Cabel Sasser: ‘The Snacks & Cereals of 2024’

Welcome to 2025. The vibes are a little heavy, so, I’m trying very hard to focus on the things I can control — and yes, that includes remembering to share things that delight me like the latest #new snacks and cereals I find at the grocery store!!

Yeah. It’s an age-old, very-odd Cabel tradition.

This time, I thought I’d do a yearly summary. And, while I’m not providing any emoji ratings — just try them yourself and form your own dang opinion, ya dingbat — I will pause every now and then to call out a few things.

I firmly believe these posts serve as an archive of peak human achievement — Smithsonian, you have my number.

(Want more? Browse my entombed #new discoveries over on Twitter [RIP], or read post #1 and post #2 and post #3 here on my blog.)

Snacks !!

Potato Shreds hold a special place in our collective Panic hearts, because they were a strong presence at PAX, not far from our own booth, and they were handing out incredible quantities of sample Potato Shreds. There was also a giant potato and fork you could hold for photos. I really enjoy the sound of “Potato Shreds”, because it sounds a bit like a licensed 90’s Sega Genesis Game, programmed by Core. And it takes some guts to try to capture the instant Mac n’ Cheese cup market, but potatoes. I’d wish Idahoan the very best on this dynamic new product but I think it’s already been discontinued. 🙁

Let’s pause for a moment to talk about Ritter Sport. So, fine, I admit it — most of the stuff in these posts is, generally, garbaggio (Italian for ‘garbage’). Ritter Sport is not garbage. Ritter Sport is incredible. The flavors taste like actual things. The quality of the chocolate is quite good. The “Sport” shape (designed to fit in your SPORT COAT) is both a wonderful square and feels great to break apart. And the company? Seems great. Yes, they’re still a family company that has not been sold to Unilever or Nestle! Yes, they seem to take great care of their team! Yes, they have a giant collection of geometric abstract art at their HQ!? It is a life-long dream of mine to visit the Ritter factory in Germany, just to say thanks in person. I hope I get to do it someday. To be clear, I am not sponsored by Ritter Sport, but I would pay good money to be! (Is that how that works?) In conclusion, all of these bars were good, eat them.

The big breakthrough in the Reese’s line recently seems to be Some Kind Of Viscous Liquid At The Base technology, or SKOVLATB — ironically also the name of my favorite IKEA couch!, is one possible joke. It started with this caramel version, and they recently followed it up with a kind of a fudge. Does it improve what is already a nearly perfect candy product? Not really. Is it fun? Yes

This is not a new product — but it was new to me. My parents got this bag of Indian Gup Shup Peanuts at Costco, and they were a smash hit snack around Panic Towers — crunchy coated peanuts, super well seasoned. I can’t recommend them enough. The only hitch: if you’re me, you sing “Gup Shup Peanuts” to the tune of “Zoot Suit Riot”

I had high flavor hopes for Dirt Cake Oreos — mostly because I thought the texture of gummy worms would actually work pretty well paired with creme filling! But, alas, these only featured “Gummy Worm Inspired Spinkles On Top”. Booooooo! No chew, no sale. I also want to call out Mondelēz interesting new serving size visualization — as if the calorie count is thinking a lot about what it truly represents. I like it!

I don’t have a lot to say about this Oreo flavor, except I can’t stop thinking about the words “Sugar Inclusions”.

Every year brings at least one or two nearly-inedible novelty products, and this was a big one. There’s not a single person on the planet that wished their potato chip would taste like “world famous breakfast flavor”. But here we are, regardless, suffering endlessly at the hands of flavor scientists. They weren’t good.

This was a remarkable shape innovation — the first Cheeto puff shaped like a tiny little pepper. It’s just so cute!!

These two Lay’s “Flavor Drop: Global Edition” chips were honestly fantastic. Very rarely has a limited flavor been a smash hit. I guess it helps that they’re just importing the best from elsewhere — but please, keep doing it.

Chili Cheese Fries? Good! Philly Cheesesteak? Also good! But, oh my lord: Everything Bagel. See, on paper, it sounds fantastic, right? Classic Everything Seasoning®, sprinkled on a curved Pringle dried potato wafer. EXCEPT FOR ONE SMALL PROBLEM. Their vision of an “Everything Bagel” flavor INCLUDED THE DANG CREAM CHEESE. Artificial cream cheese is not great on a good day, but on a Pringle? NO.

Just a quick callout on Rold Gold Selects. It’s always amazing to me when a new product in an existing category shows up and dominates — I’m thinking about Dot’s Pretzels, now owned by Hershey (?) — and the old guard just can’t let anybody else have a piece of the pie and has to just completely copy the entire product. These are Dot’s Pretzels except there’s a sweet one and a Doritos Cool Ranch one. They were great. That’s what you get for trying to succeed, Dot’s!

