Taco Bell's Cap'n Crunch Delights!

I really, really hope you like lots of red-on-red images, folks...

When Taco Bell's highly touted breakfast menu went national last year, a lot of publicity was given to the ill-fated Waffle Taco. Sure, it was a pretty gross miscue on par with the Arch Deluxe, but all of that negative word-of-mouth obfuscated what were two undeniable triumphs of the brand roll-out. First, the A.M. Crunchwrap -- as proven by its myriad variations released over the last 365 days -- was a bona-fide fast food success. The other big winner in the re-branding process was a mere $1 item that many big chain breakfast enthusiasts initially overlooked -- the Cinnabon Delights.

Despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" stalwart Meatwad, the Delights were (and are) precisely what the name implies -- a delicious, super-satisfying ball of sugar, enveloping an even more satisfying molten creme center. That they kinda' looked like hush puppies and left brown flecks of cinnamon dust and granulated sugar underneath your cuticles were mere asides -- this stuff was, in every sense of the word, tremendous.

That Taco Bell would eventually release a variation of the Cinnabon Delights isn't surprising in the slightest. What is surprising, however, is who Taco Bell partnered with for that product permutation -- Cap'n freaking Crunch.

Now, I enjoy his limited time only Halloween and Christmas flavored cereals as much as the next guy, but on the whole, I've never really been enthusiastic about the regular Cap'n Crunch cereal. It doesn't taste bad or anything, it just tastes, well, too normal for my liking. When I bite into a breakfast cereal, I want something unique and kooky, like Yummy Mummy or S'mores-flavored Krave. Unfortunately, as hearty as his puffy comestibles may be, he just ain't hitting me with enough of the weird to keep me interested in his volumes upon volumes of product variations.

But these Cap'n Crunch Delights, though? Well, they are something altogether different. Not only do they share more in common with the standard Cinnabon Delights offerings, you'd be hard-pressed to even detect the Cap'n Crunch flavoring in the menu item. Let's take a closer gander at these suckers, why don't we?

Right off the bat, let's get the testicles jokes out of the way. Yes, yes, these things do indeed share an uncanny resemblance to a pair of cherry red cojones -- an aesthetic made even worse since the flakes of cereal really make it look like the products have tufts of hair. For god's sake, the two I ordered even came in the dreaded "semi-colon" formation, which occasionally happens to guys testes' when one of them flips over sideways. Obviously, if you can't get past the mental image of chomping into Hellboy's nutsack, you should probably abandon ship while you still can. (Honest to the Almighty true story time, folks: when I ordered my pair, I referred to them as "Cap'n Crunch's balls," and the cashier almost had a nervous breakdown from laughing so hard.)

After a while, thankfully, these things stop resembling the devil's bollocks and begin to look more like strawberries with orange crap glued on them. Despite the claret hue, the balls ... I mean, 'Delights' ... still have a very profound cinnamon taste and texture, which completely overpowers the bits of cereal. I mean, yeah, you can technically taste the Cap'n Crunch, but only for a second or two before the sweet spiciness starts running around your tongue like a retard on fire. And interestingly enough, the red dye stuff doesn't seem to melt off on your fingers, which makes me want to ask some heavy questions about what kind of additives Taco Bell is adding to these things to maintain such a healthy -- albeit certainly unnatural -- sheen. 

Of course, the real highlight of the Delights ain't the Crunch, but the ultra-delicious, super gooey creme core that's probably one of the ten most pleasurable things I've ever placed inside my mouth. Essentially, it tastes the same as the standard Cinnabon Delights ball, but it has a really nice pop that's complemented by by the cereal bits. It's like getting a bit of granola in your vanilla milkshake -- sure, the textures clash a bit, but it's a harmonious clash that creates a gustatory Woodstock on your taste buds. And yes, I know full well the image above looks like what the kids today call a "creampie" -- and no, I am most definitely NOT talking about the beloved dessert offering.  

