Chocolatey Chocolate Lucky Charms

Surely I've had these before? Nope, just S'mores Lucky Charms, which were somewhat Chocolatey but not Chocolatey chocolate, you dig? Anyway, these are fine. Not as good as regular Lucky Charms for me, but I don't much like chocolate flavored things. As such things go, the corn bits (not oat, which is a downgrade) are solid. Good cocoa flavor. And the marshmallows go well - there are some normie colored ones and some chocolatey ones, but they all basically taste like chocolate-sugar-mush. Since it is record breakingly hot outside, chocolate-sugar mush (and not oven time) is just what the doctor (me) ordered!

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10 

Starburst Fruit by the Foot Mini Feet

This is an Easter candy, broadly construed. How silly. They really are mini. There are two flavors:

Strawberry: A weirdly light color, almost bubble-gum looking. Tastes like a strawberry candy flavor more than a strawberry gummy/fruit snack. Again, weirdly small. But tastes good. 7/10

Lemon: This is a little better than the strawberry; tastes like a lemon fruit snack (which to be honest I don't know if I've ever had? But if I did!) 7/10 

A serving is 2, which makes me think "just make one non-mini foot" but I guess I'm not the target audience of a small child on Easter morning. 

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 7/10 

Strawberry Vanilla Chex

Some of my best friends are naturally flavored with other natural flavors! (That is to say, they're not actually friends, but some other human-type thing that passes for friendish. Ew.) This strawberry flavor is exactly the same as every other strawberry flavored cereal I've had lately (cinnamon toast crunch? special k? frosted flake?) and it tastes artificial even if it's not. Luckily you can still taste the rice chex through it, especially after milk saturation, and sweetened rice chex cereal is one of the greats. Perhaps I'd be better off with regular rice chex and a little sugar, but at least this saves me the sugar packet and gains me a new food review. Now, where was I. The vanilla is so subtle as to be nonexistent, and once the strawberry washes off, this is pretty good. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10 

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Strawberry

Ahoy there, friends. I played myself by looking at other people's reviews of this, because there's one that just says it caused an allergic reaction in both their kids with no followup!! Are those kids allergic to legumes?? Are there secret legumes in here??? Am I about to perish!??? (Yes, I am a high-anxiety consumer, but it's also so easy to accidentally consume an allergen, man, especially in 2025 America.)

Anyway, let's pretend that review doesn't exist, since I haven't had any General Mills labelling issues yet, and I also already ate this. It smells really good, like a sweet vanilla/strawberry dessert. Alas the taste does not live up to the smell. It's got a little bit of... not artificial, but like, freeze-dried? flavor to it, which makes sense given the medium of cereal, but is why the original flavor is still superior and cereals should stop trying to do fruit-flavored versions. Augh, my lips are so tingly, but it's probably just from the rough cinnamon texture. Right?!?!?

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10 (I did not perish)

Gushers Blueberry Grape / Sour Blue Raspberry

Never has a fruit snack made me feel so foolish, and I struggled through the fruit roll-ups pizza construction in the 90s. IDK if it's because I'm colorblind or what, but all the gushers in each package here are the same color blue. The box shows two distinct blue colors, but it does not translate to the real deal. So then what flavor(s) am I eating!? You'd think I could tell via "tasting", but I'm not sure. Some are definitely grape-y, and those I like less. Some are a sort of sour berry (blue raspberry, I suppose), and those are delicious. Is blueberry part of the grape ones and each of the two BlueberryGrape and SourRazz are in each package? Or are there Blueberry & Grape packs and Sour Razz packs?! Or is every gusher a mix of Blueberry, Grape, and Sour Razz? The more of them I eat, the less I know, because the non-sour ones don't all have the same "grape" note, so I don't think the BlueberryGrape flavor, if that is indeed a flavor, is stable. Even without the mystery, this is one of the best gushers I've had. Well, there aren't that many different ones, so it's probably the best. That's all due to the sour berry flavor, whereever it resides! Gush on! The only downside is that if I eat these at school, my mouth is blue.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 7/10 

Fruit by the Foot - Splitz - Watermelon & Lemonade

I just bought a bunch of portable snacks because I'm about to spend the majority of my week kitchenless, away from comforts like Fridge and Microwave. Who could have forseen that I would eat a bunch of those snacks in my own Fully Kitchened home anyway due to weariness and/or curiosity?! (everyone). Anyway, this is too embarrassing to eat during meetings or even office hours, lol. But it's very good. The lemon(ade) flavor is sour, strong, and soapy-fresh (although it doesn't taste like soap; more like lemon soap always smelled kinda tasty to me). It smells kind of like fruit stripe gum, which is funny because it's fruit (by the foot) and has a big stripe on it. The texture is annoyingly thin compared to what I remember from my youth (cost cutting???) but the length seems about the same. Longer than a foot! Sweet, complex, a lil sour, very nice. Hopefully they don't catch me in a car accident unfurling my fruit snack scroll. 

