Quipu

Maple Bacon Donuts
Nope. Nope nope nope.

Overall Rating: 27
This doesn't taste anything like bacon. Fortunately it doesn't taste anything like maple either. Failure to satisfy on the donut aspect goes without saying.

Image from the Institute Collection
(and boy do we regret having it)

Appearance
Have you ever found yourself having to explain a joke? As you watch your audience's eyes collectively glaze over, you can feel yourself shrinking in stature along with your joke. Somebody should have warned Post that just because something makes people laugh in the elevator you're not supposed to expect to cause a laugh-riot in the boardroom.

This is one of a pair of joke cereals released by Post earlier this year in "honour" of something called National Cereal Day in the U.S. (We'll deal with the other next week.)  The product consists of two different shapes, one at least of which does resemble a donut (or a bagel or an inner tube); these pieces (made mostly of oat, we suspect) are (artificially) coloured to look sort of like the (artificial) colour of a maple-glazed donut (artificial, we repeat). The other piece is a flake of corn and wheat flour and is supposed to represent... what? The crushed, flattened souls of the marketing weasels responsible for this travesty? Well, in a perfect world that's what would happen to them anyway.

Taste and Texture, Dry
The only positive thing to say about these is that your fingers won't get sticky when you pick the pieces out of the box. Okay, we suppose there's one other potential positive: if you're one of those sad boomers who actually like the taste of those horrid molasses-flavoured Halloween toffee pieces, you'll find something in here to cheer you. There's a disclaimer on the back of the box saying no pigs were harmed in the making of this cereal. O how we did laugh... The disclaimer's not necessary, because nothing in the flavour of this product hints at any sort of exposure to porky goodness. We'd been worried the product would smell and taste of artificial smoke; there's none of that here. Not much of anything else either. We never thought we'd ever find ourselves missing the cloying scent and flavour of artificial maple, but would it have been so hard to at least put a hint of that in here? The closest we came to it was a post-testing belch that might have suggested maybe a touch of artificial maple. No trees were harmed in the making of this mess either.

Taste and Texture, with Milk
If it's not worthy of snacking from the box, is it at least going to justify immersion in dairy liquids? Don't be silly, gentle reader. If this product earns points for anything it's for the amazing speed with which the flakes turn into papier-mache goop. Most of what little flavour this ever possessed seems to evaporate when the milk is poured on; not even that  ghastly Halloween flavour bothers to stick around. All that remains by the time the bowl is empty is a somewhat sour taste of complete and utter failure.

Conclusion
It used to be a lot of fun to pick up kiddyrot cereals and assess them with a degree of seriousness totally unbecoming to what they actually were. This product represents the Marketing Department's sly, sardonic acknowledgement of what kiddyrot cereal fans were getting up to. In the process they're pretty much killed the joke.

We are reminded of what Tom Lehrer said in the mid-seventies: political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. [June 2019]