13 cereals we loved as kids and 13 we absolutely hated

Did eating Cap’n Crunch destroy the roof of our mouths? Yep. Did we still beg our parents to buy it for us? You betcha. And honestly, we didn’t need Crunch Berries or peanut butter or chocolate or any of the other newer varieties—just give us the OG Cap’n. (Ever wonder what Cap’n Crunch’s full name is? It’s Horatio Magellan Crunch.)

Cinnamon Toast Crunch isn’t nearly as good when soggy, but that didn’t matter because we absolutely inhaled it as kids before it even had a chance to absorb all the milk. The cinnamon swirls are visible and potent (the classic tagline was “The taste you can see,” after all), which means that the leftover milk also ended up tasting like tasty cinnamon toast.

True to its slogan, we really did go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs as kids. What was not to like? It was a chocolate-flavored cereal, each little ball gave off a satisfying crunch and was relatively resistant to sogginess, and it turned ordinary milk into chocolate milk. We’ll admit that the cartoon bird spokes-character likely had some sort of an addiction issue that needed to be addressed by a mental health professional, but we didn’t share in that obsession — we were perfectly happy when a shopping trip yielded the occasional box of Cocoa Puffs.

Looking back, we’re still amazed Cookie Crisp was ever invented—and is still being made today! It’s basically like eating a big bowl of mini Chips Ahoy cookies with milk. How is that even allowed to be called cereal?

We enjoyed this cereal for years, but it wasn’t until years later that we realized two things. First, if you asked us about the spelling, we would have said it was spelled “Fruit Loops,” not realizing it is actually “Froot Loops.” And second, despite coming in six different colors, every piece actually tastes exactly the same. Clearly, these details did not matter to our pint-sized former selves.

As kids, we agreed with Frosted Flakes mascot, Tony the Tiger: The sugar-dusted corn flake cereal really is “gr-r-reat!” It was even better with an extra spoonful of sugar or two, but don’t tell our parents—or our family dentist—about that.

Props to General Mills for making Golden Grahams a cereal that we wanted as kids and mom was actually willing to buy. How did this happen? For our part, each square-shaped piece was kissed with both honey and brown sugar, and it gave the milk a terrific taste. For parents, Golden Grahams seemed safe, as it didn’t include marshmallows or other gimmicky ingredients, the packaging was relatively simple and the colors were subdued, and it didn’t have a cartoon mascot on the box (mascots usually go hand-in-hand with extra sugar). Well done, GM!

Lucky Charms was one of our favorite cereals when we were younger—probably because our parents wouldn’t actually buy it for us. (We can’t imagine why—cardboard marshmallows are obviously an important part of any balanced breakfast.) So whenever we stayed over at a friend’s house, we’d make sure to have numerous bowls of Lucky Charms because we never knew when we’d be lucky enough for another opportunity to feast on hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, pots of gold, rainbows, and red balloons.

We loved Lucky Charms, so it only makes sense that our adoration would also extend to the “Monster Cereals” of Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry. Each of these horror-themed cereals contains mini marshmallows, but the cereal puffs are flavored with chocolate, strawberry, and blueberry, respectively. To us, eating these pseudo-scary, sugar-filled cereals was like celebrating Halloween all year long.

We went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs from an early age…until General Mills topped themselves by introducing Reese’s Puffs cereal—which features both chocolate and peanut butter flavors—in 1994. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were one of our favorite candies as kids, so this cereal made with real Reese’s peanut butter drew us in from the get-go!

The original Rice Krispies were alright, but once you eat a Rice Krispies treat for the first time—packed with extra sugar via the added marshmallows—it’s hard to go back to the plain cereal variety. So when Rice Krispies Treats Cereal was introduced in the early ‘90s, we immediately fell for it, as it was like eating a big bowl of the dessert chopped up into bits.

We were teenagers by the time Special K introduced their Fruit & Yogurt cereal, but that still counts as being a kid and we wanted to include a special shout-out to this Special K variety. You see, Special K was definitely on the naughty list for most of our childhood — it was boring and definitely sounded like it was supposed to be healthy. However, adding bits of fruit and super-sweet, yogurt-covered oats was a complete game-changer. Of course, it added a lot more sugar to the cereal, but that didn’t matter to our teenage selves.

Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids—including us, when we were kids! Fruit is an important part of any breakfast, but when we were youngsters, the only fruit we wanted were the oranges, lemons, raspberries, grapes, and other shapes found in a bowl of Trix cereal. It’s worth noting that the original Trix shapes were all spheres, and the fruit shapes weren’t introduced until 1991. In the late 2000s, the spheres came back, but after more than a decade of public outcry, Trix brought back the fruit shapes in 2018.

