All Hail the Captain

It’s been a little while since I last reviewed breakfast cereals. You can blame that mostly on the stores I normally frequent lacking anything really interesting on the regular. It’s hard to get worked up for another rerelease of a strawberry flavor of a breakfast cereal when the last couple of times you tried it that cereal really sucked. Yes, I’m pointedly thinking about the new Strawberries and Creme Pebbles and how much the Very Berry Pebbles sucked. Those were nasty and I’m not going anywhere near new fruit Pebbles flavors. Fool me once, Post…

Thankfully I didn’t have to actually buy the flavors I tested recently. I have a friend that visits other stores I don’t normally get to, and they happened upon a couple of interesting Captain Crunch flavors. I got to sample each one, without having a full box taking up space in my pantry, and now I can share my thoughts with all of you.

Captain Crunch Orange Creampop

This was the flavor I had the most hope for, in large part because it sounds different than what I’m used to. I like Captain Crunch in general. I think it tastes good, with a sweet and butter flavor I enjoy. I am not like some that, apparently, feel the need to mash cereal against the roof of my mouth so I’ve never understood the complaint about how Captain Crunch is “sharp” and “rough”. Chew your food people. That’s how mouths work. But Captain Crunch generally sticks to normal flavors you see in the breakfast aisle. Original, berry, sometimes peanut butter. These are accepted tastes. But orange? That’s different. That sounded intriguing.

Unfortunately the promise of the cereal didn’t match expectations. While an orange flavored cereal likely makes you think you’ll get a citrus pop as you eat, in reality Orange Creampop Crunch didn’t do much to taste like orange. While the smell when you open the box does seem orangey, the initial taste is pretty standard Captain Crunch. Not bad, per se, but not really what you expect. The orange flavor only comes on the back end, like a bit of an aftertaste, and it’s not really that great. A little artificial, a little bad. Not to be gross, but it reminds me of that burp you have after taking a big glug of orange soda. It’s not a flavor you find appealing.

I credit the cereal makers for trying something different. Maybe it was hard to get a good orange flavor on the cereal without it tasting too artificial up front. Instead it tastes artificial on the back end and that’s not any better. I like the idea of Captain Crunch Orange Creampop, but in execution it’s a bit of a mess.

Cinnamon Crunch

Now this is one I didn’t actually expect to like. I am not a huge fan of cinnamon. I like it when it’s used with fruit, such as in a pie filling, to give the fruit some needed zesty accent. Things that are meant to taste cinnamony, though, I tend to find gross. I don’t go out of my way to make cinnamon toast, or eat cinnamon rolls, and when it comes to cereal the cinnamon flavors rank very low on the list for me. But when the cereal is free and you can sample it as you like, well, I just had to try it and see.

And, honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the cereal does smell full of cinnamon. And yes, it does taste like it has cinnamon in it. Unlike Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or similar cereals, though, this one isn’t so cinnamon forward that I wanted to set it down. It’s light, with just a little cinnamon bite, and while it wasn’t a flavor I craved I found I was willing to eat more of it just to get the full experience. In fairness, my friend didn’t like it and neither did my wife, ironically for the same reason I did: it didn’t have enough cinnamon flavor to it. I felt that made it taste good, they thought it made it taste bad. Go figure.

If you don’t like a lot of cinnamon but are willing to have a little in your cereal, this might be one for you. I have to bet, though, that’s a very narrow segment of the cereal buying populace. It might, in fact, just be me.

Halloween Crunch

And then we have one that I was sure was going to be, well, just fine. Generally Captain Crunch does one kind of special flavor, and it beats it into the ground: Crunch Berries. Whenever they want to trot out some weird holiday variant the brand will change the Crunch Berries in some way, call it a new thing, and then release it to the public, but we all know. We see the game the Captain is playing. He’s just trying to sell us Crunch Berries again, gaslighting us by calling it something else. We’re onto you, Captain.

And I am right in this instance. Halloween Crunch is, effectively, Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries just by a different name. The little berries crunchers are in the shape of ghosts, and they have green flecks in them that turn the milk green, all to lend the cereal that (family friendly) Halloween frightfulness, but in all the ways that matter (taste and crunchiness) this is still just Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries.

And sure, that’s fine. I like Crunch Berries. I think they’re tasty and I’m just as likely to get the Crunch Berry version as the normal Captain Crunch in those rare circumstances that I want to buy breakfast cereal. If I were feeling saucy and wanted Crunch Berries I might maybe just get the Halloween version instead. You just have to know, going in, what you’re agreeing to. The Captain will lie to you. He is a trickster, a deceiver. Do not fall for his mind games. Swear to the Trix Rabbit and rub your Lucky Charms, lest the Captain come for you when you sleep…

Final Thoughts

So what did we learn? Well, for starters I need a grocery store that has better cereal selections. But, more to the point, Captain Crunch is best when it sticks to what works: crunch and, sometimes, berries. When it goes outside that zone it leads to weird flavors people generally won’t like. If you want Captain Crunch, get the original or the berries. Unless you’re really saucy, nothing else is needed.