It's kinda' hard to give you a quick wrap-up thought on the new item. I mean, it is pretty much unnecessary, and it tastes so much like the original item that you kind of have to wonder what's the point. That said, it definitely has a cool aesthetic (a crimson red doughnut hole that spits tartar sauce-hued goop at you when you bite into it!) and the exterior mouthfeel, with all that kooky crunchiness going on, does taste quite unlike anything you've probably eaten at a fast food establishment before. When it comes to "cross-branded" novelty foods -- i.e., your Reese's flavored Oreos and what have you -- I tend to straddle the line on whether such is a neat consumer ploy or something really, really stupid and lazy. Essentially a tri-branded product, the new Delights are certainly excessive, but beyond their wacky external appearance, they're actually a pretty damn yummy (and super-affordable) drive-thru impulse purchase.

When the new Cap'n Crunch Delights were first announced, I figured it was nothing more than another smarmy, pseudo-ironic, hipster-baiting marketing move. While I still think that's the case to some extent, the overall product turned out way better than I thought it would. It's yummy, filling and unlike virtually every other fast food breakfast pastry, it doesn't dye your teeth a funky color or leave chunks of sugary dough all over your clothing when you go to town on 'em. Believe it or not, these things aren't just value-priced comestibles targeting the stoner demographics -- somehow, someway, the Almighty Bell was able to take what conceptually sounds like the grossest thing ever and package it into one of the most sickeningly enjoyable guilty pleasure fast food snacks in recent memory.

And, of course, the popularity of the product lends itself to some much more interesting permutations down the line. Halloween is nearing, guys -- how about whipping up some Boo Berry and Count Chocula Delights to go along with these suckers? Or how about Lucky Charms Delights in time for St. Patrick's Day? Hell, for that matter, why not go full on retro-revival and bring back Baron von Redberry or Sir Grapefellow in all-new, cinnamon and sugar-paste form?

You've got yourself a license to print money, here, Bell. Golden opportunities like this one just don't present themselves everyday, y'know...

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CHRISTMAS CRUNCH!

It’s Cap’n Crunch the Way You’ve Never Seen Him Before (Even Though It Tastes JUST LIKE the Regular Cereal, But Still!)

Good lord, the troubles I had to go through for this cereal.

I saw "Christmas Crunch" last year, and thought about picking it up, but didn’t. I waited an entire year and saw a big cardboard container of it at a local grocery store a few days before Thanksgiving, and once again, I thought about renewing my inventory, but I didn’t. So, the next week, I went out in search of the Cap’n Crunch variation, and you know what I found? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, anywhere. I spent the better part of a month just combing through local retailers, and not a single damn one had the stuff on their shelves. Ultimately, I did end up finding a box at one grocer, but the box literally looked like it had been chewed through by a rat or something. I thought about picking it up anyway, but since I’m not really that big a fan of the Bubonic Plague, I had to reshelf the item at the last second.

And so, about a week before Christmas, I finally found a non-rodent-chewed box, and this time, I knew better. I snatched it up, I locked it in my trunk, and I kept that thing well-guarded like it was the Stanley Cup or something. If I had to wait until 2013 to taste this stuff, I thought to myself, then I’m not quite sure I have the internal motivation to press through such a long moratorium sans seasonal Crunch in my life.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of Cap’n Crunch variations out there. And also, it wasn’t until recently (as in, the past month) that I realized that the actual brand name was “Cap’n Crunch” and not “Captain Crunch,” as so many souls are often prone of calling it. And, uh, if you read my review of “Halloween Crunch” back in October, uh, yeah, let’s talk about Christmas Crunch, why don’t we?

I guess a good place to begin is the packaging. Not surprisingly, the box feature Cap’n Crunch decked out in a Santa suit - I guess because depicting him as Jesus Christ probably would have ruffled more than a few feathers.

The big hook with “Christmas Crunch” is that it really doesn’t have a hook to speak of. All in all, it’s just regular old Cap’n Crunch, only with a couple of red stars and green Christmas trees thrown into the mix. And they’re not even marshmallow addendums, either; we’re talking cereal bits that taste JUST like the main product, only shaped and colored differently.

As far as the rest of the packaging goes, it’s quite basic. You’ve got your nutritional info on one side and ads for the million billion other Cap’n Crunch permutations out there on the adjacent panel. The top and bottom flaps of the box say pretty much the same thing, which is, fundamentally, nothing at all.

The back of the box, however, is kinda’ the exception here. For one thing, it says that there are “five” differently shaped cereal bits inside every box, including some red snowmen and a Santa hat, but I didn’t see anything within my cereal that came close to resembling either. Maybe it was a last second excision, or perhaps cereal-crafting technology isn’t advanced enough to give us adequate Santa hat corn puffs yet?

