Candy Corn Pebbles - Target: Marlton, NJ
Candy Corn Pebbles -
Target: Marlton, NJ
I spent all of October searching for this cereal. I tried Wegman's, Shop Rite, Walmarts, Targets, and no one had it on the shelves. Yesterday I went to Target (it's now November) to snatch up some clearance Halloween goodies, and there it is! Fully stocked! They didn't put it out on the shelves until November? What sense does that make? Urg, part of me thought I shouldn't get them, because who knows if any of you can even find these in your area, but the satisfaction of finally buying them was just too much to resist.
The box is a lot smaller and skinnier than other commercial cereals on the shelves, but that seems to be normal for the Pebbles line. As you can see, the design on the front of the box is really bright and busy, but it works. (Although I think the artist missed an opportunity to make the little black marks on Pebbles' clothing into bats, but it's still pretty cute.)
Side note: Do kids even know who Pebbles and BamBam are? Do today's children only know these characters as someone on a cereal box? Or do the Pebbles Cereals really market themselves towards parents and 20-somethings like me who occasionally eat cereal for dinner after work? (Or am I alone in my sad cereal eating habits?)
Turn the box over, and BAM! It's even busier than the front! (It seems to photograph worse than it looks in real life.) There's a recipe for whoopie pies that uses this cereal, which is interesting, but there's way too much going on here for me to focus on it. If the spiderweb tablecloth at the bottom was purple, or maybe even white, it would break up the overall orange scheme and ground the image, making it a lot easier to look at. As it is, this is like someone tried to cram all the classic Halloween novelties into one photo, and it just isn't working.
I opened the bag and inhaled the processed cereal aroma. I'm trying to figure out how to describe this smell, but it's tricky, so bear with me. To me, this cereal smells like the plastic tubs of frosting you can buy at the grocery store, but not the name brand kind, the no frills store variety. There's a pretty strong artificial vanilla and butter aroma, so the more I smell this, the more I start to think that this smells like the pre-made marshmallow squares you can buy in individual packages. Overall, the scent does not smell like candy corn in the slightest, but that didn't scare me off. (I'm not a huge candy corn fan anyway.)
Since the Pebbles cereals get soggy so fast, I tried the cereal dry and then tried it again with milk.
Dry, the cereal is lightly sweet and crispy, with a marshmallow-square-like flavoring. There used to be a Rice Krispy Treats cereal I ate as a kid (do they still make that? They do. ) and this tastes a lot like that, but it doesn't have the marshmallow-y clusters and texture. After the initial flavoring wears off, your left with a slightly unpleasant aftertaste that is a bit on the chemical-y side, but it's mild.
With milk,it doesn't stay crispy long, so if you like your cereal crunchy, you better eat fast. The overall marshmallow flavoring remains, but the milk makes it seem a lot milder, and the milk seems to negate that chemical taste I get when eating the cereal dry.
Growing up, I was never a huge fan of the Pebbles cereals, I prefer my cereal to be crunchy and these get soggy way too fast, but now that I'm an adult (and writing a food blog) I like checking out their limited edition flavors. This flavor does not taste like candy corn to me at all, but I ended up really liking it! I think this might be my favorite Pebbles cereal to date, and I am really happy I bought it. The box is small, so I don't see it lasting longer than this weekend, but I think I'll try and buy another box before this disappears. It's artificial, but I enjoy the weird marshmallow square flavoring this has. If I made marshmallow treats with these, I bet they'd be amazing.
If you see this on the shelves and you're normally a fan of Pebbles cereals, I think you'll really like these. If you're not a fan, like me, but you remember eating marshmallow treats as a kid (or you enjoy the Rice Krispy Treats Cereal) You'll enjoy this seasonal item too.
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