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Puffed rice? Made by Quaker I think.

it sounds like puffed wheat or puffed rice to me too

king vitamin?

KELLOGG'S CORN POPS

Last time I tried Kix, they were a bit like eating styrofoam, bland puffs. Did they change their recipe? Or am I being slow and you meant that it naturally tasted sweeter?

eeewww. puffed rice had the texture of styrofoam pellets.

Honey Smacks? You might have liked things sweeter when you were little...
Kashi makes a lightly sweetened puffed wild rice cereal, I think.

@neuralized, I was never fond of sweet cereals, even as a kid. And I've never heard of Honey Smacks. When I was a kid, I made a sweetness exception for Coco Puffs because they turned the milk into chocolate. I guess I liked them a little sweeter back then, because Froot Loops were sometimes edible. But unless there was a darned good toy inside, I preferred Cheerios, Rice Crispies, and the one I'm trying to recall.

The cereal I remember was sort of like a cross between styrofoam and Cheetos in texture. Yeah, that sounds appetizing. But they were puffy like the puffed Cheetos (not the same shape) but they were a little firmer, if I'm recalling correctly. Not as crunchy or dense as Cheerios.

@Cassendra, I bought Kix recently (like a year ago) and I thought they were too sweet for a breakfast cereal. Oddly, I'm fine with eating a hunk of cake for breakfast, or a sweet pastry, but I just don't like sweet cereals. Which is why the cold cereal aisle is not my friend. Except for good old Cheerios. Everything else I've tried in the past few years has seemed too sweet for me.

Maybe I'll try puffed wheat and puffed rice.

It sounds like puffed rice or wheat to me too.
As far as Kix, they changed their formula or something since I was a kid.
They used to be harder and not so hollow inside and they definitely were not as sweet as they are now. They used to be good, now they aren't.

kelloggs puffa puffa rice - that's the commercial jingle I remember - and I think someone shot the cereal out of a cannon, or it came exploding out of a volcano

Ah yes! Cereal that came out of a cannon! That ad sounds familar. Because who doesn't like styrofoam-like puffed grains that has been blasted with gunpowder? What were they thinking? But I guess it worked, because it sounds right. Was there maybe a cannon on the front of the box spewing the cereal?

Maybe they are Kix when they weren't as sweet. I remember eating Kix as a kid and I liked it because it WASN'T sweet.

No but it did have a volcano on the front of the box.
Is that it?

Amy
Baking and Mistaking

Puffins! Quaker used to make a similar cereal, but I don't remember what it was called. They are brown "corn puffs" and they are not sweet.

Life? Do they still make that? I have fond memories of Life cereal. Back in the day when we had a milkman deliver glass bottles full of whole milk twice a week. Good times.

db go for grapenuts (all time fav) they even make flakes if you want to avoid cracking teeth. They are sweet but its more of a natural sweetness, I dont think they add any sweetner.

There is, however, a difference between "not sweet" and "not sweetened."

Plain old everyday cheerios is still unsweetened--with anything, according to the box sitting in front of me...and with only 21 g of carbs and of that only 1 g of sugar, the label support the taste buds. All of the new variations, though, however "lightly," are sweetened.

The only name brand ones I know of that come (or came) unsweetened are Cheerios, Kix, and Rice Krispies -- outside of generic "puffed" [insert grain].

Maybe they a health food brand? They sound an awful like Arrowhead Mills puffed corn. I was addicted to the stuff. The only ingredient in it was puffed whole grain yellow corn.

Even if this wasn't it, it does sound like what you're looking for. You might want to check it out.

I was always a flake lover, but going back, I'm stunned at how sweet some cereals are. Even Raisin Bran tastes like a big bowl of sugar. Plain bran flakes or Special K (or even better, Tesco's knock-off store version, 'Special Flakes') for us.

@BobbieAnne, it could have been puffed wheat or puffed rice. The only thing steering me away from that is that in my imagination, I'm seeing a more man-made shape rather than a natural grain that's been exploded. Which is why I tried Kix. They looked right. However, I might be remembering one shape and confusing it with another flavor. Whatever the cereal is/was, I haven't eaten it for so many years it may be extinct.

