Toy Story Honey Malted Wheats - suspiciously Shreddies [@NLi10]

 Toy Story is still a big thing, and it shows up of all kinds of products. Here we see it on imitation Shreddies.

Sensibly Weetabix have added honey but no heat.  I wonder why these aren’t just Shreddies, I guess nabisco and Weetabix are still separate companies.

At least you get two games on the back to play while you eat. I’m behind on my Toy Story films so don’t recognise all the shadows. 

And they look like frosted Shreddies 

And have a more rounded flavour than the super sugary version so are a little more palatable.they don’t quite have the same crunch maybe, but you’d struggle to tell these apart from the real brand.

Overall a hit, but as a movie tie in they will likely vanish.

Marvel White Chocolate Oaty Bars (Iceland) By @Cinabar

I bought these Marvel White Chocolate Oaty Bars, and I suspect everyone else who bought them did, as the packaging is bright and covered in Marvel characters. It really stood out on the shelf. I am always up for a bit of novelty, and I love super heroes, so why not? I also have a cereal bar most days. I opened up the box and have to say the wrappers of these cereal bars didn’t disappoint either. All of the bars are the same inside, but the wrappers were lovely and bright, and each had a different superhero character on it. They are fab.

For no particular reason, I decided to start with the Hulk. Inside the bar is a bit plainer-looking. It had a drizzle of white chocolate. 

I gave it a try, and the flavour was nice. It was sweet with plenty of oat flavour, but the white chocolate was also pleasing, taking centre stage. Texture-wise, it is firm but not hard, and that worked well. There was a bite in it without it being hard. The bar is really nice, but the packaging is gorgeous. These Marvel White Chocolate Oaty Bars would make a lovely lunch box snack or bring a smile to any adult for an afternoon snack too. 

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Squares & Corn Flakes (Ocado) By @Cinabar

We have a new flavour of one of my favourite snacks, Rice Krispies Squares & Corn Flakes. Squares are always made with Rice Krispies, and there have been many limited editions over the years, from strawberry sundae to dragon (not dragonfruit, but dragon). This is the first time they have let another cereal share the limelight, and they have let in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

I opened up the wrapper, and the bar did look predominantly like it was still Rice Krispies. I could spot the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, but they were a bit hidden between everything else. I gave it a try, and again, the flavour was mainly the usual flavour. The texture was different; there was a nice crispy texture from corn flakes, and I really liked that. The problem is that the usually cereal-based flavours mixed with sweet mallow were pretty much the same. I could pick up on the new taste in this Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Squares & Corn Flakes, but it wasn’t as strong as I would have liked. I guess Rice Krispies weren’t quite willing to step aside too much for a new flavour, but how great would one of these bars be if they were made exclusively with Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? 

New Kellogg's Krave Stix - Chocolate Hazelnut (Asda) by @NLi10

Krave is a great cereal range - I mean it's not as good as the Asda own brand version and it's at least double the price - but it is very nice. So - when I spotted these I was excited to try them. 

Krave Stix are clearly intended for lunchboxes, but for once it's a cereal bar that's an actual cereal - but I wasn't as excited as review-cat Luna.

I'm not sure why but this box was fascinating, she sat on it for a good ten minutes while I typed other reviews and then was first inside when it opened.

She only usually touches bread based foods (especially those with peperoni on them) so this was indeed an honour. 

This bit was less exciting.

And she'd realised these were not treats and wandered away by now.

And these are indeed giant Kraves. Still attached in twins, but double the size of the cereal's normal length and a little bit chunkier too.

And still very hollow and non gooey in the middle - which kind of works as a cereal.  

These are closer to wheaty crisps than I'd expected so if you crave a north european experince of crisps full of nutella then this is for you.  But me? I'm not Kraving them like Luna did. They were fine, they will get eaten, but I'd rather just snack on a bowl of the cereal.

Good for kids lunchboxes (they are actually pretty light as far as chocolate treats go) but not something for the grown-ups.

