Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Marshmallows make everything better, right?

Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes - Walmart
We all know adding marshmallows to any cereal automatically makes it better, right? That's a given, but when I saw these I was originally worried that they might be too sweet, so I passed them by. A few months later, my fiance's daughter was over the moon for the chocolate version Lucky Charms, and I bought several boxes...but then they disappeared. To fill the void in our pantry, I decided to give these a shot.
I won't get in-depth with the box art, but can I ask...where did hourglasses come from? Wasn't it, "Hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold, rainbows, and the red balloons!" Where are the pots of gold? He's a freaking leprechaun! Clovers, rainbows and pots of gold are kind of his thing. The other stuff? Well you can argue horseshoes are lucky...everything else is kind of a fun marshmallowy wing-ding mess, but hourglasses? Do kids even know what those are anymore? When did this change slip in there? They even had to pluralize "hourglass" to "hourglasses" to shoehorn the word into the normal song without missing a beat. I'll have to bug Cerealously about this on Instagram later....
Hourglasses aside, the contents of the box are exactly what you expected. It's a bunch of frosted flakes with marshmallow bits. I think these marshmallows seem slightly larger than usual, but I don't have any other Lucky Charms in the house to compare it to to make sure.  
Eaten dry, this is pretty great. The cereal seems less sweet than normal frosted flakes, but they're sweet enough to keep me coming back for more, and the marshmallow bits add that styrofoam-y texture and gritty sugary crunch I know and love. I bet it would make a great marshmallow cereal bar, or it would be great for dry zip-lock bag-style snacking.
I made myself a mini-bowl to see how this tasted with milk, the results were surprisingly disappointing. 
 
With milk, the flakes lost almost all of their frosty sweetness, de-evolving into normal corn flakes which stayed crisp and crunchy in milk, but tasted corn-y and bland. Almost like I was eating a cereal geared towards adults. Unless you managed to get a marshmallow in with each bite, this teetered on bran-flake-territory. 
The problem may be that these aren't normal frosted flakes. Tony the Tiger-style frosted flakes belong to Kellogg's, Lucky Charms belongs to General Mills, so it's not like the two cereal giants played nice and collaborated with one another, but still, even grocery store no-frills frosted flakes taste sweeter than this version. Especially in milk. Maybe they were afraid that the marshmallows would make things too sweet and over-corrected by making the flakes less so?
When all the cereal is gone, the milk left behind is also quite, "meh."  
This is another case of a cereal that is best enjoyed dry. I think this is great for snacking, or maybe sprinkling on top of yogurt or ice cream or something, but as a breakfast cereal it falls shockingly flat. Honestly, same yourself some disappointment and trouble and just buy normal Frosted Flakes, or the no-frills grocery store version near you, and add your own marshmallows. They sell freeze-dried mar-bits online fairly cheap, and I bet the combination of legit flakes and marshmallow bits will make for a much more satisfying experience.  
Should you buy it? : No, DIY it 
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4 comments:

  1. My husband makes fun of how I eat cereal but it might be helpful in this case. I pour myself a bowl of cereal but instead of adding milk to the bowl i get a glass of milk. I then eat the cereal with a spoon dry from the bowl then take a drink of milk with it. (it started because i can NOT stand soggy cereal)

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    1. Interesting technique! That might be the way to go with this one, since the flakes get soggy so quickly.

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  2. woah that's freaking sac-relig.,.

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  3. do grape nuts, the cereal they must serve in h-e-double-hockeystix!

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