be tough to swallow if not broken down properly first.

To its credit, Frosted Flakes Gold packs an average amount of health punch: 3 g of fiber per 3/4 cup serving, as well as 25% of daily recommended amounts of Iron, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, and Vitamin B12. Honestly, though, the flavor and texture are just so unappealing that I’d rather take my big girl vitamin and a fiber tablet than eat any more of this cereal. Also, it claims to have Long-Lasting Energy but doesn’t follow through with telling us exactly how it has this long-lasting energy. From the 2g of protein that almost all of its competitors have per serving? From the bit of honey that’s in it? Where? Back up your claims, Tony!

I’m not quite sure which demographic is supposed to be targeted for Frosted Flakes Gold, but I think Kellogg’s totally missed the mark for both kids and adults.

No toy inside, and NYCWD‘s least favorite cereal mascot on the box are not in this cereal’s scoring favor.

Slogan: “Crunchy Flakes made with Whole Grain and Baked with Honey”
Taste: Like sickeningly oversweet cardboard, to put it nicely
Box opening: Pretty difficult
Bag rippage: Lots of ripping
Bag slippage: Bag overboard!
Allergy alert: Contains wheat ingredients and trace amounts of soybean

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about the cereal please visit the Kellogg’s website.

The T-shirts for this episode are from ThinkGeek.

Quaker is the only cereal company that has been found to have put out a specifically special edition of one of their name brand cereals for the Christmas holiday. While this may be unique in and of itself, the exclusivity seems to be a Quaker tradition as they have exhibited similar behaviour with Quisp and with a version of Crunchberries called Ooops.

While we are almost certain that Christmas Crunch is as good as the regular cereal, we have to give the 2003 Christmas Crunch Cereal eaten in 2007 zero bowls. It just isn’t tasty anymore. In fact… its downright stale and nasty… and gave me a few hours of indigestion to boot.

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information you can visit the Official Cap’n Crunch website.