Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats!
If you’re charmed by the idea of “Halloween cereal” but find the usual crop a bit too juvenile for your tastes, here’s one for the more sophisticated palate:
Okay, so maybe I’m stretching things. Just a little.
Still, Kellogg’s new Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats is by far one the least “cartoony” of this year’s autumnal breakfast offerings, and if you don’t believe me, just check out that box. It looks like a Food & Wine cover!
(Huge props to the designer on this one. It’s the most fall-centric thing I’ve seen all year, evoking everything from farmer’s markets to late October picnics. Thank you, cereal box, for inspiring me to learn more about flour and foliage.)
When you release the cereal from its plastic prison, you’re met with an intense waft of cinnamon and spices, pungent to the point where you might confuse your kitchen with your town’s last remaining Ma and Pa coffee house — the one that had a chalkboard before chalkboards were a thing.
The cereal — which adds a layer of pumpkin spice frosting to the Mini-Wheats’ usual white stuff — looks great, smells great and is great. Whereas most pumpkin spice deals rely too heavily on cinnamon, this one is all about the nutmeg. For lack of a better term, it tastes “fancy.” Like something a baker slaved over for hours, and not at all like something that was once sandwiched between Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs.
PS: “Pumpkin spice” is a notoriously vague term, but according to the back of the box, Kellogg’s identifies it as cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and ginger. Hereafter known as CANG, mostly to make you envision an orangey palette swap of this motherfucker.
If I had one complaint, it’s that Kellogg’s has seemed hesitant to turn Pumpkin Spice Mini-Wheats into one of their “Mini” mascots, as they typically do whenever the little wheat pillows get a new flavor. So here’s my attempt to rectify the situation.
When all of the anthropomorphic Minis nail a group shot in some late May commercial, I’m gonna be really pissed if no one mentions their distant, awesome cousin.
I normally prefer my Halloween stuff to look like it’s targeting six-year-olds, but since Kellogg’s already released three different cereals to handle that, it’s nice to get one from the opposite end of the spectrum.
And, as I only learned while writing this review, it pairs nicely with cold coffee that’s been sitting on my desk for eight hours. Must be the allspice. Don’t get used to this paragraph; I’ll probably cut it after a fresh cup.
