The breakfast cereal thread

[D'Snowth]

What in the world happened to Trix?

I haven't had any in about a year or so (IIRC), but now, it's like it leaves a rather rancid after taste in the back of your throat, and you have to wash the bowl quickly, otherwise it starts stinking really bad too.

What are they putting in it now?

So I was right, they have done something different to Trix:
http://metv.com/lists/10-favorite-foods-that-dont-taste-the-same-as-when-you-were-a-kid

However it doesn't taste like, to me anyway, that they toned down the citrus flavor and upped the berry flavor, it just tastes like they upped the rancid factor.

 

[Drtooth]

GM changed the recipe for various cereals in the last few years. Partially to replace hi fructose corn sweeteners to..uh... corn sweeteners with regular amounts of fructose, maybe? And they went on a whole grain kick that made some of their cereals taste like cardboard for a while. And the grain flavor overpowered the cereal flavors until they tinkered with it.

That said...well... you lose tasting ability the older you get (something that actually kept me up at night once), so nothing is going to taste the same over time.

As for current cereals, while I prefer the Batman cereal over it, I'm not discounting the equally flavorful Superman Caramel Crunch cereal. Tastes more like cookies than Cookie Crisp ever did. I could just buy a box to make snack mix out of. Something I rarely say about a cereal. It's got a great not too sweet flavor. I was expecting it to taste like extremely sugary corn pop type cereal, but it's very much a full, rich, caramel flavor. My only complaint is you have to eat the bowl fast. The flavor coating on the cereal pieces wares off in the milk quickly, but the milk it leaves behind is delightful. Like drinking a caramel swirl ice cream that melted.

 

[D'Snowth]

The fact that Jif now has a peanut butter and jelly cereal makes me think of all the times in years past where fictional characters have thought that peanut butter and jelly would make an excellent flavor for some kind of munchy treat. Like how on THE LITTLE LULU SHOW, Iggie thought peanut butter and jelly should be an ice cream flavor, much to Lulu and Tubby's disgust; or at the end of MOUSEHUNT, Nathan Lane got the bright idea to market peanut butter and jelly-flavored provolone string cheese to kids; even on SEINFELD, Kramer thought there should be restaurants that sell nothing but peanut butter and jelly novelties and call it P, B, and J's.

That being said, the cereal itself doesn't really have much taste to it: it certainly doesn't taste like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

 

[Drtooth]

There was a short lived food court spot in a mall that actually did sell only PB&J's, and was clearly conceived by Seinfeld fans. Ha ha ha ha...

...it closed in a matter of months.

I want to say there was a PB&J cereal at some point, but I don't feel like looking it up. It should have been a pretty obvious addition to the few Peanut Butter cereals on the market (other than Reeses, the only one with staying power was Cap'n's Peanut Butter Crunch), it just took them long enough to come up with it.

I'm surprised there wasn't a Fluff based cereal with Peanut Butter pieces and Mar bits.

 

[D'Snowth]

I just happened to think: wasn't there, at one point, like an extra crunchy Pebbles cereal? I seem to recall a commercial involving a high school geography student explaining what caused the great continental divide, and it apparently was the result of Fred and Barney eating said extra crunchy Pebbles with a crunch so loud and so big it split the continents.

 

[Drtooth]

Somehow I don't remember it but it sounds familiar... I dunno. I bet I could find it on Youtube, but it would be a heck of a search time to sift through them all.

As a Flintstones fan, watching the cartoon and the cereal commercials, I've always noticed a weird inconsistency.

Fred would always mooch off of Barney in the cartoon, even though Barney is never said to have any employment. The extended version of the original song even features the line about Barney being Fred's "fair weather friend" with Betty chiming in, "that is if he has a buck to lend." There was also that one episode where they go to a carnival and Fred records a song on a "your voice on a record" booth and orders Barney to put a coin in the slot where Barney gets annoyed and reprimands him with "I always put the coin in! 'S Matter? You bashful or somethin'?"

Yet...

The cereal commercials all feature Barney mooching off of Fred, though in the guise of wearing a disguise and tricking him. Now, I'm not complaining because it's usually hilarious. And the addition of parodies of pop culture meant a nice little rotation of different scenarios. Even used the obvious Transformers parody (written as one of those "I just don't get new things, they annoy me, let's make fun of it without research" gags) in a YTP. Still, it's weird to see this turn around. But Barney doesn't get as mad and flustered as Fred, and he'd react to Fred trying to steal cereal in costume with a sense of humor.

Of course, it beats the alternative of...well...I posted this in the "I can't believe how Terrible this is" thread, but I think it bares repeating here...

UGH! HB did not animate this commercial and it shows. Seems they couldn't even get close Betty and Wilma sound-a-likes, and I had to listen to it multiple times to see if that was Fred's official voice. But they got Mel Blanc in there. Probably cost more than everything else in the ad combined. Heck, almost seems like the commercial was made by the only people on the planet who never saw a Flintstones cartoon before.

 

[D'Snowth]

Fred would always mooch off of Barney in the cartoon, even though Barney is never said to have any employment.

Yeah, they did. There was an episode where they both quit their jobs to go into business for themselves running a roadside diner; this is confirmed when both Wilma and Betty call up Fred and Barney's respective employers and learn of their quitting. Not sure if this counts since it might be a different continuity, but in THE FLINTSTONES' NEW NEIGHBORS (the special where the Frankenstones move in next door), we see Barney carpooling with Fred to work, both of them wearing hardhats (well, turtle shells), and carrying lunchboxes with them. So, yeah, I'm sure Barney works, they just never really took the time to establish that further since the show was more about the Flintstones than it was the Rubbles. Either that, or we're supposed to chalk it up to Barney working at the same rock quary as Fred as the 1994 live action movie established.

EDIT: I found it!

Could that thumbnail preview look anymore awkward?

 

[Mynameisdean]

So, does anyone see Waffle Crisp in stores anymore? I feel like they might've been discontinued, because they were great.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah, they did. There was an episode where they both quit their jobs to go into business for themselves running a roadside diner; this is confirmed when both Wilma and Betty call up Fred and Barney's respective employers and learn of their quitting.

Never understood why they didn't establish where Barney worked. I think there could have been potential for them to reveal that Barney made slightly more than Fred, thus giving more reason to mooch off of him.

On that subject anyway, I really don't like how they completely obliterated the presence of the Flintstone characters in Pebbles ads. Thankfully they did return to their own cereal boxes after focusing on athletes for a while. But is this because they're trying to get "hipper" kids in that don't care about a 50 year old cartoon, or the fact that said 50 year old cartoon isn't exactly easily accessible the way Scooby-Doo is? They did have that one wrestling movie, but ever since the Seth MacFarline show never happened, it really seems that WB's not doing much with the characters. There is still merchandise here and there, though.

 

[D'Snowth]

Is it just me, or do Pops suddenly look a little too yellow? Like a shade of yellow similar to Bert. I've never seen it look that yellow before.