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!

Hot on the heels of one of the first pumpkin-spice themed cereals we’ve run into, Kellogg’s has their own Fall variant as well, in the form of perennial old-person breakfast: Special K. Considering the deluge of limited edition pumpkin-flavored foods doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so we may as well get used to it at this point…

Pumpkin Spice Special K is similar to the aforementioned Cheerios from last post, in that it’s an adult cereal, utilizing just the subtlest of pumpkin spice flavoring. Special K is pretty bland on its own, so the addition of virtually any flavor will only be an improvement. This version features pumpkin spice in two forms: on the corn flakes themselves, plus little clusters they refer to as “spice clusters”.

The flavor, as mentioned, is incredibly subtle on the corn flakes. It’s nothing special, your average, run-of-the-mill pumpkin spice taste, maybe with a little bit different due to the corniness of the cereal. The spice clusters meanwhile are a lot more flavorful. I’m actually not entirely sure what they’re made of, since they actually taste and feel a lot like cookies. The box said they have cardamom, ginger, all spice, and cloves, so in a way they’re kind of like little pumpkin spice cookies.

While the spice clusters are tasty, the major problem with this cereal is that these clusters (the best part) aren’t very common, and the few there are mostly just sink to the bottom. It’s kind of nice to get a mouthful or two of them at the end, but the rest of the cereal experience is pretty bland and kind of shitty. The flakes don’t stay very crunchy for very long either, though this is likely just an overall weakness for Special K in general.

Also, not to just pile on, but unlike Pumpkin Spice Cheerios, these things don’t contain any pumpkin whatsoever.

Pumpkin Spice Special K might be appealing to the most basic of basic bitches and bros, particularly the ones that actually eat Special K to begin with. But for everyone else, it’s really not worth wasting a breakfast over. On top of this, while the Pumpkin Spice Cheerios weren’t that great either, the one thing they had going for them was that they actually did have a strong flavor of literal pumpkin taste. Special K though, not so much. It’s more in the territory of just spice.

Should you eat Kellogg’s Pumpkin Spice Special K?

No

(unless you already really like Special K)