@dbcurrie--naw, it's gotta be one or the other of the puffs--get a bag this weekend, have a bowl and then report back--I am really caught up in this now, and kinda jonesing for a bowl of each (really, I love them both and would never, never combine them in a single serving--would too disparage the goodness of each!), but I am not-carbing these two weeks, and so they are weel off limits to me. Be a dear and get some, for me? Just be careful not to accidently grab a bag of the sweetened ones, right?

-yours in unsweetened fraternity (or is that sorority?)

if they looked like kix but weren't sweet i would agree with chisai and say puffed corn since they are almost the same size and shape. try it regardless because that stuff is good!

Gotta be puffed wheat from back in the day when the cereal section was one shelf long. Still shake my head in amazement every time I head down the cereal aisle at the market.

Sorry to be of no help on the cereal you are looking for, but your post made me think of this: http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001452.html

If you think it's dumb, tool around the site and read five more. The humor will catch up to you :)

Puffins?

Maybe it was Quisp. I think that was a Quaker cereal

P.S. Quaker has puffed grain cereal in boxes. Here is a link for their puffed wheat cereal. If you scroll down there is also a link for puffed rice and other cereals.

You know, if she's saying it isn't Rice Krispies, I think she knows what puffed rice is, right?

I'm trying to think of floatable cereal that isn't too sweet, which is hard! I agree, if you can tell us cereal nerds :) what the shape of the cereal was, we might be more help to you. I'm thinking Quisp or Crispix--but Corn Bran is a good guess. Because she didn't see it in her cereal aisle, I'm betting it isn't Life or Honeycomb?

I think all the discussion is because the definition of "sweet" varies from person to person...

I say fork over the $10-$15 and sample some cereals... I'd start with the puffed rice/wheat since it's the least sweet of the suggestions and move up from there.

it's gives me a warm, sugary glow to know that I'm not the only one on the planet who still remembers Quisp fondly! However, I'm going to have to go buy a big bag of puffed rice and a new bag of sugar to eat with it...

Okay, I was back in the cereal aisle today. Different store. There were NO puffed wheat or puffed rice cereals of any brand. I picked up a box of the Kashi 7-grain, and if there is a less appetizing depiction of a food product, I haven't seen it. So I put that back.

Did you know that there are giant Rice Crispies? I have no idea how giant they are, but that's what the box said. But I know what rice crispies taste like, so I put those back.

Then, across the aisle (so many cereals, they crossed the street) I found some Gorilla cereal. Can't remember the exact name, but they were round yellowish balls. Made by one of the newer companies with a healthy name. Obviously, they weren;t the ones I ate back then, but they looked pretty close. Had those in my basket when I spied Kashi Honey Sunshine. Less sugar and fewer ingredients than the Gorilla balls. The wrong shape, but the drawing on the front made them look puffy and relatively float-worthy. So I traded the Gorilla for the Sunshine.

Haven't opened the box yet. I had barely enough time to drop the box off at home before I had to scamper out again, and I got home in time for dinner. So I'm not craving right now. Maybe I'll have them for breadfast. Novel idea, that.

Anyway, I'll probably visit Whole Foods tomorrow. I'm hunting for ramps, but maybe they'll have interesting puffy cereals. Now I'm thinking I need to buy puffed wheat AND puffed rice, just for the fun of it.

Oh yeah, and on my way out of the store, I ended up in the snackfood aisle, another place I don't frequent. There were these yellow corn pop things that looked awfully similar to what I remember the cereal looked like.. But these were allegedly cheese coated.

And then I started wondering if my mother, in one of her less, um, motherly, moments, was feeding me snackfood instead of cereal. But no, I'm pretty sure the one I'm thinking of came from a cereal box and they weren't salty or cheesy.

The quest continues tomorrow.

Oh, and I know I've never eaten Quisp or Quake.

Team Flakes are one of the best cereals ever made. I don't eat a lot of breakfast stuff, but Team Flakes (with their team of for grains) is by far one of my favorites ever.

I don't meet too many people that know what they are/were.

