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Contrary to my previous Raisin Bran review, I actually like Raisin Bran. It’s a product that marries cereal and fruit together for some morning goodness. Tastewise I would normally give Raisin Bran 4 bowls, but 4 years ago their special offer was the absolute suck and my review of it reflected that.

Here in the present day I have taken on the challenge of Raisin Bran Extra! with the focus more on the taste than on the deals the corporate mongers try to use to entice you to their wares. Raisin Bran Extra! adds cranberries, almond slices, and yogurty clusters to the traditional mix of bran flakes and raisins. I honestly enjoyed the addition of the cranberries and the almond slices. They added a nice additional flavor to the raisins, slightly sweetening the spoonful with some added texture.

The yogurty clusters on the other hand… overkill. Besides the fact that I don’t generally like yogurt in anything I eat, unless it’s frozen, these clusters were just the complete opposite of from the rest of the cereal… like little plastic pellets in a sea of natural ingredients. What’s worse is they over sweetened the cereal and dominated the flavor profile.

Nutrition information:

Taste: Tastes like an over sweetened bowl of yogurt with bran flakes on top
Box opening: Easy
Bag rippage: A gaping hole worse than the hole in the ozone layer
Bag slippage: Total slippage
Sog factor: It sogged quickly as expected
Allergy alert: Contains wheat, milk, soy, and almonds

All in all, I give Raisin Bran Extra! 3 bowls. One bowl for the raisins, cranberries, and almond slices. They definitely lose a bowl for the yogurty clusters turning it into a bowl of candy and they lose a bowl because, well, the corporate mongers can’t even have a suck deal to offer!!!!

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information about Raisin Bran Extra! visit the Kellogg’s website.

Kelloggs Raisin Bran combines two things that go great together… cereal and fruit. While the cereal is sweetened, it is not as overbearing as the sugary cereals. Another downside to the cereal is that the raisins are so dehydrated that the milk cannot rehydrate them. Instead, the flakes are left to absorb the milk and become very soggy.

Kelloggs Raisin Bran uses the sun as an icon. With two scoops of raisins in his hands, Sunny, is portrayed as a benevolent sun providing the extra goodness to what would otherwise be a dull cereal. Sunny has only been around since 1966 while Kelloggs Raisin Bran first came our in the early 1940′s. The royal purple box has been a constant for Kelloggs Raisin Bran, although in other countries the color is a lighter shade.

The term Raisin Bran was at one time trademarked. However constant use of it made it a genericized trademark, hence why we refer to this particular cereal as Kelloggs Raisin Bran. There are a number of other companies that also use the term Raisin Bran to describe their similarly stylized cereal.

Possibly one of the best things to ever happen to Kelloggs Raisin Bran was the 1987 commercial featuring claymation icons The California Raisins, a blues band, singing Marvin Gaye‘s “I Heard It Through The Grape Vine“. It was this commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory Board (yes, there really is one) that led to a huge marketing push putting them on everything from lunchboxes, notebooks, bookbags, folders, and t-shirts (I used to own one) which brought in more revenue in 1988 than the California farmers selling raisins. This also placed raising items into higher demand and was a natural fit for Kelloggs Raisin Bran.

Once again however the cereal companies disappoint with their offers. Every DVD listed on that box has appeared in Wal-Mart‘s dollar bin. The fact is that this cereal is more like a “gateway cereal” (similar to how marijuana is called a “gateway drug”) for kids to eat healthier. They fail to realize this and seem to target the geriatric population as their selection of DVDs indicates. While Kelloggs Raisin Bran is not targeted towards children, is there anything wrong with giving adults something cool?

Cereal Wednesday Bowls:

For more information you can visit the Official Kelloggs Raisin Bran website.