The Cereal Report is a column in which PCFG conducts various cereal reviews, of new or limited products, as well as providing brief backgrounds on the cereal. Cereal is delicious and fairly cheap as far as meals go. Everyone should eat cereal!

Recently, an Aldi supermarket opened nearby us and we’ve started doing a lot of grocery shopping there due to their super delightful prices. Recently we picked up the following cereal:

Much to my own pleasant surprise, this turned out to be one of my new favorite cereals, and not just because it only cost $2 bucks.

If you’ve never heard of Aldi before, basically they’re a supermarket chain that cuts lots of corners and sells knockoff products to charge the lowest prices possible. BUT! But, I should say, they do all this in a really high-end, classy fashion. The corners they cut are negligible, like free shopping bags/shopping carts, and their knockoff products are incredibly high quality, to the point of being on par or even better than their source material. Either way, it boils down to a really nice shopping experience at drastically lower prices, for products that are just as good. That brings my to my next point.

Millville is a brand used exclusively for Aldi, which produces some cherished cereal favorites like Fruit Rounds and Corn Nuggets and Crisp Rice and other hilariously literal product names. Yet, unlike actual knockoff brands which can be hit or miss quality-wise, Millville supposedly is a brand operated and overseen by General Mills (get it? Mills? Millville? Ah?), based on what I was able to find about them online and heard in-store. So in reality their stuff isn’t actually knockoff cereal, they’re pretty much the exact same foodstuffs, just marketed under a different brand and title due to copyright bullshit. Some are exact same products as other brands, and some are similar formulations. So yeah, when you buy their Marshmallow Puff Charms or whatever it’s named, you’re basically just buying Lucky Charms in a different box. Lucky the Leprechaun is great and all, but screw that; I can deal without if it means spending less money. A lot of cereal is ludicrously expensive, so it’s really bangin’ to buy a box for $2.00 instead.
But back to this particular cereal, Blueberry Crunch. It’s a bit of an enigma in that it’s not really a pre-existing cereal marketed under another name. No, Blueberry Crunch is its own unique little thing, but still made by General Mills/Millville and as such it tastes awesome.

So let’s all agree right off the bat here, it definitely is made using the same process that Cinnamon Toast Crunch does. It looks mostly the same, but this has little specks of blueberry mixed into the pieces. The cosmetic differences are small, but the taste is way, way different for obvious reasons. Much to its namesake, it tastes a lot like blueberries. And that’s just a delight, considering blueberry cereals never really caught on, with just Booberry making its yearly rounds every Fall. The sugar coating is sweet but not tooth-destroyingly sweet. As a whole, Blueberry Crunch has a really mellow flavor. It’s not bland, but rather nothing about it sticks out; don’t get me wrong, that’s a great thing. Cereal formulation has become much of a pissing contest recently, with companies vying to be the most chocolatey or the most cinnamony, when really cereal is meant to be a hardy meal. A nice fruit flavor is good, but cereal doesn’t need to approach candy levels of flavor bite to them. Blueberry Crunch avoids this, with just a really pleasant blueberry flavor and mild sweetness to it. It lingers on your tongue, and the ensuing cereal milk is absolutely frigging scrumptious.

To be honest, I’d love this cereal no matter what, or no matter who made it. The fact it’s sold at Aldi for just two bucks is a sweet bonus since you can get two boxes of it for less than the price of just one name-brand cereal at other places. Though in fairness, its exclusivity is also somewhat of a downside too since it guarantees that if there’s no Aldi markets around you, you won’t be able to find it in any other stores unfortunately. If you have an Aldi closeby, absolutely go buy some.

Should you eat Millville Blueberry Crunch?

Yes

(provided, you have an Aldi supermarket near you)