Overall
Cost: 6/10 
Taste: 7/10 

Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch

I probably can resist a new Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor, because I've tried a lot of them by now and they're never as good as regular cinnamon toast crunch. But if we don't try new things, our fear & avoidance of new things will grow ever stronger, and it's pretty easy to try new Cinnamon Toast Crunches, so.

These smell very much like a sugar cookie. Impressive work by the GM smell scientists. They taste like, hmm. Something familiar that I can't put my finger on. (Not a sugar cookie). I'll circle back if it comes to me later. The taste is OK... like a vanilla and less-cinnamony cinnamon toast crunch. Nothing unpleasant here, but it's a little lacklustre. Even the leftover milk just tastes like regular milk (no thank you). One of the better CTC spinoffs, but still inferior to the OG. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls Cereal

Here we have cinnamon toast crunch in circular disc form, with small dark spirals on top. The whole disc tastes the same, which is very unlike a cinnamon roll in actuality. It is also crunchy, which we hope is unlike a cinnamon roll in actuality. But the taste is not quite "cinnamon toast crunch", it's a little less cinnamon sugar and a little more "roll flavor", whatever that is. This is to its detriment. It is a fine sugary cereal but on the low tier for sugary cereals.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Trix Loaded Cereal

 

These loaded cereals look so fun, but I've come to realise they don't scratch the cereal itch for me. They're just so soft and large! Anyhow, these are the colors of the bisexual flag, and the taste of one too. Just kidding, they taste like the other pillowy loaded cereals, but with a small element of fruity trix flavor. The fruitiness does make it less itchy and scary for me somehow, but it's still not an ideal cereal texture. Or, really, taste. I dunno.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Vanilla Spice Cheerios

This is a huge box, and it expires in less than a week! Freakin' Target burned me. These are fine. They taste like cheerio -- sort of a mix of the apple cinnamon cheerios (but less sweet) and the multigrain ones (different shades of brown, a bit boring). Not much vanilla, really. They made me a bit nervous due to the appearance, but it reads safe and I lived. It's OK, but there's better cereals!

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Chex - Maple Brown Sugar

Hey, this was surprisingly solid. It tastes more like Chex than maple, and I forgot that I like chex! Even corn chex, apparently. It's not too sweet, but it's a little sweet (in the Kix zone!) and the milk remnants are very sweet. They do say that the PB chex are made in a separate facility, which I appreciate. Still a little scary, haha. But they are good, and the aftertaste is like maple brown sugar oatmeal, which I don't love (but it's growing on me), but the taste taste is pleasant and fun.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Cocoa Puffs Loaded Cereal

The back of this box is so weird -- it's like "living cereal rich" and "tell us how you live cereal rich" and what does it mean, living cereal rich!?!? I guess if anyone's doing it, I am, because I have a hell of a lot of cereals. Cereal rich and milk poor. Anyway, the cereal itself is also weird. The texture and stuff is similar to the cinnamon toast crunch one, but with no cinnamon flavor. I guess there's a vague chocolatey flavor, but even that is subtle? And then the filling is vanilla. They're kinda like those orange/pink/choco wafer rectangles, except less tasty and a worse texture. The first time I ate them they also made me nervous and cut up my mouth. So, not my favorite cereal.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Loaded Cinnamon Toast Crunch

OK, there's a lot of pretty weird things going on here. First of all, are these weird emoji square guys looking to be a new "thing"? I don't like that. Second of all, this is a small box and not family size. I mean, it's family size for me, a family of one, but that's a lexical innovation. Next, these taste very little like cinnamon toast crunch. Gone is the dense, sugary coating we are used to. Instead these puffs are somewhat....bready!? Someone online said they are like the cinnamon twists at Taco Bell, and I can see that. The taste is similar, and they are both weirdly airy, but these have no crunch at all, even dry. It's weird. They're also hardly loaded; it's more like the tiniest layer of pop-tart filling than any vanilla cream. It's OK though. Mild and sweet, like a little cinnamon cake puff. I don't hate it!