The backflap also suggests that you go out and buy a gingerbread house, and use the cereal bits as, among other things, shingles and landscaping foliage. A cool idea, I guess, but I think I have a better one; how about instead of using “Christmas Crunch,” you open up one of those boxes of “Halloween Crunch” you’ve been hoarding since fall and make a HAUNTED gingerbread house instead?

And, onto the cereal itself. It’s quite festive and colorful, no doubt. I’ve never really thought of yellow as being a Christmas color, but it’s not too sore a sight on your peepers, either. And if you see anything in there that resembles a snowman or a Santa hat, please encircle it with a bright black marker and e-mail me the photographic evidence.

Yeah, there’s not too much to say about the cereal, as far as aesthetics go. For whatever reason, I keep getting a trail-mix vibe here; although, for the life of me, I’ve never had a bowl of trail mix with sugary pine trees in it before.

And there’s even LESS to say about the taste of the product. If you’ve ever had Cap’n Crunch before, well, this stuff tastes EXACTLY like what you’ve already eaten before. And unlike “Halloween Crunch,” you don’t even have the incentive of radioactive green milk to keep you glued to your cereal bowl. It ain’t bad, by any stretch, but the “special” attributes of the product, I am afraid, are limited to purely cosmetic differences.

The Herculean task of finding a box of this stuff was probably several million more calories than anyone should ever expend in quest of a breakfast item - I’m convinced that Ah-nold put in a lesser effort trying to find a “Turbo Man” doll in “Jingle All the Way” - but I can now say that I’ve tried TWO different Cap’n Crunch variations explicitly tied to two different holidays, when most of humanity can never say that they’ve tried just ONE. The final product wasn’t too exciting, but this gimmick opens up the door for untold possibilities in the future. Easter Crunch? St. Patrick’s Crunch? Independence Crunch?

Yes, please. Yes, so hard.

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HALLOWEEN CRUNCH!

It’s Captain Crunch, it’s Halloween-themed, it’s for a limited time only and it TURNS YOUR MILK GREEN. How could I NOT do a review of it? 

I’m not sure how I was able to overlook it, but last year, a new, Halloween-themed variation of Captain Crunch - called, fittingly enough, “Halloween Crunch” - hit store shelves. I may have missed the proverbial boat last year, but you know DAMN well that I’m not letting this one sail by me two autumns in a row.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the product (or, if you want to be a little more literal, grains and oats), I find it imperative to state that, all in all, I’ve never really been that big a fan of Captain Crunch. That’s not to say that I foster a distaste for the product, it’s just that it was never a cereal I regularly consumed as a youngster. Odds are, if old man Crunch were a werewolf sea captain as opposed to a regular sea captain, I probably would’ve been likelier to gravitate to the product - but alas, that is territory we are ALL familiar with by now.

What makes “Halloween Crunch” different from your standard box of Captain Crunch, you may be wondering? Well, a lot, beginning with the packaging, which I am now going to spend a ridiculous amount of time analyzing and assessing.

First off, the color scheme here is pretty great. It’s mostly black, with lots of orange and green splashed around the box. There are tons of sinister looking pumpkins all over it, too, which makes it even more awesome, clearly. Really, if it wasn’t for the Cap’s grinning Jack O’ Lantern mug carved on the pumpkin, most folks would be hard pressed to distinguish this box from the box art of some antediluvian VHS horror movie from the mid ‘80s. That’s worth so many points, you don’t even know.

As with most cereals, you get some mildly airbrushed, mildly exaggerated cereal bits painted onto the box, complete with splashing milk - because as we all know, if you ain’t eating your cereal and it’s going all over the damn place, you, my friend, aren’t really eating cereal. The attention to detail on the cereal bits is pretty impressive, as you can even see the little green granules on the grain. And this is important, for one MAJOR reason…

…BECAUSE THE CEREAL TURNS YOUR MILK GREEN. GREEN, PEOPLE, GREEN! Granted, just about every cereal I can think of ends up turning your cow juice into some color other than ivory by the time you’re finished with it, but in this case, it’s actually being marketed as a prominent selling point, just like that Reptar cereal from “Rugrats.” And really, what kid in the U.S. could turn down the prospect of eating a cauldron of slime and sugar-sweetened ghosts for breakfast, anyway?