Cadbury Bournville Brunch Bar (Iceland) By @Cinabar

I think my love of cereal bars came from daily commuting and the fact they were quick and easy to add to my lunch box for a sweet treat with a coffee at work. Although I mostly work from home these days I still buy cereal bars and Cadbury Brunch ones are a favourite. I like chocolate, I’m not trying to claim they are healthy, I go for the chocolate content as an influencing factor! I was quite excited to see a Bournville edition of my favourite bars in Iceland and bought a box to try. Bournville is Cadbury’s dark chocolate and although the cocoa percentage isn’t as high as some posh dark chocolate bars, for my sweet tooth it offers a boost of extra cocoa without loosing the much loved sweetness.

The bar looks similar to the regular Brunch Bar but the chocolate chips are dark as is the coating. I enjoyed the taste and texture of the bar, chewy but not sticky and with enough cereals to keep it interesting to eat. There is a dash of honey and the flavour with the dark chocolate was lovely. It was a little bit richer and the Bournville chocolate worked well. I hope these aren’t a Limited Edition because these will be a regular purchase for me in the future.

Rice Krispie Squares - Salted Caramel Pretzel (Ocado) By @cinabar

There are some new flavours of Rice Krispie Squares out and they have gone all American. Actually I think they may have always been American, but the UK version now has American themed flavours. First up we have these Rice Krispie Squares Salted Caramel Pretzel edition, which sounded fun. I love a mix of sweet and salty.

I opened up the packet and was quite surprised by the look of these Squares, they are really covered in pretzel bits, even to the extreme where it was hard to recognise the marshmallow bar underneath. There is a lot of topping an dI wasn’t complaining. I gave the bar a try and the texture was out this world. I found the usually soft and crispy Rick Krispies in the sticky mallow but the topping added extra crunch and a nice hint of savoury too. It really worked and I enjoyed the Salted Caramel Pretzel treat with a cup of coffee. I’m just hoping the other American flavour (Cookies and Cream) is half as good to be honest. This is quite a leap from their usual limited editions (we’ve all seen the things this year where all they do is add a bit of orange), this it is a total success.

Kellogg's Krave Stix (Iceland) By @Cinabar

Even though I’m not commuting at present I still buy and eat cereal bars for breakfast, possibly because it turns out I’m just lazy and maybe because I also like them with a morning cup of coffee. I do regular orders with Iceland and they are not the best supplier of interesting cereal bars (I like Eat Natural) but I still always find some to buy. This week I spotted these new ones Krave Stix based on the Krave breakfast cereal, so I ordered a box to try.

Inside each packet are two “stix” which look like elongated versions of the Krave cereal, in fact they looked exactly the same just longer. I tried a bit of the first one and my initial thought was that is was a little dry, and well that it needed milk. I know right, who would have thought it. I took a further bite and got used to the dryness especially as the chocolate centre became more prominent and then found myself quite enjoy the bars. I had them with a morning cup of coffee but part of me thinks maybe I should have had them with a glass of milk, for some reason I suspect that would have worked.

Romance Me - Rocky Road Cereal Bars (Iceland) By @Cinabar

And the prize for the smartest packaging for cereal bars goes to… Romance Me - Rocky Road Cereal Bars. Wow this is a smart box. I was looking for some cereal bars online and browsing the Iceland site and found these and the packaging was just so super and the branding so interesting I couldn’t resist. Yes I know package an item brightly and I’m sold, I’m an advertisers dream! :-D

When they arrived I realised they were part of the Slimming World range and were actually low in calories. Bonus! They are quite small bars but they look lovely too with pink and white marshmallows as the topping. There is plenty of chocolate flavour and the texture is rather nice, firm, not crunchy but mixed because of the marshmallows. They may be slightly over packaged but they are tasty and fun and I’d be happy to buy them again and to see if there are other interesting bars in the range.

Rice Krispies Squares - Dragon Creation (Sainsbury) By @Cinabar

So this is the latest snack review in our mythological creatures series. We have been trying out various products with varieties inspired by unicorns and etc, to see how these translate into foodstuffs. Generally speaking they have all sounded far more exciting than they are and left rather ordinary flavours and designs despite the potential. The latest item to join the category are these Rice Krispies Squares Dragon Creation edition an dI’m hoping there is a bit of magic. The packaging looks fairly bright and interesting and I was keen to see how the product looked outside the packaging.

