Time for another trip down memory lane. It’s been ages since I had Froot Loops - I sort of associate those artificial fruit mini doughnuts with childhood because we used to only have them at my late aunt’s house when we were being babysat overnight. I remember Toucan Sam and his enormous multicolored nose uttering magical phrases like “follow your nose.” I think I may have been confused back then thinking he meant to put the Froot Loops UP your nose. They barely fit at the time. Ah, good times.

*** Disclaimer - I’m not responsible if you stick cereal into your nostrils.

I think the new Fruity Cheerios may be a better candidate for probing your proboscis with, since they are quite a bit smaller. But no, I didn’t try to install these as fruit air fresheners in my nose this time around. General Mills has decided their cereal empire is not quite big enough, necessitating their introduction of these faux-Froot Loops. How do I know they’re taking on Kellogg’s? They say so right on the box, in not so many words. Fruity Cheerios contains “25% less sugar than the leading fruity cereal”. (Addendum - hmm, I can’t confirm they are indeed talking about Froot Loops, but I’ll leave my suspicion as such unless it’s invalidated.)

As I said before, the first thing you notice about Fruity Cheerios (and I guess I’ll give them a little credit for choosing to call it “Fruity” rather than “Frooty”) is that they are quite a bit smaller than Froot Loops. They look just like spray painted Cheerios actually. For colors, they’ve gone with Purple, Green, Red, Yellow and Orange. I’m a little sad they don’t have Blue, because that’s the best flavor of fruit. I forget what colors Froot Loops are, but if memory serves me correctly (in true Iron Chef style) they were pretty similar. But I’ll give 10 Fruity Bonus points to the first commenter to tell me what they are.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that they haven’t really messed around with the basic underlying taste and textures of Cheerios for this newer product. (For those keeping track, this is the 11th variety of Cheerios they’ve introduced.) We do still eat quite a bit of Cheerios at our house, and these are very similar - a lot of oatsy flavor with a secondary corn crunch. If you eat them dry, you’ll notice a bit of gritty cereal aftertaste which isn’t too unpleasant. In milk, they go down much easier.

With the addition of fruity taste to them, they taste a little like Cheerios dipped in Hi-C or some other box drink. But you’re definitely not going to mistake these for Froot Loops. I felt like the “fruit” taste was less harsh and artificial tasting than in Froot Loops. They do claim it’s flavored with “real fruit juice” on the box. (According to the label, I only see orange juice concentrate - but hey, I guess that’s better than completely artificial flavoring).

I also liked the fact that it seemed less sweet than other kids cereal. I’m sure they are really promoting the fact that it has 25% less sugar than Froot Loops to moms around the country. It did taste truly less sweet, though. Artificial coloring is a whole ‘nother story, but I did think they win overall on taste. (Hmm, I’m told Froot Loops has a “1/3 less sugar” variety as well so maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned with the sugar content.)

Well, I guess there’s only the price to contend with - which is again over $4 MSRP. While cereal like this will probably last you a bit longer since you don’t eat it every day (don’t tell me you eat Cheerios EVERY DAY), it’s still a pricey breakfast food where you’re paying a lot for the bright packaging. Kids’ cereal is so expensive in general, but if it wasn’t for the fact that I got this for free to review my wallet would probably give it a 4/10 instead of a 5/10. You should probably try get it on sale at the market instead of shelling out the big bucks.

Price: Free (MSRP $4.49, 11.5 oz box)
Found At: Sent in for review
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10