The back of the box has some information about pumpkins and stuff, which, yeah, is probably cool for a read while you’re waiting in line to purchase it, but the clear reason to get excited here is that the manufacturer provides you with a Captain Crunch Jack O’ Lantern template.

You know, something tells me you’re going to be seeing some orange, candle-filled fruit with these things mutilated into them before the month’s over. Just call it a hunch or something.

As for the cereal itself, it’s very, very Halloweeny, with lots of orange and yellow and brown. I guess that would technically make the product more Thanksgiving-colored than Halloween-hued but hey - it’s the right season, at least.

Half of the cereal is your traditional Captain Crunch bricks, while the other half are these light red, ghost looking things that bear more than a passing resemblance to the denizens of a certain General Mills breakfast offering. With that in mind, I like the fact that the ghosts here actually look sort of like traditional, table-cloth-draped spirits than the kinds were used to seeing in cereal-form; you know, the variety that looks more like the monsters that chase Pac-Man around than an otherworldly being caught betwixt the worlds of the living and the dead.

As a general rule, I don’t eat my cereal with milk, because…I don’t know, I just don’t like milk, I guess. Since soy milk was on sell, I decided to use that for my initial Halloween Crunch taste-through. And if you wanted to see me losing my Halloween Crunch cherry live on the Intraweb, well, here you go, folks:

Honestly, I think I feel about soy milk the way most normal people feel about tofu. Yeah, it’s all right, but it’s clearly no substitute for the real deal. Some folks may dig that sweetened-corn-plastic taste, but to me, it just wasn’t thick enough to provide an optimal Halloween Crunch experience. That’s sage advice for anybody, even the lactose intolerant, you know.

Taste-wise, I thought the cereal was pretty good. Granted, it isn’t going to convert me from the Church of Chocula, but it wasn’t a bad specialty item by any stretch. I guess it’s sort of redundant to call a cereal’s taste “sweet,” but this stuff was just excruciatingly sweet, as if someone dumped the contents of a hummingbird feeder over a barrel of oats and marketed under the Capt Crunch flagship. To a lot of people, that probably sounds like a negative declaration, but this IS cereal we’re talking about here: if you want subtlety and refined textures, you’re marching down the wrong supermarket aisle, amigo.

Oh, and in case you were wondering? It DOES end up turning your milk green, to a certain extent. But then again, I was using soy milk…that shit may NATURALLY be that color, for all I know.

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My Modest KRAVE CEREAL Reviews

In a glutted cereal market, do Kellogg’s latest products bring anything new to the (breakfast) table?

A few months back, Kellogg’s unveiled a new breakfast cereal called Krave. Actually, the company released two new breakfast cereals simultaneously, with el nuevo product-o coming in dual incarnations - one a chocolate version, and the other, a double-chocolate permutation.

There were a couple of things that initially struck me about this newfangled product, the very least of which was the fact that it kinda’ shared its namesake with a line of gay discos. Was it the embossed cereal chunks on the front of the package, or the fact that the company paid a butt load of money to mass campaign the poop out of the new product, or was it merely the notion that, all in all, there’s really not that much deviation in the cereal aisle stock from month to month? It’s insanely common to see new variations of products in the cereal aisle (the next time you hit up the grocery store, make a mental note of just how many damn varieties of Captain Crunch are being hoisted upon you), but seeing entirely new brands of cereal is an exceedingly rare phenomenon. The breakfast game is one clearly dominated by the old guard, so seeing any form of new blood on the shelving is a sight that’s sure to grab your attention…and make your taste buds just a wee bit curious as a result.

Eventually, consumer curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to recently try out both products. So is Krave destined to be the “next big thing” in America’s pantries, or is it destined to go the way of Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy? Cereal connoisseurs, keep a-reading…

I suppose the first thing to note is that, compositionally, there doesn’t seem to be that much of a difference in the caloric make-up of the two. Granted, the double-chocolate incarnation appears to have a bit more chemical weight to it (which probably explains why it’s expiration date is a month earlier than its uni-chocolate kin), but for the most part, the two items are nutritionally equals.

