There are lots of things that you can eat for breakfast, but we’re going to focus on the box cereals endorsed by cartoon characters or athletes. You have flakes, O’s, puffs, and shapes. Various kinds of cereal “accessories” can be added, but some accessories don’t match up with every shape. Sugar, fruit (dried or fresh), and marshmallows pretty much sum up what you can add to cereal. Let’s break it down:
Flakes: Can be frosted (Frosted Flakes) or have sugar added (Wheaties). Fruit works too and is essential if the flakes are relatively flavorless (Special K). Flake cereal with marshmallows is absolutely unacceptable. Since flake cereal can’t be eaten with marshmallows, something any of the other cereals can do, it is disqualified right out of the gate.
O’s: The O’s can go with anything. They can be sugar frosted (Apple Jacks) or honey glazed (Honey Nut Cherios). They can have marshmallows (again, Oreo O’s) or fruit (Cheerios) and they earn bonus points because the hole reduces the likelihood of choking.
Puffs: They have everything. For my money, they provide a better crunch than the O’s. In my experience, puffs are most oftened used for a sugary cereal, but Kix more than make up for anything the puffs lack in quantity of non-sugary cereal compared to O’s and flakes. Puffs are boring asthetically when compared to shapes. The makes of Trix recognized this and switched from puff form to shape of the different fruit form and Trix hasn’t been the same since the switch. Both Trix and puffed cereal as a whole lost something when Trix defected. Trix lost the quality and the puffs lost the premier fruit flavored sugar cereal in the business. Think about it, the puff cereals don’t have anything to go up against Froot Loops anymore.
Shapes: Marshmallows work best with shapes. Alphabits, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, the list goes on. Add in Cap’n Crunch along with Quaker Oat Squares for the non-sugary cereal for good measure and the shapes run away with it.
There you have it. Shapes are the best cereal form with puffs running a close second. This subject is open for discussion, but if you disagree know that you will be wrong. I’ve been studying this subject every day for years.