If you took a bowl of Lucky Charms and picked out all the marshmallow shapes, you’d end up with something very similar to Alpha-Bits. The only difference is that the multi-grain cereal pieces in a bowl of Alpha-Bits are shaped like letters. (But your mouth can’t tell the difference.) Alpha-Bits later frosted their cereal pieces and added marshmallows for a sweeter option, but it was too late to save this brand in our tiny, child-sized brains.

“Hated” might be a bit strong, but we definitely did not like Apple Jacks. The commercials made them seem like a super-fun breakfast option, when in reality it was just a bowl of cinnamon cereal with a hint of apple flavoring. Apple Jacks not tasting like apples was — and still is — a common complaint, even though the ingredient list does, in fact, contain apples…as its eleventh ingredient. (Bonus complaint: Why were they orange-colored?)

Parents often give their kids Cheerios because they’re one of the healthier cereal options, which is probably why we didn’t like them. Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios, and some of the other sweeter options were alright, but we found the plain variety to be just that: plain.

We’ve had a complicated relationship with Chex, the hollow little bite-size biscuits of shredded wheat. We always found the cereal itself (which came in wheat, corn, and rice varieties) to be bland and one of the few cereals in existence that is not improved in any way by the addition of milk. But as a snack, Chex could be enjoyable. General Mills knew this long ago — Chex party mix recipes have existed since the 1950s — and finally fully capitalized on it when they rolled out a pre-mixed snack version in the ‘80s, which gained popularity over the following decade. Combining Chex cereal with pretzel pieces, miniature breadsticks, bagels chips, and other common snacks was a winning combination…especially when savory, sweet, and sweet & salty flavors were later created.

Mom loved giving us Corn Flakes, as Kellogg’s boasts them as being loaded with iron and numerous other essential vitamins and minerals. But when Frosted Flakes exist—literally Corn Flakes with added sugar—how could we as kids ever settle for less? 

We distinctly remember begging our mom to buy a box of Golden Crisp for the toy inside. For the life of us, we can’t remember what that toy was, but we absolutely remember how terrible the cereal was—it tasted like burnt kettle corn—and having to secretly throw it away to avoid our mother’s wrath.

Grape Nuts is often referred to as the worst-tasting cereal…at least according to kids. It doesn’t taste like grapes or nuts and is actually very bland. However, as adults, we now know you can treat it like oatmeal and dress it up with fruit and/or brown sugar. It’s also good when mixed into yogurt, as it maintains its crunch quite well!

Kashi makes some of the healthiest cereals on the market, but as kids, their GOLEAN cereal made us go lean over the garbage can. We found it to be too bland, and a bit bitter, and it got soggy quickly…especially when we were trying to avoid eating what was poured into our bowls. We’ve come around on it as adults—especially with the expanded flavor offerings—but it took a few decades.

The slogan for Kix used to be “Kid Tested. Mother approved.” We don’t know which kids tested the puffed-grain cereal, but it certainly wasn’t us. Kix’s lack of food coloring and flavors was the reason behind the slogan and probably the reason why the cereal didn’t appeal to our younger selves—although Berry Berry Kix wasn’t bad! (For the record, Kix updated its slogan to “Kid-tested. Parent-approved.” in 2018 in order to avoid gender stereotypes and also to use proper punctuation.

Mikey famously liked Life cereal, even though he supposedly hated everything—according to the commercial from 1972. We must have been even pickier eaters because we didn’t care for Life. We found the brown checkered cereal to have an uncooked, lackluster taste and didn’t think Cinnamon Life was much better.

One time, when we were younger, we tried a bran muffin. It was not a pleasant experience. So a cereal with bran flakes—and raisins, something else we didn’t like—was a big no-no. We were much more interested in brightly colored, sugar-packed cereals. As we got older, we developed a taste for Raisin Bran until we realized that, ironically, it actually contains more sugar than most kids’ cereals! (A one-cup serving of Lucky Charms has 12 grams of sugar, while the same size serving of Raisin Bran has 17 grams!)

Frosted Mini-Wheats had enough sugar to keep us interested—and we liked the way it made the milk taste—but we can’t say the same about Shredded Wheat. Shredded Wheat came in numerous sizes and brands (the name is so generic that it can’t be trademarked), but they all had one thing in common: we wouldn’t eat them.

Wheaties is basically Raisin Bran without the raisins, so obviously, we had no interest in it as kids. We weren’t even convinced by the slogan General Mills came up with, “The breakfast of champions,” which probably explains why we are not professional athletes and are instead writing slideshow articles about kid cereals.