Rice Krispies Treats Cereal: RIP

In discussing cereal, I am most often asked two questions. Do you REALLY eat four bowls of cereal every morning? Yes, I am that awesome. I mix them up, samurai-style. So what is your favorite cereal? Being hip and nostalgic and obsessed with that which I cannot have, I inevitably answer this way: Rice Krispies Treats Cereal. I used to eat them as a kid, up through high school perhaps. And up until about four seconds ago, I thought they no longer existed. Haven't seen them in stores since the late '90s. Yet a Google search yielded this marshmallow-sticky pearl of wisdom: Try Amazon. I should've figured. They do books. They do backpacks. Why the hell not boxes of long-lost cereal? (Amazon reviewers [52 of them] have given RKTC a very honorable rating of 4.5 our of 5. Bitchin', dudes!)

Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, the rainbow-striped unicorn of breakfast products. I wish you could try the stuff. (Well, you can; order a set of four boxes from Amazon, as I am surely about to do. A follow-up post is in order: Do my adult taste buds still appreciate their saccharine crunch?) For now, this description will suffice: Imagine Rice Krispies bonded together by marshmallow-flavored sugar into little bite-size clusters. Divine. Never goes soggy. Never bespoils the milk. Sweet, but not tooth-achingly so. A+ stuff, and the perfect morning pick-me-up for a coffee-free existence.

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of my current, more healthful favorites. My sugar-cereal intake has declined in recent years, to perhaps one box every six weeks (unless you count Frosted Mini-Wheats and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which I don't, despite the fact that they're covered in sugar). Since my earliest cereal-eating days in grade school, I've also enjoyed more geeky, adult cereals: Crispix, Raisin Bran, Multi-Grain Cheerios (that, my friends, is the only Cheerios I buy nowadays). My current top three available cereals fit into this category: Raisin Bran Crunch, Basic Four (featuring raisins), and Raisin Nut Bran (raisins coated in little nut pieces. The best.). My favorite unavailable more-or-less healthy cereal is Oatmeal Raisin Crisp. (Can you tell? I dig raisins paired with a nice crunch.) Oatmeal Raisin Crips, on the other hand, is a gang in LA. Least that's what I hear.