Gwynedd Stuart
It’s the most wonderful time of the year in the cereal aisle. All of those orange-hued boxes of pumpkin spice cereal have gone into hibernation for the season, making way for red-and-green boxes of holiday cereal.
Some holiday cereals are better than others; if they simply added food coloring (looking at you, Rice Krispies), we didn’t bother sourcing them for this taste test. We were looking for fun holiday flavor profiles, cute holiday characters, and seasonal shapes. Cinnamon Toast Crunch led the charge with three limited edition flavors, including the returning Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch and Apple Pie Cinnamon Toast Crunch. (We tried both last year, but re-evaluated our opinions.) If you need a little bit of festive fun to get you through to winter break, here are five holiday cereals to fill your bowl before January rolls around.
- Cap’n Crunch’s Christmas Crunch
-
As far as I can tell, this is just Cap’n Crunch with some trees and stars—not terribly exciting as holiday cereal goes. At first I thought maybe the shapes were Crunch Berry flavored, but I think that was just power of suggestion. Mostly, eating this just reminded me that Cap’n Crunch is very sweet. Also, the regular Cap’n Crunch morsels are way smaller than I remember them being, which actually might be a good thing? I was able to eat this without shredding the roof of my mouth (iykyk). If you have a high tolerance for sugar in the a.m., this is a fine holiday cereal, but it wouldn’t be the first one I reached for.
Credit: Merc / Target
- Apple Pie Toast Crunch
-
Last year, one of our taste testers really loved this Apple Pie Cinnamon Toast Crunch. To each his own, but when my colleague Jordan Myrick and I re-tasted it this year, we were less impressed. I love apple flavored cereals like Apple Jacks, but this is just so cloyingly apple-y. To me, this holiday cereal tastes the way Country Apple body splash from Bath & Body Works smells, which unlocks all sorts of middle school trauma. If you like very powerful apple flavor, you should totally buy this, but there are two other Cinnamon Toast Crunch variations that we preferred.
Credit: Merc / Target
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Hot Cocoa Cereal
-
The Rankin-Bass stop-motion holiday special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer premiered on TV in 1964, so I find it extremely impressive that the little dude is a cereal mascot in the year of our lord 2023. See, he truly isn’t a misfit! And I like his cereal, too. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cereal consists of crispy cocoa-flavored morsels and little colorful marshmallows. I do think the chocolate cereal pieces could be a little more chocolatey, but you definitely get cold hot cocoa vibes when you eat this, thanks to the marshmallows. I’ll admit that I brought this box of holiday cereal home.
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- Gingerbread Toast Crunch
-
This is the newest holiday flavor of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And it’s good. It has that signature crispy crunch with just enough ginger tang and a little bit of warm molasses on the finish. I will say the flavors feel a little grown-up to me, but I also don’t have kids or really understand what they like. This is a great holiday cereal, but I think our number one pick might be more of a crowd pleaser if you’re shopping for a family.
Credit: Merc / Target
- Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch
-
Jordan and I agree: This holiday cereal should be a year-round offering in the CTC metaverse. Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch is just so good. It has a warm vanilla flavor that really channels freshly baked cookies, and it makes milk taste incredible. We couldn’t stop eating this. I do think some people will taste this and be like, hey, where’s the cinnamon? Here’s an idea for you, CTC: Combine the sugar cookie flavor dust with a little bit of the original Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor dust and release Snickerdoodle Toast Crunch next year, okay?
Credit: Merc / Target
Holiday Cereal!
Holiday Cereal!
Holiday Cereal!
Holiday Cereal!
Best of the Best
Danny Palumbo
Justine Sterling
Sanah Munjal
Luke Field
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!