I have to say I was really impressed when I opened up the wrapper, the bars do look very impressive. There are obviously lots of marshmallow Rice Krispies, but there are chocolate bits (dragon eggs I think) and smart looking candy dragon flames. There was actually some effort in the appearance and I have too say I liked the way they looked. As someone who likes interesting textures I also liked there added crunch and it made it fun to eat. I wish there was an added flavour to make it truly special, they should have gone with cinnamon flames, but the taste was quite plain and just sugar. Dragons don’t really say usual vanilla marshmallow Krispies to me, but at least there was some imagination used in the decoration.

Curiously Cinnamon Cereal Bars (Poundland) By @Cinabar

I don’t eat a lot of breakfast cereal, but if I did my preferred choice would be Curiously Cinnamon. Cinnamon is my favourite spice, I love its warming goodness. One of the good things about the current season is the fact that cinnamon starts to appear in lots of things, it really is a winter spice. I always get excited when I find something new or that I haven’t tried before but especially so if it contains cinnamon.
Although I don’t buy many cereals I do buy quite a few cereal bars, they are much more easy to eat either on the train or at my desk at work. I found these in Poundland and I haven’t found them before in my usual supermarkets, but I can say the box didn’t have a “new” label on it, which is confusing.

Inside the box there are individually packaged bars all in the bright orange Curiously Cinnamon wrapper. Once open I can see the milk flavour base coat on the bottom half of the bar, and the square pieces of the Curiously Cinnamon cereal. The flavour was good but milder than I remember the cereal being. There was a decent amount of spice, and the sweetness and milk taste did work well together. I found this a treat to have, and I love the idea of a portable version as to what would otherwise be my favourite cereal. It was missing the fabulous cinnamon milk you get left with after the real stuff, but this certainly works for convenience. I do hope this isn’t a winter only limited edition, as I’m going to be after some more boxes of these.

The Advent Calendars That I Am Not Buying This Year (@NLi10)

I blame Lego. 

Hello readers, and welcome to a quick round up of things that I didn't buy, won't buy and all sorts of craziness in between.  Someone else from FSF may end up with something below, but it isn't for me.

Here is a typical supermarket or bargain shop's Advent Calendar selection.

These are from B&M - a store I rarely visit - but that other sites had suggested had a large array of themed sequential snack foods for December.  I mean I don't know how you choose.  Most of these are the poor Kinnerton chocolates which for less than a pound will ensure that anything you buy the child for Christmas HAS to be better than 24 days of not-quite-chocolate.

But - there are also calendars aimed at adults.  As I opened with, this is Lego's fault.  Making advent calendars that contain limited edition adult focussed toys (that kids will enjoy) in calendars that can cost quite a lot has become a big annual thing. And it seems this year is peak sequential tat box as there are now a lot of different options.

Smelly candle calendars?

Check!

Beautification and cleansing calendars?

The top one isn't even a full 24 days.

Then we get to the really, REALLY poor value calendars.  I have to be careful here as I may get one of these off the family, but all the 'festive favourites' are here.

Have a guess at how many grams of  Quality Street you get for £5.  Go on.

222g - not including the wrappers.  That's £21.79 per Kilo.  That's Pick_n_mix at Woolworths territory right there

Ah - but inflation - maybe that's what Quality Street costs now because of Brexit.  Nope 7.99 for 1.2 KG or 6.66 per KG, or 3.27 times cheaper than the calendar.  It's getting silly.  And there aren't even that many different options to have in the calendar - but it's still basically the same as a random grab from the tin.

Nice house - are you getting £5 worth of sweets inside or less than in the £1.50 grab bag we gave to the Trick or Treaters?

And now.  There is actually something worse. Non sequential advent calendars.  I mean they still number the doors but you get 23 identical items, and then on day 24 you get one mildly different item.  This isn't advent, this is RATIONING.

And it's not just a single brand - there are a lot of these this year.  Yummy luxury - no surprises. Worst unboxing ever.

And for £8.99 you get the ultimate mix of the two.

24 Kellogg's mallow bars 

And TWO Pop Tarts.  For those not familiar with these bars they are essentially white rice pops, brown rice pops, then Frosties as a separate thing.  That's essentially two types of thing, with Christmas Day Pop Tarts.  I went to B&M to get this - thinking it'd be about £2.99.  Maybe it will be in January as I can't see these flying off the shelves.

