Quipu

Froot Loops

Overall Rating: 96

The essential breakfast experience has not changed. Long live the King.

Appearance

Sometimes simplicity just works. Froot Loops are miniature donuts in day-glo colours; not as shockingly bright as, say, Trix, they seem to shimmer in the bowl before you pour on the milk. The addition of lime-flavoured (and green-coloured) Loops is the perfect touch, breaking up the sameness of red-orange-yellow colouring of the old-style Froot Loops.

Taste and Texture, Dry

The perfect snacking cereal. The simple shape makes them easy to pick up; the variety of flavours is quite noticeable when the package is fresh, and overall is a wonderful, sweet-sour tang that perfectly balances acid with sugar. These aren’t cloying or heavy, and as a result it’s easy to snack your way through an entire package, thus ruining a carefully structured taste trial.

Taste and Texture, With Milk

As above, not quite as bright as Trix when the milk goes on. Froot Loops shines, though, in retaining its crunch and crisp, firm mouthfeel in milk. Maybe they’ve done something to the sugar frosting, which resists the milk quite tenaciously. Even several minutes after the addition of the cow-juice, Froot Loops have a distinct snap to them as you bit down. And the acid zip, though somewhat subdued by the milk, is still there. Oh, and by the way: the [old] TV commercials are right: you can tell this from other cereals by smell.

Conclusion

If anything defines the suburban Saturday-morning kid experience, it’s a couple of bowls of Froot Loops and a couple of hours of Warner Bros. cartoons: sugar, psychotics and falling anvils (or coyotes, or Yosemite Sam). Practically speaking, there is little real difference between Froot Loops and its competitor, Trix. either is a great cereal choice, and if Froot Loops has been given a higher score, it’s for sentimental reasons on the part of the Institute staff. Sucrophile has very fond memories of Froot Loops, and sometimes even science can be affected by sentiment and myth. [February 1993]