Playing Russian Roulette with Cereal

Life is a lottery. One day it hands you roses, the next it leaves a flaming parcel of dog poo on your doorstep. This is how I feel when I open a new Kellogg’s Variety Pack.  At this point I’m usually hungover, and I’ve been too lazy to organise a proper breakfast, so I’m left with the choice of eight fun-sized boxes of cereal. 

I know these are ostensibly aimed at picky children, but if you double up on packets, you have just about enough to sustain an adult human being.  But here lies the challenge: which two cereals to combine?

This becomes especially tricky when you consider that there are eight packets, but only six different cereals.  Kellogg’s solution is to make up the numbers with a random final pairing, which can often lead to an unsuitable combination. It's the breakfast time equivalent of Russian Roulette.

So how do I avoid eating a cereal bullet?  How do I best buddy up these six cereals?  First, I’m going to examine them in more detail.

Coco Pops.  Considering the monkey on the packaging is named Coco, it seems likely Kellogg’s want kids to imagine they are eating bits of dessicated monkey dung.

Rice Krispies. Flavourless albino dust motes.

Frosties. Sugar flavoured flakes of corn.

Corn Flakes.  Corn flavoured flakes of corn.

Multi Grain Shapes. Fun-shaped shapes of amalgamated crops, including rice, oats and maize.  The Frankenstein’s Monster of cereal.

Honey Loops. These used to be called Honey Nut Loops but presumably due to an alarming spate of nut allergy incidents, the nuts have been removed, and replaced with god knows what.  Honey flavoured.

Now I know a little more about these cereals, I should be able to pick a perfect match for each of them.

Coco Pops are basically chocolate Rice Krispies, so that's an obvious combination.  Frosties are just Corn Flakes pasted in sugar, so those two go well together.  And Multi Grain Shapes and Honey Loops are similar enough in flavour and texture to make sense as the final pairing.

But what of the final two packets?  What if it wasn't one of these pairs?  What if it was, for instance, Coco Pops and Frosties?  Would that work? There are fifteen possible two-cereal combinations.  Discounting the three that I know already work, that leaves twelve.

The next step is for me to test all twelve cereal combinations.  I do this in one sitting, ingesting 300 grams of cereal and 2,839 mililetres, or roughly five pints, of semi-skimmed milk.  This is when my suspicion that I am lactose intolerant is confirmed, and I spend the next four hours in and out of the lavatory.

But what did I conclude from my findings?  Which of the six Variety Pack cereals is the most adaptable?  Who is the dependable utility player who will be happy to fill in at right back?

The answer is of course Rice Krispies.  Their adaptability lies in their very absence of character.  Coco Pops and Frosties together are just too sweet, and mixing the flaky cereals with the softer ones can lead to jarring differences in texture, resulting in an anxiety filled breakfast.  The bland softness of Rice Krispies makes them an ideal accompaniment to any of the other five cereals, adding bulk but not impinging on flavour.  It's the cereal for all occasions.

When my guts have finally settled down, and my recycling bin is full of empty cereal packets, I notice I'm left with just two boxes.  To my horror, I realise they are Coco Pops and Frosties.  Suddenly I know how Nicky from The Deer Hunter felt.