REVIEW: Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters

I do not know if any of you noticed, but Honey Bunches of Oats is reproducing like rabbits and I bet people in China are pissed. While each couple in China can have only one child, an asexual semi-healthy cereal can have seven offspring, with the possibility of more. I bet you right now that Honey Bunches of Oats is off somewhere breeding. Its most recent spawn is the Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters.

With a plethora of Honey Bunches of Oats variations, I am wondering when it is going to stop popping out new flavors. Right now, there is Honey Bunches of Oats Honey Roasted, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Strawberries, Honey Bunches of Oats with Cinnamon Clusters, Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Peaches, Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas, Honey Bunches of Oats with Vanilla Clusters and of course, Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters.

You know what? Maybe Honey Bunches of Oats is a polygamist and part of the Fundamentalist Crunchy Cereal Church and it lives with all of its Honey Bunches of Oats wives in a secluded ranch in the middle of Texas. Oh, the inbreeding could lead to some messed up offspring, like Honey Bunches of Oats with Bacon, Honey Bunches of Oats with Fluoride or Honey Bunches of Oats with Honey Bunches of Oats.

Anyway, I am exciting about Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters because it means we are one step closer to having Little Chocolate Donuts on our breakfast table. Fortunately, this cereal comes with real semi-sweet chocolate (with cocoa butter) and not that “chocolatey” crap, which looks good on the outside, but do a little digging and you’ll have a bitter taste in your mouth. Unless a bitter taste in your mouth is something you are into and willing to pay extra for.

Like I wrote in the previous paragraph, this cereal has semi-sweet chocolate, which makes sense because having sweet chocolate would be silly in a cereal that supposed to be healthy. Unfortunately, the semi-sweet chocolate clusters gives the cereal a really weak chocolate flavor and I was hoping that Barney Rubble would give me some his stolen Cocoa Pebbles to mix with this cereal.

Despite its weak chocolate flavor, I have to say that it is one of my favorite Honey Bunches of Oats variations. It has got the whole grain goodness for the adult in me, the chocolate goodness for the kid in me, and it allows me to buy a chocolate cereal that doesn’t make me look like a pathetic bachelor, puerile adult, or possible pedophile.

(Nutrition Facts – 3/4 cup – 120 calories, 2 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1 gram of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 65 milligrams of potassium, 25 grams of carbs, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 7 grams of sugar, 16 grams of other carbs, 2 grams of protein, a whole lot of vitamins and minerals, and 1 step closer to getting mini Hershey’s Kisses into a cereal.)

Item: Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Chocolate Clusters
Price: $4.00 (on sale – 14.5 ounces)
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Real chocolate in it. Clusters are crunchy. Honey Bunches of Oats. One step closer to having Little Chocolate Donuts. Vitamins and minerals.
Cons: Chocolate didn’t stand out. My excessive use of “Honey Bunches of Oats” in this review (to kill some time, count the number of times I used it). Honey Bunches of Oats with Fluoride. Chocolatey crap.

Honey Bunches of Oats Banana Nut Cereal Bars

Honey Bunches of Oats Banana Nut Cereal Bars

Ever since I started eating these new Honey Bunches of Oats Banana Nut Cereal Bars, I’ve been acting kind of strange. I guess someone could say I’ve been acting “bananas” and “nuts.”

I’m beginning to think that the saying, “You are what you eat,” is actually true.

If you don’t believe me, then listen to the crazy things I’ve done recently.

Many of you know about my insane McDonald’s Dollar Menu binge the other week. Besides Ruben Studdard, what sane person would stuff themselves with all that food in one sitting?

If you don’t think that’s nuts, I watched dangerous amounts of programming on the PAX Network, and when I say “dangerous amounts of programming,” I mean any amount over two minutes.

Still don’t think I deserve a straitjacket? Well how about me watching hours of the Ashlee Simpson Show, then buying her album “Autobiography” from iTunes, playing it over and over again on my iPod, and learning the words by heart, so I can lip-sync them as well as she can.

I guess I should’ve realized something was wrong after eating the first Honey Bunches of Oats Banana Nut Cereal Bar and soon after becoming the winning bidder for underwear on eBay.

However, the cereal bars were good and I saw my eBay purchase as a need for underwear and not as a sign of becoming crazy.

The cereal bars didn’t taste much like the actual Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, even though they had the same crispy flakes and oat clusters the cereal has. I thought it wasn’t as sweet as the cereal. However, these cereal bars were definitely better than the Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas cereal, which The Impulsive Buy reviewed last year.

Besides being good tasting, these cereal bars are also sort of good for you. Each bar has as much calcium as a glass of milk and has nine other vitamins and minerals. However, this isn’t special because the better-tasting Hershey’s SnackBarz I tried a few months ago, with its crispy rice, marshmallows, and milk chocolate, is a good source of calcium, iron, and seven essential vitamins.

Yahtzee!

Plus, the Hershey’s SnackBarz didn’t make me do anything crazy, like eat in one sitting half a bag of Ruffles Light, with the anal-leakage-causing Olestra.

Well I guess I should be glad I didn’t eat any Hostess Ho-Ho’s.


Item: Honey Bunches of Oats Banana Nut Cereal Bars
Purchase Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Pros: Good. Chewy. Calcium. 9 vitamins and minerals.
Cons: May make you go bananas or nuts. PAX Network. Lip-syncing. Olestra.

Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas

Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas

Here at The Impulsive Buy we like to keep up with the latest product trends because we so desperately want to be cool and hip.

In our short existence, we have followed a few trends, like the breakfast smoothie trend and the low-carb soda trend. Another one we have been closely following is the cereal with real fruit trend, which we think is an awesome idea, but not as awesome as the Hypercolor clothing trend in the 1980s.

A few weeks ago we reviewed Corn Flakes With Bananas, which we found to be pretty damn good. Who would have thought adding bananas could make Corn Flakes, which is something just as bland as any Britney Spears’ CD, taste better?

So today we’re going to review another cereal with bananas, Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas.

We at the Impulsive Buy are fans of the original Honey Bunches of Oats, with its crunchiness and lightly frosted corn and wheat flakes. After our kick-ass experience with Corn Flakes with Bananas, we assumed the Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas would be just as good. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed.

To be honest, we were only dissatisfied with the dried bananas in the cereal. If we were able to pick out all the dried bananas, we would like it, but if we wanted that it would be easier to just buy a box of regular Honey Bunches of Oats.

The bananas in the Honey Bunches of Oats were soft and squishy, like Bob Dole without Viagra. So when we added the milk, the bananas absorbed it like a sponge and they got soggy faster than you can say, “These bananas suck ass.” This was unlike the Corn Flakes With Bananas, which had crunchy banana chips, like the kind you find in hippie health food stores in between the dried apricots and hemp bracelets.

These bananas in the Honey Bunches of Oats were so bad, we don’t think gorillas, monkeys, orangutans, or Robin Williams would like them.

After our positive experience with Corn Flakes with Bananas, we had such high hopes for Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas. To summarize how we felt about this cereal, we would like to use the following analogy: It’s just like getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. Things get soggy and it sucks.

Item: Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas
Purchase Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: The Honey Bunches of Oats part.
Cons: The soggy bananas part.