My Week In Cereal

I am one of the unhealthy people who never want to eat/feel like they don’t have time to eat breakfast. For the past eight days, I have started off my morning with a bowl of cereal. To spice things up, I’ve had a different cereal each time. This was made possible by the General Mills variety pack.

Last Friday, I had Trix which is a corn based cereal formed into greenish blue, lime green, yellow, red, purple and orange balls. They have been on the North American market since 1954. Their mascot is the “Trix Rabbit,” a large, white rabbit who tries to trick children into giving him their Trix. “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

I never had Trix as a kid. They aren’t healthy or chocolate so my mom couldn’t justify buying them. I’ve tried others’ Trix, but this was my first time alone. I was unimpressed. They are better dry than in milk. If you put milk on them, it tastes better if you eat each flavor separately. Taken together, it just tastes really gross. I don’t like how the cereal sticks to your teeth. The inside of each ball remains crisp while the exterior becomes soft which is weird for me. It’s not a good consistency. With all of the colors, they turned my milk a light purple. I don’t know what color I was expecting.

Saturday, I had Honey Nut Cheerios. They are circles with holes in them, dipped in honey. They were introduced in 1979. Though their bee mascot didn’t originally have a name, in 2000 General Mills held a naming contest and the winning name was “Buzzbee” or “Buzz” for short. To me, he’ll always just be “Bee.”

I had to resist the urge to eat all the Honey Nut Cheerios dry. It brought back memories from when I was little and my mom would give me a small bag of them to keep me quiet in church. Everything about this cereal is perfect. There is only a touch of sweetness. When milk is added, it just gets sweeter. The box proudly says that it’s a “heart healthy” cereal. With cereal tasting like that, it makes eating healthier easy. Though not as crunchy after a few minutes in milk, the cereal doesn’t become squishy. When all of the cereal is gone, the milk remains white and tastes sweet.

Cocoa Puffs was the cereal of the day on Sunday. It is small chocolate-flavored balls of grain. Apparently, it’s been around since 1958, but I had always thought it to be a new cereal that came out when I was in grade school. Their mascot is “Sonny the Cuckoo Bird” who is “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

I remember begging my Mom to get this cereal. I thought the mascot was cute. Also, the idea of chocolate cereal is yummy. The dry cereal has a light chocolate taste. When milk is added, it sticks to your teeth. The after taste is a little strange, kind of like cardboard. I don’t remember it tasting like that. As expected, the milk turns brown. The box says, “Great Chocolaty Taste!” I could barely taste the chocolate. I guess I outgrew Cocoa Puffs.

I started this week (Monday) off with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It is square pieces of cereal with light brown and white swirls on it to signify that it’s been sprayed…loaded with cinnamon and sugar. The cereal was first produced in 1984. Their mascot is “Wendell, the baker.” “It’s the cinnamon sugar swirls in every bite!”

This was another “treat” cereal from my youth. The smell of the cinnamon when you first open the box is amazing. The cereal is sweet and crunchy dry. Once milk is added, though, they quickly become soggy. Also, the sugar seems to over power the cinnamon once milk is added. The after taste is a very bitter cinnamon, quite unpleasant. When the squares are gone, the milk remains white with the excess cinnamon floating in it.

Tuesday was Cheerios. They are the plain version of Honey Nut Cheerios. They have been a staple breakfast cereal since 1941. I never realized that they had a mascot, but apparently they do. “The Cheerios Kid” is their mascot. All of this time I just thought he was a regular kid. Go figure.

This is a very basic cereal. There is nothing special about it. I believe it to be much better with milk than dry. Eaten dry, it’s just too dry. I couldn’t help, but remember, as I ate the cereal, the 1989 movie Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, in particular, the scene where the kids are in the Cheerios and think they’re going to get eaten. Very scary scene. Anyway, I wanted to put sugar on the cereal, but figured that it would negate the healthiness of the cereal. The milk remained white with no added flavor from the cereal. I didn’t remember it becoming soggy so fast when I ate it before.

On Wednesday, I had Golden Grahams. They are sweet graham cracker flavored squares. They have been out for quite some time. I had always believed their mascot to be a bear, but I can’t find any source to confirm that or that they had any mascot. “How do they cram all that graham?”

I believe they taste more like graham crackers without milk. As they become soggy fast, they are definitely better dry. As the cereal sits in milk, the milk becomes slightly honey in color. My brother Joel, the Harvard graduate, used to always eat these. I always believed that they played a role in his intake of knowledge.

Frosted Cheerios started my day yesterday. They are the frosted version of the plain. They have been on shelves since 1995. There is no official mascot, but television celebrities (Gumby, Melissa Joan Hart, etc.) have made cameos in the commercials. “Frosted Cheerios tastes so good the box never closes!”

Dry they taste like there is already milk on them. Milk makes it even better. The cereal becomes sweeter in milk. Perhaps I ate it too fast, but it didn’t seem to become soggy like the plain Cheerios. The frosting most likely acts as a barrier between the milk and the grain cereal. Once the cereal is gone, milk remains white, but is sweetened by the frosting.

I ended my cereal adventure today with Lucky Charms. They are an oat cereal with fun shaped, colorful marshmallows. The cereal was created in 1963. Their famous mascot is “Lucky, the leprechaun.” In the commercial, children try to catch “Lucky” to get the cereal. “They're Always After Me Lucky Charms!” because “They're Magically Delicious!”

I used to sneak a bowl of this cereal when I went over my aunt’s house. She always had the good stuff. My mom believed that it had too much sugar in it. The marshmallows have a stale texture. You can taste the dye. The dry cereal tastes like Cheerios. The milk makes the marshmallows taste better because it dilutes the dye. The whole cereal is much, much better in milk. The cereal leaves the milk sweet with a bluish, grayish tint.

I still don’t like eating breakfast. I do, however, see the point in doing so. I had a lot more energy in the morning than usual. I think I might continue to give this breakfast every day thing a try.