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Do you remember a better time before you were concerned if breakfast was healthy and if your food contained protein or sugar? Back when what cereals you had in your pantry provided a hierarchy in your friend group. Well, this list is here to remind you of that hierarchy, from the delicious and crunchy to the bland and cardboardy. Here are the cereals you loved and hated as a kid (and maybe still do).
Love: Lucky Charms
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“They’re Magically Delicious” is right. The marshmallows obviously stole the show and made the milk taste incredible. Without the marshmallows, we’d probably have a cereal similar to Cheerios… a good thing Lucky included those marshmallows in his cereal. They got even better as the milk disintegrated them a bit.
Hate: Raisin Bran
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When your parents tried to come home with Raisin Bran it was a bad start to the week. Maybe you won the battle and convinced them not to buy it again. Or maybe you had the parents that tried to convince you “they forgot you didn’t like it,” or “that’s all the store had.” Either way, raisins don’t belong in anything that’s supposed to taste good.
Love: Fruit Loops
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Toucan Sam knows what’s up. Fruit Loops are timeless and have never faltered in their taste or shape. They never tried to change what their cereal offered or do any kind of weird spinoff flavor. And for that, we thank Sam and his fellow toucans.
Hate: Rice Krispies
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These were terrible. You hoped you were going to be eating a Rice Krispie Treat, but instead, you were just eating a flavorless quickly dissolving mush that somehow made the milk taste even worse. If mom brought this home, she was going to hear about it.
Love: Cocoa Krispies
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What a different cereal! All the bad things about the original, are different for the Cocoa. Cocoa anything in cereal is a win and Cocoa Krispies were no different. Sure, they still dissolve a little quickly, but with the chocolatey milk at the end, you can just slurp all that mush straight from the bowl.
Hate: Rice Chex
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I just don’t know what they hope for with flavorless cereal. They certainly try to play up the health aspect, but anyone who reads these boxes knows they’re still packed with sugar. So they aren’t good for you and they taste terrible, and there’s no added milk flavor. At least there’s a slight crunch?
Love: Fruity Pebbles
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Our guys Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble knew what they were doing. Fruity Pebbles were delicious, crunchy, and made the milk taste incredible. The only possible knock on this delicious cereal is that the pebbles dissolved a little too fast so you needed to eat quickly.
Also Love: Cocoa Pebbles
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Like we said- Fred and Barney know what’s up. And like we also said, cocoa anything in cereal is a win. Chocolate milk at the end of a bowl is always a bonus with cereal. It is usually a debate of which cereal people like more between the Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles, and while you can’t go wrong with either, I give a slight edge to Fruity Pebbles personally.
Hate: Life (the cereal of course)
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Again unsure what the point of flavorless cereal was. These had a crunch, and were a little more durable than the Rice Chex, but still tasted like nothing. If you wanted a glass of milk, you’d just have a glass of milk, no need to taste slightly sawdust-esque air.
Still Hate: Cinnamon Life
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Points for trying? Not given by me. The cinnamon life still tasted like sawdust-flavored air with a slight cinnamon aftertaste. There are a plethora of better-tasting cinnamon-flavored cereals- no need to waste time on this.
Love: Cocoa Puffs
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The bird on the box has the right idea. The best part of Cocoa Puffs was the delicious chocolate milk at the end. Somehow even better than chocolate milk out of a glass. Cocoa Puffs were great all around for the crunch, flavor, and milk at the end. 10/10.
Hate: Corn Flakes
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On the opposite side of the spectrum is Corn Flakes. Not sure what the deal was trying out corn-flavored cereal, but it didn’t work out. There’s also the eerie similarity to the much preferred Frosted Flakes that makes you wonder why parents are buying these.
Lowkey Love: Apple Jacks
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There might be a little contention here, but “cinnamon was da winna mon.” Like cinnamon-flavored Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks were delicious. Maybe not your top cereal choice as a kid, but you weren’t mad if these were in your pantry from time to time. The cinnamon-apple-flavored milk at the end was also delicious.
Hate: Crispix
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Is this not the same thing as Rice Chex or Life? Still unclear how there were so many versions of this bad, nothing-flavored cereal. It was like General Mills and Kellogg were trying to lay out a bunch of landmines for parents to run into instead of just letting them bring home the good stuff.
Hate: Cheerios
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Can it help lower cholesterol? Probably not, but who knows. Does it taste good? Absolutely not. But perhaps the lesson here is they had to learn to walk before they could run– so we had to have flavorless Cheerios before we could get to the good stuff.
Love: Honey Nut Cheerios
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An excellent campaign to convince parents that Honey Nut Cheerios are different than any other incredibly sugar-packed cereal. If all gross cereals needed was the extra sugar (honey), then they should do that. Honey Nut Cheerios is completely different than its predecessor.
