The internet tells me that today is National Cereal Day. I must have missed the display in Walmart and all of you forgot to send me cereal cards in the mail. I did eat a bowl of cereal already today. Half a serving of new Donettes cereal with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros mixed in for a cinnamon powdered donuts taste. Wasn’t too bad. That’s enough talk about what I ate today, what brand new cereal could I have eaten back in the year long theme of 1983?

Smurf Berry Crunch Cereal.

There have been many examples of the sense of smell being the strongest sense. This will be one more example, because I can still smell this cereal. It was a fake food scent but with undertones of something close to real. It tasted like scented markers smell with corn dust powder beneath. Like a bowl of scratch and sniff stickers. It was also a cereal that fell victim to the “FrankenBerry stool”. While some of you might think I’m being ridiculous, this was a known problem that warranted coverage by national media. The pink dye would cause shades of unnatural colors to appear in the toilet.  Though the Smurfs aren’t any where near as popular today as they were in the 1980’s, despite two theatrical releases, there is no way this cereal would still be around in the same incarnation today without a drastic ingredient change. That dye would probably be blamed for causing some sort of issues in children today.

Pac-Man Cereal.

I would love to say, “imagine a world where a video game was big enough to have its own cereal?” Then I saw the Overwatch O’s at Walmart this week, and I don’t know of anyone who plays Overwatch. Because I’m old. But everyone knew and played Pac-Man back then. Bowling alleys, bars, restaurants, that cheap awful small one that drained so many batteries. He even invaded Saturday morning cartoons and breakfast cereals with his tales of taking pills and seeing ghosts. The cereal had corn pellets with marshmallow Pac-Man and ghosts. Later, there was a Super Pac-Man version with giant Pac-Man marshmallows. So big they could be roasted on a campfire and made into Pac-Smores. The cereal is kind of back in a way as part of Funko’s line of collectible cereals.

Crispy Oatmeal and Raisin Chex Cereal.

Chex is a fine, acceptable, healthy cereal choice. There are others, many others, that do the same. But between name recognition and the local supermarket’s weekly sale Chex hangs in there. The reality is Chex is best known as the main ingredient for the world’s best snack mix. Whether classic commercials starring the entire Peanuts gang is the base for your recipe. Or, like me, your mom has her personal Chex mix recipe that is a family tradition held aloft as equal with staples of Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, I can assure you that the words Raisin and Oatmeal have never appeared on that recipe much less the actual mix. I want my Chex Mix full of nothing but crunch. No chewy or gummy ingredients. If a variation of Chex can’t be worked into a Mix recipe than expect it to be a failure, which is why this blend never reached the same heights as its Rice, Corn, and Wheat cousins.