by Lore Sjöberg

USA Olympic Crunch
An ill-considered bit of breakfast jingoism, as evidenced by the fact that, as far as I can tell, it was only available in wholesale stores. USA Olympic Crunch (so named, I assume, to distinguish it from Canada Olympic Crunch) is just Lucky Charms with different shapes and about one-tenth the marshmallows. Now if they had decided to increase the number of marshmallows, perhaps inverting the cereal-marshmallow ratio, then at least it would have been a bold experiment. As-is, Patriotic Sports Puffs are not my idea of a breakfasty good time. D

Froot Loops
One of the nicest things that ever happened to me was when a then-girlfriend took it upon herself to go through a box of Froot Loops and separate the colors. She then gave the box, each color in an individual baggie, to me. What wonders I did to deserve segregated fruit cereal, I don't know, but I experienced a thrill not unlike opening the fabled Ark of the Covenant, except without the melting face bit. At any rate, I was able to answer the Eternal Froot Loop question: Do the different colors really taste different? The long-awaited answer: Sort of. A

Frosted Flakes
Cereal, sugar, box, disturbing cartoon animal, worthless premium: Frosted Flakes embodies everything it means to be sugary breakfast cereal. In a world where new breakfast cereals rise up, shine briefly, and are struck down by what Adam Smith called "The invisible blood-encrusted two-by-four of the market," Frosted Flakes abide. I do want to pick one nit, though: if you were playing basketball with a skinny loser of a kid and a 6' 4" cartoon tiger with biceps the size of the giant turtle at the petting zoo, and you got your ass kicked, would you then be saying "Whoa! That kid's good!" or would you instead be saying "We'd be doing pretty good too, if we had a giant anthropomorphic jungle cat on our side!" A-

Rice Krispies Treats
They taste better in milk than Chex Mix does, I'll give them that. And come to think of it, actual Rice Krispies treats make at least as much sense as part of this nutritious breakfast as Pop Tarts do. But Rice Krispies Treats Cereal doesn't taste like Rice Krispies Treats. It tastes, in a word, awful. Marshmallows don't have the most natural flavor ever to wander down the gullet, but whatever marshmallow substitute they devised to hold the amphibian-egg-sac-like clusters of Krispies together is to marshmallows as marshmallows are to fresh organic island-grown sugar cane. D-

Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch
Weird. Eerie. Peanut buttery. The thing about Peanut Butter Captain Crunch is that I don't really like it, except when I'm eating it. When I'm eating it, I compulsively wolf down the entire box at one sitting, then I go back to not liking it. It's like some early-morning Jekyll-and-Hyde routine. Here's an idea for a commercial for Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch: They have characters that want to steal the cereal, characters that want to protect the cereal, characters that are afraid the cereal will make them lose their minds; why not a character who doesn't like the cereal until some rosy-cheeked and trendily-dressed grade-schoolers shove it down his throat, at which point the character grabs the entire box and kicks and beats the children away while he chorfs down. Anyhow, I'm going to assume my cereal-eating id is correct here and give this an A-.

Cocoa & Fruity Pebbles
This cereal has problems. First off, it's about the only cereal that doesn't stay crunchy in milk. It gets soggy in milk, and does so in a hurry. I've learned, over the years, to severely limit the amount of milk I add to Pebbles, lest I be forced to eat what would be more accurately called "Flaccid Rice Ovals." Secondly, they have the most God-awful commercials imaginable. I get enough of the trend of the week without seeing Barney in a trend-of-the-week costume. C-