Magic Spoon is the latest evolution of cereal—a pantry staple that’s wound a strange path through American history. A path that begins in 1863 when James Caleb Jackson invented the first cereal, dubbed Granula, reportedly so hard that you had to soak it overnight to make the graham-flour mixture edible. John Harvey Kellogg, a devout Seventh-day Adventist and his brother Will created Corn Flakes in 1895. The original formula was in line with John Harvey’s ultraconservative, pseudoscientific belief that a diet of flavorless foods would help people avoid sexual urges.
After Kellogg’s Corn Flakes hit the market, it was off to the races for breakfast cereals. By the 1950s, when Frosted Flakes popped up on grocery store shelves, breakfast cereals were in their heyday, making way for cereals like Reese’s Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Waffle Crisp, which became sugary sweet household names in the ’90s and early aughts.
But today, the mighty have fallen. With the exception of a few isolated months during the early onset of the pandemic, cereal consumption has been in steady decline since at least the 2000s. Between 2000 and 2015, sales dipped nearly $4 billion. In 2021 sales of ready-to-eat cereals fell 8.7%, only to sink 3.9% further in 2022.
In a 2013 piece for the Wall Street Journal, Kellogg’s then CEO John Bryant pointed out how morning habits have started to leave cereal behind. Consumers, he said, want more convenient, portable food with a hook—say, gluten-free or high in protein. That’s where the next generation of internet-friendly, super-cereals has started to shine.
OffLimits is gluten-free and vegan and offers TikTok-able gimmicks like cereal glitter. Three Wishes is low-sugar and made from chickpeas. Wonderworks bills itself as keto-friendly and comes in four straightforward flavors. RX, known for its protein bars, has turned to plant-based protein cereal too. But no one comes close to Magic Spoon, the original internet cereal. Founded in 2019, Magic Spoon took the internet by storm in 2020, offering high-protein, no-sugar cereals in Cocoa, Frosted, and Cinnamon Roll. They can be found on the shelves of your local supermarket, and many are available for order online.
Magic Spoon makes a big promise: delicious, sweet cereals without any traditional sugars and with the bonus of added protein. But how good do they actually taste—and which flavor is best? I tested six flavors of Magic Spoon cereal, each in a bowl of milk, to determine which is worth your precious breakfast time. From delectable to downright unholy, here’s what I found.
The Sickeningly Sweet: Frosted
On crinkling open the bag of Magic Spoon’s Frosted, I was greeted with a strong, chemical aroma. The kind you get from a plug-in scent diffuser or one of those tiny Christmas trees you hang in your car. It was vanilla and cinnamon mainly, but also stale caramel. Unfortunately the first bite didn’t offer much improvement. It tasted of that same cloying vanilla, so overwhelming I couldn’t finish the bowl.
The Mysteriously Mild: Fruity
Magic Spoon’s Fruity cereal is not meant to taste like actual fruit, is it? My bowl smacked of a kind of sweetness not found in the natural world. Instead, it was reasonably close to Froot Loops—a resemblance I’m sure is on purpose. My first bite smelled like lemon-lime soda and was grounded by a vague, generically fruity flavor. Think of kissing someone who’s just eaten a handful of Skittles. It was pretty good and would definitely satisfy some late-night cereal cravings.
Just Nutty Enough: Peanut Butter
Now we’re talking. Peanut Butter smelled like roasty, candied peanuts. Its flavor was rather mild, but the smell was robust enough to trick my brain into enjoying it. No, it didn’t have the deep nuttiness of actual peanut butter, nor did it have the saccharine sweetness of something like Reese’s Puffs. It landed somewhere in the middle. Peanut Butter struck a good balance of savory and sweet: a breakfast I could eat a bunch of days in a row.
The Most Mellow: Cinnamon Roll
On first sniff, Magic Spoon’s Cinnamon Roll loops seemed hyper-sugared and blasted with sweetness. But the taste was a different story. Each crunch gave way to toasty cinnamon caramel with the slightest breeze of coconut. The more I chewed, the more I realized: This tastes just like a Samoa. Although it wasn’t the most intense flavor of the bunch, I loved the easy, warm flavors of Cinnamon Roll.
The Pure Heaven: Blueberry Muffin
Did it taste like blueberry muffin as advertised? No it did not, but that’s not the point. I was treated to something even better. What greeted me when I opened the bag of Magic Spoon’s Blueberry Muffin was a heavenly mix of vanilla and berry aroma that melded happily in each bite. The angels sang, the clouds parted, and a light shone from the heavens as I munched away.
The Unchallenged Winner: Cocoa
As the little loops of Magic Spoon’s Cocoa tinkled into my bowl, I was prepared to compare them to Cocoa Pebbles, and assumed they wouldn’t come out on top. The cereal swiftly turned my cereal milk into chocolate milk—that was a good sign. The folks at Magic Spoon, I thought to myself, might be onto something. Things only got better from there. It was satisfyingly chocolaty, and as I devoured my bowl, I began to realize, it kind of tasted like chocolate pudding! Is there higher praise one could give a cereal?
