by Lore Sjöberg

Boo-Berry
Thanks to faithful reader Lish Daelnar, I finally got my trembling hands on some Boo-Berry for the first time in my adult life. The fact that it had "Casper and Wendy Marshmallows" barely detracted from the sinus-clearing joy of acquisition. It's hard to be objective through the haze of nostalgia, but this is damn fine cereal. You have to admire a cereal with the spheres to stick with one fruit flavor during the modern flavor expansion. No wildberry, no watermelon, just something vaguely resembling blueberry flavor. With marshmallows. B+

Mini Wheats Frosted Original
Weirdly arranged name aside, Mini Wheats Frosted Original neé Frosted Mini-Wheats are the ultimate in mixed breakfast metaphors. Shredded Wheat pads are basically hay bales, and frosting, original or no, can't change that. Whether you're downing Frosted Mini-Hay Bales, Bite-Sized Hay Bales, or even if they made Marshmallow Blasted Hay Bales, you can't escape the fact that you're enjoying the great taste of hay bales. D+

Raisin Bran
A deceptive cereal. First, there's the question of two scoops of raisins, and what that means. Last time I checked, the American National Standards Institute hasn't issued a definitive statement on the volume of a "scoop." Doubtless one could pick up a miniature scoop with a capacity of one raisin, so assuming these are whole raisins, all they're guaranteeing is that there are no fewer than two raisins in each box. Secondly, this comes across as a healthful cereal, when in fact those all-natural sun-poked juicy raisins are so coated in white sugar that they look like larval pods from "Aliens: A Christmas Story." I once tried an all-natural raisin bran cereal, and it was pretty good once I poured a bunch of sugar on it. C+

Corn Pops
They started referring to it as simply "Pops" in the commerical. Presumably "sugar" sounds too unhealthy and "corn" sounds too healthy, so that all cereals from now on must be abstract allusions to the fun you'll inevitably have completely ignoring the suggestion that you serve them with milk, juice and toast. All right, fine then. Negative: they have the texture of packing material. Positive: Ever since childhood, packing material has always looked to me like something you should pour milk on and eat anyway. C

Smurfberry Crunch
This was one of the best of cereals that are now dead, gone, and pushing up boxtops. I was not a huge fan of the Smurfs. Heck, I'd give the Snorks two-to-one odds against them in a fair fight. But this was good cereal, made up of blue artifical-tasting units and red artifical-tasting units, both of which tasted exactly the same. The disturbing bit, though is that this cereal was created by Ralston-Purina, and the cereal bits were the same size and shape as Little Friskies. Weird. And, I might add, eerie. A