So what I did buy - for December - is:

One really cheap nasty calendar

One midrange unusual calendar

One overpriced, but a little more varied calendar

and one weird one that I'm ordering from Ocado

The countdown to opening those begins now!

Fibre One Carrot Cake Bars (Asda) By @Cinabar

We buy quite a lot of cereal bars, as they make a quick breakfast on an early morning. I have tried the square bars from Fibre One before but these ones are new and sounded quite different. Although these Fibre One Carrot Cake Bars sort of fitted into the cereal bar category I didn’t quite feel comfortable having one for breakfast so I had my first try as an afternoon snack.

Firstly I have to point out that the box opened backwards, which bothered me for some unknown reason. Boxes usually open the other way. Inside there were four individually wrapped bars. Once open I found each bar was covered in lots of nuts and as I like nuts I was really pleased by this. There was a thick cream cheese layer under the icing which was surprisingly generous.

I bit in, and found the bars were very soft, and the spices weren’t too strong, but gave them the tase of carrot cake. They were gentle warming. The cream cheese kept the bar moist, and the nuts added a nice bit of texture. These new bars are tasty, but also they only have 90 calories so are a good afternoon treat. They aren’t quite as indulgent as an actual slice of carrot cake, but they are tasty but perhaps a little too indulgent for breakfast.

OSHEE Vitamin Muesli Bar Plum/Cranberry (Asda) by @NLi10

Well last time we looked at the water - now lets look at the muesli bar!

Rather oddly it has plums in it! This is a massive improvement over sultanas or raisins.

The pack isn't all that special, but I figured if I'm getting the drinks we may as well get a bar too.

And it looks pretty good - just enough choc to hold it all together and you can see the fruit.

The grains are pretty boring, but then that's not the idea here.  I'm sure its for exercise or similar. And it fills the need, like the drinks its reasonable quality and the flavours are good.

Not going to rush out and buy more, but I enjoyed it.

Goodness Knows - Blueberry And Almond And Dark Choc @NLi10

I was desperate for a non bread lunch time snack at Milton Keynes station and spotted these on the till end. As it contains many of my favourite things I suspected I was on to a winner - blueberries, almonds and dark choc is a great start!

As we waited for the train I fiddled with the packet and realised that the insides were being well protected by a card tray and it wasn’t as big as I’d hoped. And then I opened it to find four bites!

This was pretty disappointing, yet oddly photogenic. At 25p per square this better be pretty good.

And shockingly it was! It’s just nutty enough, just fruity enough, and the dip of dark chocolate was great. All the flavours were present and it was actually filling enough to satisfy that 11 o clock craving.

From my initial doubts at the size to price ratio and luxury of the whole thing to the eating experience  it went from’this will do’ to ‘ I need more’ in a very short time span. There are multiple other flavours, and hopefully a few special offers and multipacks to have. as a way to get a snack that isn’t just chocolate and fruit and nuts this is a great bridge between real whole foods and brand name bars. 

An unexpected delight.

Quaker Oats Porridge To Go - Breakfast Squares (Morrisons) By @Cinabar

As someone who isn’t much of a morning person the idea of saving time when I’m running late and grabbing a breakfast on the go has great appeal. Consequently Quaker Oats Porridge To Go Breakfast Squares sounded like the perfect snack to try out on the train to work. There are two in the box individually wrapped. When I looked at the box it said that they could be heated in the microwave, but not having one on my journey I was pleased to see they could also be eaten straight from the pack.
They smelt sweet and oaty and I took a bite. Now I found that I wasn’t keen on the texture. It was not stodgy like flapjacks can be or indeed sticky, but it was quite solid, and it felt like it was an effort to eat.
I thought it was a little dry, but my issues were purely with the texture, as I really enjoyed the flavour. The taste was just right on the sweetness, with plenty of fruity tones, with hints of berries, and the base taste of golden oats worked well. I could imagine a bowl of porridge with a dollop of fruit jam all sort of condensed down. If only the texture of this Breakfast Square was a little lighter.
I think I will try the second one heated up (it takes just 10 seconds in the microwave) and see if that helps the texture, otherwise I think these might not be for me.