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10

Carmella Creeper Cereal

I mean, wow. This sure is a bright green cereal! It has Red 40 in it, though, which my dad was quick to point out. It also smells like potpourri, as I was quick to point out. The taste, though, is exactly like waffle crisp. A weird, somewhat cloying sweetness that I didn't hate but that just felt a bit much. Also, this is supposed to be caramel apple flavor, but apart from the smell, there are no apple notes here for me, only caramel. The texture is also slightly off-putting and very dry. I do like the marshmallows. It's a kid's cereal, that's for sure.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Chex Mix Bars - Double Chocolate

Bars are always stressful for me, especially because they usually have a peanut flavor. And there's a peanut chex mix bar flavor! But the ingredients read as safe; there's no warning and GM says they'll use warnings, so I ate it. Then I felt scared, dizzy, lightheaded, etc. But I'm alive. Lol. This also has sorbitol in it, which is a dangerous game, but it's in potatoes and stuff too, so hopefully it's potato level and not sugar-free gummy level. OK, down to business.

The main flavor notes here are chewy sweet rice crisps. It's essentially a rice krispie treat with fake choco on the bottom. That's a decent sweet snack. The corn chex is really not for me, it's like subtle notes of corn chip in my sweet scary treat. The pretzel bits are nice. I love chocolate covered pretzels, and this is like chocolate covered pretzels hidden among some less good (but still fine) bits and bobs. It looks scary too, all brown and crumbled up. But I think it was fine. I bet I'll like the next one I eat much more! 

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

Cocoa Puffs Go Box

Whew. This is so stressful because it looks like R Puffs (I don't want to even spell it out haha) and it also has granola and they make a PB cheerios go box. So many scary things. But the label is so safe (may contain wheat!!) so it is surely safe. And I am alive to write about it. The cocoa puffs tasted a lot better than I remember. Very chocolatey and not stale or gross. Better than the Kit Kat cereal I just had, that's for sure. The cherries are very sweet, but fine and go well with the chocolate flavors here. The granola is different than the usual, I think? It's chocolate flavored but the chocolate is subtle so I didn't like it as much as the honey vanilla granola. Overall this is really tasty though. 

Overall
Cost: 3/10 (Like 8 dollars for a 3 pack, wtf)
Taste: 7/10

Kit Kat cereal

I like KitKats and I like cereal, but this isn't that great (alas). It's kind of like chocolate enjoy life cookies as a crunchy cereal (must be the rosemary). They're very crunchy. They look cute, like little puffy pillows, and the smell is like marshmallow. The taste is mostly "cocoa puff", but unlike everyone who doesn't see a kit kit resemblence, I kind of get it. There's cereal-chocolate flavor, sure, but there's also weird buttery burnt vibes that recall the thin layer of choco in the middle of a kit kat. So I get it, but it's still not my favorite and I would much rather be eating a Kit Kat proper (or Kix cereal). Edible though.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Lucky Charms minis

How many minis are there? I'm starting to overcome my "is this reese's puffs" fear with time, especially since I realised that big Kix are the same shape as Reese's Puffs (big) and I eat those plenty. Anyway, enough psychosis from me, on to the review. So unlike Lucky Charms proper, these corn balls are corn and not oat. They're a bit like mini kix, really, which I would love, except there's a bit of a bad, stale metallic aftertaste here. The marshmallows also don't jive as well. I'd much rather eat Kix or regular Lucky Charms. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but I dunno about this. I will say that the miniature marshmallow shapes are cute, at least.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Tres Leches Toast Crunch

This stuff smells really good, like cinnamon flan. Unfortunately, it tastes super artificial -- almost exactly like the dunkin flavored whipped yoplait yogurts. Oddly sour, sweet, and poupourri-esque. I guess the leche vibe comes through since I do get a very "is this curdling in my mouth?" vibe. The texture is good, smell is good, but taste is a little too strongly fake for me. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Pillsbury Funfetti Popcorn

Today in things that are extremely weird: this popcorn. It looks tasty: wide, plump kernals and a glaze on top. Plus sprinkles. It tastes freakin' weird. Like funfetti sugar cookies or cake, sure, but not at all like popcorn. Confusing. And then, there's a bad artificial aftertaste (which sometimes happens with sprinkles, it's true -- kind of plasticcy?). This popcorn is definitely not for me. I wish it were just caramel corn or even plain popcorn instead, because the base seems solid, but you can't taste it at all through the very disconcerting Funfetti glaze.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10