Overrated: Frosted Flakes
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They’re Gr-r-reat! was kind of an exaggeration. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t that good. When your parents came home from the grocery store and this was their pick, you kind of just thought “Okay, I guess?” before asking them to pick a different one next time.
Love/Hate: Frosted Mini Wheats
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How is this a love-hate you ask? Because one side was good and one wasn’t. As a kid, you knew the strategy was the eat the frosting side down so that’s what was on your tongue– and it was pretty good. Every once in a while there was a piece in the box that had no frosting and you realized how bad the cereal was without it.
Absolutely Hate: Wheaties
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“Eat your Wheaties!” was a genius marketing campaign. For a minute you thought whichever professional athlete they had on the box at the time made it to the big leagues because they ate Wheaties for breakfast. Then you figured out they do not eat Wheaties and realized it’s just another bland-flavored flake cereal.
Love: Honeycomb
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Honey-Comb was legit. Especially before they reduced the sweetness. The original recipe was incredible as a kid. The fun shape held up in milk and gave delicious honey-sweetened milk at the end of the bowl. The only rival to these guys was Waffle Crisp.
Hate: Kix
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Bad move making a cereal that looks like Peanut Butter Crunch but tastes nowhere near as good. It doesn’t matter if Kix came first, they should have realized they should do something different. Kid-tested maybe, but certainly not Kid-Approved.
Love/Hate: Corn Pops
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Okay, hear me out. This was not a good cereal… unless it was surrounded by the likes of Chex or Raisin Bran or cereals in that general range. Corn Pops were like a big fish in a small pond and as soon as you moved them to the pond with the other heavy hitters, you forgot about them. They were good every once in a while when your other options stunk.
Love: Reese’s Puffs
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An instant classic. As a kid, when these came out, you wondered why they didn’t think about this before. Peanut butter and chocolate in a cereal, yes, please. Parents were hesitant at first because they assumed it was just like eating candy for breakfast, but then they probably realized it was the same as every other cereal. The only knock you can have on Reese’s Puffs is that Peanut Butter Crunch is a better peanut butter and Cocoa Puffs is a better chocolate.
Hate: Special K
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They tried every dried fruit and yogurt addition they could think of and this cereal still wasn’t good. There wasn’t anything special about Special K. Your mom probably tried to pitch you on this one once or twice and you had to let her know– no thank you.
Love: Trix
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What a rollercoaster for one of the top cereals of all time. Trix used to be the GOAT. Then they decided to change their shape and that ruined everything. The flavor was different, the cereal wasn’t fun anymore, and no one was happy. Then after realizing their mistake, they reverted to the shapes only to never have quite the same taste as before. The vote on these is mostly from nostalgia for a better time.
Hate: Shredded Wheat
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Do you think these came first or do you think someone was like “Hey, you know how we could make Frosted Mini Wheats even worse? Let’s get rid of the frosting.” Either way, if the taste wasn’t terrible enough, you also get a jaw workout trying to chew threw the layers of shredded cardboard.
Love/Hate: Honey Bunches of Oats
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Again, not amazing but not terrible. There were some pieces in the clusters that were good and others that weren’t. It’s like they decided to start with Corn Flakes and then add in a few delicious things and a few more not-so-delicious things. It made each bite very inconsistent. Sometimes delicious, sometimes not.
Love: Cinnamon Toast Crunch
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Many people’s favorite cereal and you’ll see no argument from me. Whether it’s the “taste you can see” or “crave those crazy squares,” Cinnamon Toast Crunch has never waivered in their delicious cinnamon-sugar cereal. A top-3 milk at the end in addition to the delicious crunch. If you ever got to try Chocolate Toast Crunch, that was also delicious.
Hate: Total
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Total waste of purchase is how I used to feel about this. Even if you added the fresh fruit shown on the box it would not help the bland-tasting flakes that somehow have even less flavor than Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran.
Love: Captain Crunch
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There is nothing this guy does wrong. The original flavor is amazing. Maybe you’re one of those who shredded the roof of your mouth while eating these, or maybe you recognized a great crunch requires sacrifices. All three of these cereals are top five all-time.
Love Even More: Crunch Berries
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Most of the time you can’t improve on the original merely by adding something to what’s already delicious, but Crunch Berries really do hit differently. You get the same delicious original Captain Crunch Cereal, plus four different delicious berries. For the record, the blue berries were the best.
Peak of Life: Peanut Butter Crunch
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My personal favorite of the Captain Crunch saga, there is nothing wrong with Peanut Butter Crunch. Every other cereal attempts to achieve such a strong delicious flavor. The only comp would probably be Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but obviously very different flavors. Thank you, Captain, we salute you.