As far as packaging goes, you’re dealing with the same lingo on both. Clearly, the double-chocolate variety is aesthetically different than the single-chocolate variety, and this is reflected on the packaging for said items. The back panels for each cereal, however, are identical, with Kellogg’s inviting would-be consumers to join the “Krave Nation” (although I’m not really sure if that’s supposed to be a republic of the “democratic” or “constitutional” variety, to be honest.) Also, Kellogg’s makes note of its target audience - “chocovores” - as people that really enjoy themselves some chocolaty breakfast items. Or as other marketers (and most of the laity) are prone to calling them, “diabetics.”

I guess there really isn’t too much to say about the cereal chunks themselves. Obviously, the two are differently hued, and are about the size of one’s thumbnail (pending you’re not part of Andre the Giant’s clan or something). I racked my brain for a few days trying to figure out what these things reminded me of, only to come to the realization that these things bare an uncanny resemblance to those old-ass Skoal Bandit pouches - you know, those mini-tea bags of chewing tobacco that many a crude stereotype can be seen sucking and spitting out on cable television programming, or perhaps your neighborhood’s more rural-looking gas stations. Whether or not that’s something you can overcome while chowing down on this cereal, I am afraid, is something that only the individual can decide for him or herself.

The big selling point for Krave - both varieties, mind you - is that each granule of cereal is loaded with a an inner-chocolate core that makes the cereal interiorly chocolaty as well as exteriorly. The packaging on the front of the cereal makes it sort of look like the chocolate core is almost liquid magma, so for those of you well versed on your Gushers etiquette - well, that may just come in handy once more here.

Before trying the cereal myself, I decided to do a little whole grain biopsy, to see just how chocolaty the inside of each chunk actually was. Since the exterior shell and interior filling of the double chocolate variety are virtually identical in color, it’s pretty hard to tell just how much bang for your buck you are getting there. With the “standard” chocolate variety, however, there is indeed an inner nucleus of chocolate to be found, although I was mighty miffed to note that the chocolate was of a solidified - and not gummy, oozy and Ovaltine-like - nature.

After determining that the foodstuff was most likely edible, I decided to turn on my camera and film my first experience with said product - remember, what you are witnessing is indeed my very first time inviting Krave in my body, and as such, my reaction is one hundred percent undiluted and authentic. “Blair Witch,” this shit ain’t, folks.

On the whole, I would say that Krave is a pretty good cereal, and after digesting both boxes, I reckon I can give you a more comprehensive review of each product.

First off, the “standard” version of Krave actually has a more pronounced chocolaty taste than the double-chocolate variety, which, clearly, is weird as all hell. I think this can be attributed to the fact that, since the standard version has something of a grain-tasting exterior, once you bite into the chunk and get a rush of chocolate, said chocolate flavor is more noticeable than in the double-choc offering, since you really don’t know if you’re chomping down on the outside or inside of the flake.

If you’re eating the cereals side-by-side (or blind-folded), odds are, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference between them for the first couple of bites. Outside of the afore-mentioned pronounced chocolate-ness of the standard offering, the double-choc variety has more of a semi-bitter taste to it. That’s not to say it isn’t sugary or anything (because, dear lord, is it ever), it’s just that it has a sharper flavor than it’s “just-chocolate” sibling. It’s a distinct difference, but it’s not something you would really notice until you’ve gone through half a box of each - and even then, it’s not really that big of a difference between the two.

I really wouldn’t say that one variety is better than the other; if you’re looking for a more “traditional” chocolate cereal, I would go with the standard offering, and if you’re looking for a stronger bowl of cocoa, I’d vouch for the double chocolate blend. In all reality, the gustatorial discrepancies between them are so slight as to be negligible; in fact, if you mix the two into a single bowl and dig in, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell which cereal was which - which means that either Kellogg’s is slacking off in the formula department, or they’re making the absolute subtlest statement about the arbitrariness of race relations since “Ikaruga” on the Nintendo Gamecube.

So, at the end of the day, is Krave really worth your time, effort, energies and moolah? While I don’t think the stuff is on the fast track to dethrone Count Chocula anytime soon, it isn’t bad by any stretch, and both varieties have just enough uniqueness to their flavor to make them stand out from the million-billion Rice Crispies/Cocoa Peebles variations out there. All in all, it isn’t going to revolutionize the breakfast aisle in any regard, but if you’re sick of downing oatmeal and off-brand Pop-Tarts every morning, it might just be a pleasant change of pace for those of you seeking something different to stuff into your digestive tracts each morn.

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