Cap'n Crunch's "Crunch Treasures" Cereal: Someone Needs to Walk the Plank

Every so often my local grocery store decides to do a huge promotional push on established foods as well as new items. This time around it was Quaker Foods and they had an entire display of $1.00 products. Usually I swarm an offer like this but these were not full sized products so I treaded carefully and only bought one box of Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Treasures. I saw the words "1/2 the sugar of regular Cap'n Crunch" but didn't think it would mean that it would taste like stale generic cereal. But in a way that is insulting to generic cereal.

The special 3.9 ounce boxes contain four servings and the boxes are priced at a dollar; each serving contains 120 calories, 1 gram of fat, 26 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of protein. Even though there is less sugar in it, it is still on the high side for carbohydrates '" and those are the numbers without milk. Quaker makes a big deal about this containing 12 essential vitamins and minerals but that is a moot point if you can't get kids to eat it without them dumping sugar on it. Please note, this is not the same as Treasure Hunt or Treasure Treat cereals.

As soon as I popped the first mouthful I was disappointed; there is a different shape to the pieces than the regular version but that isn't enough to get most kids into the taste. I used the rest of the box with modified Rice Krispie Treats and once the marshmallow was added to it the pieces of Crunch Treasures were palatable. If you want to reduce the amount of sugar your kids are eating you can buy this and mix it half and half with the regular version of the Malt-O-Meal knock off version. Chances are they won't be able to tell the difference if you do the 50/50 mix but just remember to get rid of the box of Crunch Treasures before they see it.