Quipu

Dino Pebbles

Overall Rating: 91

We think we’ve found the perfect breakfast insanity. And gentle readers know what to give the Institute for Christmas.

As usual, image is from the collection of
the Sucrophile Institute

Appearance

What they eat for breakfast on “Miami Vice.” A pastel riot of marshmallows overwhelms what looks for all the world like a sugar-silly version of (I kid you not) Kellogg’s Special K. The marshmallows are supposed to represent surfboards, suns, dinosaurs and, we think, pineapples (the box says “Dino Goes Hawaiian!” Scary thought, that)

Texture and Taste, Dry

The only thing that keeps this from getting a perfect 100 score. The marshmallows have the tooth-rotting intensity of all cereal marshmallows, but the cereal itself―what there is of it, anyway―lacks character dry. It’s sweet enough, all right (the ingredients list reads: “Rice, Sugar, Marshmallows”), but eating this cereal dry is like chewing on air, once you get past the marshmallows. On the bright side, you won’t want to eat this stuff dry anyway. It’s too good with milk to be thrown away on snacking.

Texture and Taste, With Milk

Adding milk liberates Dino Pebbles. A heady perfume is released when the milk hits, and the sweetness is now enough to induce diabetes in bystanders, a sort of insulinated contact high. We’ve never before come across a cereal sweet enough that it tasted as if we’d already added extra sugar to it. The perfume is sort of flowery, and there’s a strong hint of roses in the fruitiness of the flavour. Best of all, there’s no bitter aftertaste, a failing common to cereals at the sweeter end of the spectrum. This stuff is sweet all the way down.

Conclusion

For the time being, at least, we’ve found our home. This is it: the best sweetened breakfast cereal in the world. Kids, don’t tell your parents how great this is. Tell them it’s made with spinach or kale or something; tell them anything you have to to get them to buy it for you. How can we doubt the US is still a great power, when possesses the industrial might to produced a processed food product this magnificent? Do you think the Japanese or Chinese have anything to match this?

[October 1992]