Drew Tries Stuff: Weird Cereal Flavors
Who doesn’t love cereal? Who didn’t yearn for that aisle on every childhood shopping trip, more attainable than candy, more entertaining than any other collection of food. And yet, it has always been at the cutting edge of sugar-culinary development. Bringing in tiny marshmallows, creating a breakfast version of Reese’s, introducing Cookie Crisp, which advertised itself at legit cookie cereal. It would seem like, with so much already accomplished, there might not be many places left to push the envelope with this breakfast treat.
Well, several cereal makers heard your thoughts and called your bluff. Shit is getting weird out there, y’all. Which was how I knew it was time for another installment of Drew Tries Stuff, the series where I boldly explore a new frontier, so that you won’t have to.
Cinnamon Roll Fillows
Starting off with what seemed like the most normal of the lot, Fillows are crispy cereal with a sweet inner-filling, similar to a great number of cereals through the years. This one also came with a Cookies and Cream option, but I wanted to give it the best chances of success possible and I tend to trust cinnamon cereal over chocolate.
This was a strange one, in that dry, I kind of liked it. If you threw this into a trail mix at a 1/4th proportion to everything else, it would make a nice pop of sweet to balance things out. The problem came when milk was introduced to the event. While that dull husky crust of an exterior helps ground the sweetness when the product is dry, it rapidly loses integrity when damp. As the shells fail, leaving only that sugary cores at full strength, the flavor of everything goes completely out of whack. Within a few minutes, the bowl had become inedible. These have a place, if you’re willing to forgo milk and mix them in with other components, but probably not as cereal.
Final Score: 2 out of 5 rabbits zoned out in a sugar coma.
Drumstick Ice Cream Cereal: Mint
If that name didn’t make you do a double take, then you and I are very different creatures. When I walked past that in the grocery store, I came to a full stop, staring at the box and sure I was reading something wrong. Nope. They did it, those crazy bastards went and actually did it. Recognizing this box as my inevitable fate, I scooped it up and prepared for what was to come.
For all that lead-up, the result of this was… fine. It’s got three different cereal types mixed together, which are supposed to represent different flavors, but honestly dry or with milk, it all ran together. Vaguely mint, vaguely chocolate, this cereal does manage to be inoffensive to the tongue, however its largely by being too soft to hear. Or, taste, I guess. This metaphor kind of got out from under me. Point is, the cereal is boring. Not bad, mind you, just deeply generic. While that might make it capable of slipping into someone’s breakfast rotation, it also feels like a waste. If you’re going to create something that crazy, swing for the fences. People didn’t pick this up because they were expecting normal.
Final Score: 1 out of 5 blood-soaked malfunctioning leprechaun traps.
Sour Patch Kids Cereal
I already used all my creative “what is this” language talking about the discovery of the Drumstick cereal, and truly, this was more just confusion than shock. Sweet to breakfast is a standard conversion, but bringing in something sour… the hell? I even teased it on social media, because how can you not share that kind of horror? When it came time to taste, I was truly braced for anything.
Except, as it turned out, for the cereal to be…kind of… good? Yeah, I was shocked too. It’s a lot like Trix in flavor, only with a small burst of sour upfront. Dry, you catch the sour a lot more, not shockingly the milk tends to mute that aspect substantially. But again, once you get past that, it’s basically Trix, and Trix is fucking great. While I’m not quite sure who out there is eating a bowl of Trix and thinking “I want this to be 10% more sour for half a second”, good news hypothetical cereal fan, your prayers have been answered. The best use of this cereal might just be busting it out around friends and making them think you have an iron stomach.
Final Score: 3 out of 5 cookie robbers freelancing into recipe theft.
Honey Maid Smores Cereal
It’s probably not a great sign for anything that I had to clarify which smores cereal I’m reviewing today, but hey, the times are what they are. While the older model has been around since I was a teen, this new one seemed sleeker, plus was from a stranger to the breakfast game, so far as I know. It seemed weird, and if you don’t know that’s going to hook me by now then that tendency may never sink in.
Similar to Drumstick in composition style, this had three different cereal types mixed together. Unlike the last combo, though, these three pieces are actually distinct. Chocolate spheres, mini-marshmallows, and basically Golden Grahams form the components of this breakfast adventure. The marshmallows made the dry-test tough; they’re flavor and texturally like Lucky Charms marshmallows, and while I won’t say those can’t be eaten dry, we can at least agree it’s a divisive opinion.
When eaten in milk though, to my great shock, this one actually came together. Granted, two of their components were essentially lifted from existing cereals, but remixing is part of creation, and they did manage to make something different from the sum of its parts. I would certainly not say it tastes anything like smores, but the flavors work well together and it holds up even as sogginess sets in. Bizarre as the idea is, this one works, and might even make it into my regular breakfast rotation.
Final Score: 4 out of 5 tigers nervously testifying before the Cereal Mascot Steroid Investigation Committee.