@cycorider, I was looking for the Arrowhead Mills today, and didn't see any of them. I know I've seen them in one of the stores around here, but I'll definately check Whole Foods tomorrow. I have no idea why I'm on a cereal kick suddenly. Maybe because the weather is getting warmer and a chilly breakfast sounds like a good idea.

I think it's definitely Cookie Crisp...

(ahem, kidding)

I'm betting those cheesy coated snacks you encountered in Whole Foods is Pirate Booty. Pirate Booty is like CRACK for kids--mine find it irresistible for some reason?

I cannot wait to find out how your cereal tasting goes. Gorilla cereal...huh, what a crazy name!

Puffed Wheat

My grandmother once got us puffed rice (we asked for rice krispies, she thought they were the same). It came in a bag and not a box. So maybe it's by the bagged cereals...

Okay, I'm taste testing. I bought puffed corn and puffed wheat to go along with the Kashi Honey Sunshine. I looked at the puffed rice, and I'm absolutely sure that isn't the cereal I was looking for.

I'm eating these dry, to get the full effect.

First up, the puffed corn. These little morsels are a cross between popcorn and styrofoam, but in a good way. These are tasty, but not the cereal I was thinking of. I have an irrational urge to put butter and salt on them. Honestly, I don't think I'll eat these with milk, but they'll make a nice snack food. I don't think I'll buy them again, though. Popcorn is cheaper.

Puffed wheat (Arrowhead mills version) is smaller and crunchier than the puffed corn. I think I remember puffed wheat from when I was a kid, but it seems it was a lot bigger then. Maybe it's the brand or maybe I was that much smaller. These have a slightly toasty flavor, but not much else. Oddly, I like them. They remind me of the unpopped corn kernals that you get in popcorn, but obviously less corny since they're wheat. I can see eating these plain as a snack, or with milk. But this isn't the cereal I was looking for. I might actually buy these again.

On to Honey Sunshine. These are much smaller and a lot less yellow than the box leads you to believe. There's a bit of sweetness, but it's not so much that I'd reject these. Oddly, there's not much corn flavor. I expected more corn to come through, considering how few ingredients there are. Of the three of them, I'm going to say that this is the one I'd want to put milk on, rather than eat it straight. They aren't bad, I don't know if I'd buy them again, but I'll happily eat them until they're gone. But they aren't close to the mysterious cereal I was looking for. These are much denser than the cereal I'm after. The original was much airier.

I'm beginning to think that Kix or Corn Pops are the cereal, but that they've gotten sweeter since I last ate them.

Of the three, the puffed corn is probably the closest in flavor, but the cereal I'm thinking of is more of a manufactured texture, rather than being an actual popped grain. More like a cross between the Cheetos puffs and the puffed corn. And although I said the cereal wasn't sweet, it was a tad sweeter than the puffed corn.

So there we have it. If I could get single serving sizes of Corn Pops and Kix, I'd like to give them a side-by-side trial and see if either is close. But I don't want to buy a box of each, unless someone has an interesting recipe for disposing of the remains, if I decide they're too sweet to eat.

@Bobbie, I'm thinking there's probably a small upsurge in cereal purchases as people get nostalgic about the ones they used to eat, or they get cravings just because they're reading this.

I'm not sure you're going to be happy buying a box of Corn Pops. They're pretty much a sugar bomb...Kix pretty much taste unsweetened next to them. Heck, HONEY Kix taste unsweetened next to them. However, if you're really dying to find out and need recipes, crush them up as breading for chicken or fish. You're still going to notice the sweetness though. Or if you can do sweets but just not sweet cereal, you could make a Rice Krispies Treat kind of bar with them.

I can pretty much guarantee that the cereal you loved was Kix. I loved it, too. However, some time around 1992 or so (I remember where I lived but not the specific date), General Mills changed the Kix formulation and took the tiny amount of sugar out of the cereal and put it and some more sugar on the outside of the puffs. I remember because I was quite unhappy about it (I, too, do not like sweet cereal) so I wrote GM a letter. They wrote back, thanked me for my interest, enclosed a coupon for any GM cereal, and told me to try another one of their products as they were not changing Kix back to the old formula.

