Quipu

Sucrophile: Batman Returns Cereal

Overall Rating: 89

The Bat. The Cat. The Cavities. Sugar runs riot, with more than a passing nod to the Dark (as in chocolate) side.

Appearance

Imagine Rice Chex gone straight to hell. This product passes on the obvious representational gambit (it leaves the bats for the easier-to-shape marshmallows) in favour of a standard Chex/Shreddies woven square. In this case, though, the square is coated with a dark, nasty-looking sort-of-chocolate ink-cum-syrup. Against this virtual blackness the pastel-coloured marshmallows look rather pathetic. Points are lost because of the pastel colours (Batman don’t do pastel!) and because the “chocolate” starts leaching out almost before you pour on the milk.

Taste and Texture, Dry

A good mixture of mouth-feels, with the crisp yet yielding crunch of rice squares contrasted nicely with the deranged squeegee and sugar-rush of an extraordinary number of marshmallows. Eventually, we’re convinced, Ralston Purina (woof!) will give in to the obvious and start marketing a nothing-but-marshmallows cereal.

Taste and Texture, With Milk

In the bowl is where this cereal really shines. A truly lavish use of sugar is readily apparent, yet the artificial chocolate flavour has a deranged bitterness that prevents the flavour from being cloying. In fact, your mouth almost puckers. Once again the marshmallows are the perfect finishing touch, their intense sweetness matching the bitter choco-something sensory blast for sensory blast. The cereal starts to disintegrate fairly quickly, but this is less of a problem than it seems. The sugar content of the product is so high, and its impact in the bloodstream so immediate, that within a couple of spoonsful (or possibly within seconds of your opening the box, if you haven’t developed a tolerance for kiddyrot sweetened cereals), you’re in full sugar-rush and literally shovelling the stuff into your mouth. We like this product a lot, and have a great deal of difficulty stopping with just one bowl. We also have a great deal of difficulty typing after testing the product.

Conclusion

This stuff is just whibblefreem! [August 1992]

We have tried to imagine a kiddyrot cereal tie-in to the Christian Bale Batman movies and our imagination fails us. If such a thing ever did exist, we do not want to know about it.