Quipu

Hot Wheels Cereal

Image from the Institute collection, in
which it really ought to stay

Overall Rating: 41

If there’s one thing we at the Institute hate more than oat-flour, pretend-to-be-sweet cereals, it’s big, clunky oat-flour, pretend-to-be-sweet cereals. Not even marshmallows can save this guck.

Appearance

Just fine. If what you like to see in your bowl in the morning is big disgusting chunks of beige cement bobbing on the surface of the milk. The stuff is supposed to look like wheels, I guess, but given the sculptural limitations imposed by a medium of flour and water, fer godsake, things don’t quite work out. Instead (and this wouldn’t have been such a bad thing were it not unintended) the product looks like miniature sections of lotus root.

Of course, the marshmallow “cars” tend to spoil that illusion fairly quickly. They look like pastel-coloured kidneys.

Texture and Taste, Dry

Eurgh. Ghod, we hate oat-flour cereals! They are dry and they’re crumbly and it doesn’t seem to matter how much sugar you dump on them, they still taste like sawdust. This product is nowhere near as dense and tasteless as Honeycomb (the worst of the worst), but it’s still like biting into wallboard. And while the marshmallows are the usual Ralston psychotically sweet explosions, there aren’t enough of them to override the dry desert this cereal is.

Texture and Taste with Milk

The milk goes a long way toward relieving the dusty tedium of the product. But why not just drink the milk? The one thing oat cereals have going for them is good crunch and mouth-feel in milk, and this one is no exception. In fact, if you are lucky enough get a bowl with a reasonable ratio of marshmallows to icky dry kacky bits, it’s close to almost being a nearly pleasant experience. Of course, so is dental surgery on drugs.

Conclusion

The marshmallows seem to sink to the bottom of the box. So open this package from the underside, pour yourself a few bowls to get most of the marshmallows, then throw the rest away. Or save yourself the trouble, and throw the box away before you open it. Or before you even buy it. [January 1993]