Reading all this makes me want to have the only sweet cereal I liked growing up: Honeycombs. I am going to have to buy a box. Tonight.

dbcurrie: It's odd that you have so much interest in a cereal that you have so little actual recollection of. Especially when you claim that you aren't even sure what inspired it.

Perhaps my crazy cereal post inspired you. It has certainly influenced a lot of other Serious Eats readers to go on a cereal binge. If so, please accept my apologies. ;)

My advice: maybe you should just find a new cereal that you like now that you are an adult, and forget about the vague, undefined memories of a long gone cereal that obviously didn't have a very big impact.

Cheers,

~ Paula

does anyone remember ironman cereal from kelloggs? i remember enjoying that.

@Paula, I think it was a TV show that did me in. It was one of those "how it's made" segments, and I was thinking that it looked just like some cereal that I used to LOVE when I was a kid. And seeing it brought back the memory of the flavor, even though I hadn't thought about them in years. Of course, watching this show late at night made me want the cereal for breakfast, but that wasn't going to happen.

The thing is that when I was a kid, I didn't have many cereals that I'd want a second box of. So it's not like this was one of many. And I feel the same way now. Most of the ones I've tried haven't made a second appearance.

So I decided that next time I was in the store, I'd have to see if I could find the old cereal again. As much as I like Cheerios, something different would be good. Since I liked this other cereal as a kid, I figured there was a good chance I'd like them now.

Anyhow, I think they might have been Kix, but as was noted above, they changed the formula in the 90s, so what I remember doesn't exist any more. On the plus side, I did follow some suggestions and I found some other cereals that are pretty good.

@ dbcurrie: Phew!!! I'm off the hook. Happy crunching!!! :)

@bitfiget, I've never heard of King Vitamin. So that's not it. I'm pretty sure it was the "old" formula for Kix, pre-1990's. So the cereal still exists, but they don't make it the way they used to.

Quaker Puffed rice or Puffed wheat. Straight out of the cannons. And if anyone else remembers (I think it was to the tune of the 1812 overture), it was:
The only cereal that's popped from guns

Thank you, heartofglass, for the link to 80s stuff. Wow! And they actually have "cereal finder" link and an alphabetic list of which cereals are still available. Sadly, my own personal favorite, Kellogg's Concentrate, seems no long available. Perhaps that was because you could eat the entire tiny box of Concentrate at one sitting rather than the recommended serving size. We loved that stuff, though.

The problem is, when cereals were made when we were little, they used sugar to do any sweetening that was needed. They use High Fructose Corn Syrup today and EVERYTHING I liked when I was a kid tastes overly-sweet to me now. I confirmed this recently when my husband bought Coke that was kosher for Passover--It has a yellow cap and is sweetened with sugar. It was delicious--and the first time I've actually LIKED Coke in a very long time. Besides, I'm convinced that if HFCS is not kosher, it MUST be bad for you!!!

Maybe it was quisp...quisp used to be my absolute fav...it had a cartoon martian on the box, puffy...just plain good and, sad to say, one that lost porpularity sometime in the 80's or 90's range....

# 130 is even better, it has to be it.

HONEYCOMB? The people who suggested this either have a really bad memory or an impared ability to register sweetness!

To me all the clues pointed toward puffed wheat too. I have a strange love/hate nostalgic memory of this cereal as well. Today, I would suggest making cereal bars from it, as I would most cereals!

The Gorilla cereal is Gorilla Munch, a healthy rip-off of Corn Pops by Nature's Path kid's line, EnviroKidz. Never been big on kid's cereals. I recommend the Heritage Flakes... especially for cereal bars! lol

http://www.naturespath.com/products/cold%20cereals?tid=5&brand=All&nutri=All

For all you cereal freaks out there, check these sites...
http://www.cereality.com/main.php
http://www.cerealicious.ca/index.asp

You guys crack me up...dbcurrie clearly said at the top that he/she wanted cereal that was not sweet. NOT that it wasn't sweetENED, but NOT SWEET. And yet you kept suggesting honey-this and sugar-that. People just don't listen, do they?

Jets vs. Kix = the cereal version of West Side Story?

When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...
From your first bowl of milk
To your last soggy flay..k...

I loved Kix until they changed the formula. They are airier now and don't have nearly the taste of the old ones.