Wendy’s Frosty Cereal, Reviewed

Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist, and your humble cereal reviewer. This is another Serious Eats Cereal Review.

If you’ve watched these videos before, you know I like to choose cereals that are novelties. They’re gimmick cereals. They’re clearly not really meant to be eaten on a regular basis. So I’m very excited to have with me the Wendy’s Frosty Cereal, which seems to come from the tradition of cereals like Reese’s Puffs, and Cookie Crisp, and Oreo O’s—cereals that are explicitly meant to just be glorified candies. They’re desserts.

This comes from Kellogg’s. It’s not new, but it’s pretty recent. The box isn’t too special. Has some fun Wendy’s facts. I guess you might be interested in those; I’m not.

I can’t imagine any kids that would be. On average, about how many Frosty treats does Wendy’s sell in the US per year? Choices are 30 million, 130 million, or 260 million. My guess is going to be 260 million. And the answer…the answer is C, 260 million. There you go.

If you are not familiar with these cereal reviews, I go through a certain process before I render a verdict. First, I open the box, and I get a sense of the aroma. Then I try the cereal dry. Then I put them in the bowl of milk, eating them as you would at the table. Then I have a bowl here that’s been sitting for a few minutes, and I will try [that]. Then I’ll taste the milk to see if any of the flavor from the cereal seeps into it. It’s all very straightforward! And we’re going to begin right now.

Let’s get a sense of this aroma. Chocolate cereal, I’m going to expect you to smell like chocolate. And it does. It smells specifically like cocoa, not just for the milk’s chocolate, but, like, if you open up a container of Hershey’s cocoa powder, [it] more or less smells like that. We’ve got marshmallows, and we got dry cereal.

Very chocolatey. No idea if it tastes like a Frosty, because I…[have] no idea. These are good. Try these with some milk. I feel like they’re skimping on the marshmallows because I only get a handful in here. But I’ll get a spoonful with marshmallows, as many as I can. Let’s try these.

…I mean, these are great, I would say. Kind of one note, just chocolate. But chocolate cereal is hard to beat. Very sweet, which makes sense with the 17 grams of sugar. That checks out. That’s out the way. Now we go to the part that I hate, which is trying soggy cereal.

They hold up great. Almost no difference with the freshly poured — I don’t know, the freshly milked? That sounds terrible! — cereal. Final test, milk test. And yeah, it’s like drinking a glass of chocolate milk.

To some extent, none of this is a big surprise. It’s rare to get a bad chocolate cereal. Even the worst one I can think of, Cocoa Pebbles (which gets soggy really quickly), tastes good.

I probably should have eaten or had a Frosty before I did this so I could have some sort of sense memory. But just as far as a chocolate cereal goes, I think this is top-tier. I’m going to give this 4 and 1/2 spoons. I’m going to give my usual admonition here. Don’t eat these for breakfast. This is a treat, and you should treat it as such. Having said that, as far as novelty dessert cereals go, I’m going to give this one a high recommend. It’s really good.

Again, I’m Jamelle Bouie and this has been another Serious Eats Cereal Review. I’ll be back with something else that I will regret putting into my body.