A History of Dessert Posing as Cereal

Whatever your feelings on sugary cereal, the beloved treat has long been a staple on breakfast tables, much to kids' delight (and parents' chagrin). Soon, you'll even be able to grab a bowl of cereal inspired by the Wendy's Frosty, but it's far from the first time breakfast has seemed a lot more like dessert. Read on for some of the most sugar-filled, calorie-loaded boxes from recent decades, including some that were probably among your childhood favorites.

Related: 30 Things You Didn't Know About Your Favorite Childhood Cereals

If any drive-thru item should be made into a breakfast cereal, it's definitely the Wendy's Frosty. The company has teamed up with Kellogg's to release this limited-edition item in December 2021. It's got round chocolate-flavored marshmallows and cereal pieces, and you better believe plenty of people are going to swirl them into a real Frosty for maximum chocolatey goodness. The best part? That Frosty will be free with the coupon that comes in every $4 box.

Related: We Tasted All 9 Wendy's Breakfast Sandwiches and This Is the Best

Parents love coffee. Kids love sweet cereals. So a food that merges both is perfect for the whole family — right? That seems to be the bet by Dunkin', which teamed up with Post Consumer Brands to bring its two most popular coffee flavors to a bowl near you last year. And it isn't Dunkin's first foray into the cereal aisle. Children of the '80s were spoiled with the sugar-loaded Ralston's Dunkin' Donuts cereal, available in chocolate or glazed. It was even hawked by none other than Fred the Baker, known for his catchphrase, "Time to make the doughnuts!"

Related: Dunkin' vs. Krispy Kreme: Who Has the Better Tasting Doughnuts?

There's no sugar-coating this one: It's a Twinkies Cereal. This riff on the iconic Hostess snack cake hit shelves in 2019, complete with pieces that looked like miniature Twinkies and a guarantee "to brighten your day, one sweet bite at a time." It wasn't Post's only gimmicky treat cereal to launch in 2019, which also saw the debut of Hostess Donettes Cereal, Hostess Honey Bun Cereal, and Mega Stuf Oreo O's. 

For more fun stories about food, please sign up for our free newsletters.

Sweet flavors have a long, proud tradition in the cereal aisle. Sour? Not so much. Post saw an opportunity to go after folks who love flavors that make them pucker with the introduction of Sour Patch Kids Cereal in late 2018. It was polarizing for sure (the cereal “spoils a perfectly good bowl of milk,” according to the Washington Post) and it seems the naysayers may have prevailed — this Walmart exclusive is already gone from shelves.

The only good thing about the holidays being over is that it means Girl Scout cookie season is right around the corner. General Mills recognized our unflagging devotion to these fundraising favorites by releasing Thin Mints Cereal in 2017, along with another variety inspired by Samoas. Apparently, mint was the dominant flavor in this limited-edition product. “It won’t burn your tongue, but it will still chill it like a French kiss from Frosty the Snowman,” noted Cerealously. 

Kellogg’s recently brought this fan-favorite cereal back from the dead, and who can blame them? Few flavors are quite as indulgent or nostalgic as graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. Introduced in 2002, the cereal required “thousands of pounds of chocolate cream … that's about as much as 7 elephants weigh. Millions of marshmallows were used during a single day's production — that's more than enough to fill 3 classrooms!” according to Mr Cereal. Healthy, indeed. 

If you ask us, the disappearance of this cereal is one of the great tragedies of the ‘90s. Introduced in 1993, Sprinkle Spangles were star-shaped, sugar-cookie-flavored puffs that were, of course, coated in colorful sprinkles. (And if there was ever any doubt about that, here’s what the box said: “The first breakfast cereal covered with sprinkles! That's right, sprinkles! It's everything you've been wishing for, a crisp, delicious tasting cereal with rainbow colored sprinkles.”) The cereal was discontinued in 2000. 

Ice cream for breakfast might even be a healthier choice than the proudly sugary Ice Cream Cones cereal, which hit shelves in 1987. Made up of Kix-like spheres and adorable cones, it came in two flavors: vanilla and chocolate chip. The mascot was "Ice Cream Jones," a soda jerk who made it his mission to sugar up kids.

Related: I Switched Out Cereal for Oatmeal for Breakfast — Here's What I Learned

By today's more health-conscious standards, it's hard to believe Nerds cereal ever existed. But exist it did, in its unabashedly sugary glory, with food coloring so intense that it could reportedly turn kids' poop red. Introduced by Ralston in 1985, each box actually contained two sleeves of flavored cereal — either orange and cherry, or grape and strawberry. "Which side are you gonna eat first?" the commercial asked. We'll tell you when we recover from our sugar coma.

Once upon a time, "little marshmallows with a chocolatey, nutty coating mixed with vanilla and chocolatey puffs" really were part of a complete breakfast. Rocky Road, a General Mills cereal from the mid-'80s, also had a super-cute troupe of three mascots: the hard-rocking Choco (a chocolate puff), Van (a vanilla puff), and Marsha (a chocolate-covered marshmallow).

Phone home if you remember this box of peanut butter and chocolate goodness. Introduced in 1984, E.T. cereal from General Mills was a given after the massive popularity of Steven Spielberg's film "E.T." Its flavors were inspired by the lovable alien's famous fondness for Reese's Pieces.

It's only natural there was a Cracker Jack cereal, introduced in 1983. A commercial touted the "cracklin' crunchy puffs of incredibly colossal caramel taste" while adorable kiddos greeted the morning with sit-ups and a casual jog around the yard. An equally enticing draw was the prize in every box.

Why have waffles when you could have Waffelos cereal? Fans who enjoyed the breakfast item from its debut in 1979 until it was retired in the mid-'80s say there was nothing quite like the maple-butter flavor of this Ralston creation, which also managed to stay crunchy in milk.

Related: Foods We Miss From the '70s and '80s

The best part of eating Post's Pink Panther Flakes, introduced in the early '70s, was watching the food coloring from this sugar-coated, neon pink cereal turn your milk pink. Of course, it was also hard to resist its eponymous mascot, the star of a long-running Saturday morning cartoon. An old Pink Panther Flakes commercial even riffed on the show's famous theme song.

One of the longest-lived dessert cereals, Cookie Crisp was originally a Ralston product when it first hit shelves in 1977. And while it did get a bit healthier for a while, in 2020, General Mills decided to switch back to its original, more cookie-like formula, likely recognizing that nostalgia is a better driver of sales than nutrition, Food Dive notes.

An online petition to bring back Kaboom has more than 2,700 signatures, proving this General Mills cereal still has impassioned fans. Made up of smiley-face corn pieces and marshmallows shaped like stars, it hit shelves in 1969 and remained popular through the '70s and '80s. "There was enough artificial coloring in Kaboom to make you literally poop out rainbows," one columnist remembers. Say no more, sir, and sign us up.