(Yes, those are Bridgerton-branded baking mixes.)

NO. For a “New!” guy, this is a genuine crime! YEAR-ROUND AVAILABILITY DOES NOT A NEW MAKE!!

When the moon hits your eye, like a big-a pizza pie-a — Meltamoré, is not the name of this product, but it really should’ve been. The idea that you can heat up a Hostess product seemed like an innovation — but the result wasn’t.

I just have to take a moment to appreciate the naming team for coming up with PRINGLES MINGLES. They’re two flavors, mingling together! I’m not being sarcastic, it’s a world-class name (and fun logo!), even if I think the product might be short-lived — because these were neither Pringley-enough nor Mingley-enough.

I just realized that most of my callout paragraphs here are focused on bad things and, unfortunately, this is no exception. Of all the chips we tasted last year, these were by far everyone’s least favorite: Doritos Baja Fiery Mango featured a kind-of rotten super artificial bathroom-cleaner mango flavor that was simply too strong and too painful. Bad shark

Top Ramen is really on a roll lately, having discovered that rubes like me love a novelty ramen flavor. The S’Mores one? Honestly not that bad — kind of like a cup of Swiss Miss with some noodles in it. The Everything Bagel had a weird cream cheese funk. (I’m not sure why I took a picture of these ingredients, except maybe to call out the powerful combination of Cocoa, Molasses, Honey, Onion Powder, and Sucralose.)

We finished 2024 with this new Oreo, and I can’t figure out why it needed a whole-dang sub-brand — LOADED — when we’ve already had Blizzard flavored Oreos, which is this. Why not just call this “Cookies and Creme Oreos”? It can’t be denied that the concept of making an Oreo filled with Oreos is truly a Nobel-level innovation, which once again gives me an excuse to try to popularize the word: Oreoboros.

Finally, Doritos rang in the new year by dropping this new flavor which is… quite genuinely great! With a great package! It feels like it should be made permanent! It’s spicy, it’s sweet, and it has a unique genuine pepper flavor that we all loved. Seek them out, and enjoy.

Cereals !!

Before we get into it, I found this fascinating: a “New & Improved” callout, that actually seems… new and improved! Compare the old ingredients (right) with the new (left), as the new adds both Milk Chocolate and Semi-Sweet Chocolate as ingredients. That seems pretty important for, you know, a Kit Kat flavor. It’s almost like they tried to see if they could get away with the first receipt, and just didn’t.

I can’t quite figure out this Ghost cereal, as it’s entirely bereft of General Mills branding, and I don’t know what Ghost is. Why hide General Mills? I’ve also never seen a box say “Made with Lucky Charms™ Marshmallows” before. Weird!

(Sorry, real quick, somebody called Crumbl cereal “Gentrified Cookie Crisp”, 100% spot on.)

All of these Glazed cereals dropped at once, and it’s an interesting study. They obviously want “Glazed” to be a brand, but they’re not confident enough to make it wholly original — they had to hitch it to existing brands to get a jump start. I do generally like the design (except for that god damned apple), and that the “Family Size” banner is in an interesting font, but I did not enjoy hundreds of tiny vanilla glazed donut balls.

Folks, again: nothing beats retro packing designs, ever. They are almost always, without exception, better than work done today!! Also, this reintroduction tells me that General Mills never destroys a mold — this is the exact same cereal shape as 1993’s Sprinkle Spangles.

It must mean something. At the very end of the year 2024, General Mills decided to make a F•R•I•E•N•D•S cereal. This is exciting for someone, or many someones, for some reason, or many reasons, and it’s not for me to judge, or to question, just to accept and let the cereal pour over me. If they made a Donkey Kong cereal again I’d be so happy but I understand and accept and agree that someone else would look at it and be all “ugh god why Donkey Kong now?”. I get it. But also I need to be honest, I’ve never seen a full episode of Friends. I know there’s a funny guy named Joey and they spend a lot of time in a coffee shop and yes I know there’s a “Smelly Cat” song, I’ve seen a clip of that, and that’s really it. I think Jessica loved Ross, right? All the people seem nice and I know British people love this show, so it must feel like peak America. Is there a maybe brand new VHS box set of episodes that just came out? Is that why they made this? I wonder how much it cost to produce this. They had to develop the flavor, at minimum, unless it was already sitting on the shelf for an aborted Starbucks Cereal product. And then at least had to pay their designer, or multiple designers?, to do the box art/template. I wonder what the budget was and how much they need to sell to break even. How much from each box sold do we think goes to the license holder? And then, how is that royalty split up amongst the show creators, the production companies, the cast? Actually, do we think any of the cast actually get a cut of merchandising like this? Is it possible Joey gets a little cereal check every month? I really hope so. They all seem nice. Maybe “The One With The Vanilla Bean Latte” helps them all out a little. It must mean something.

Anyway, uhh, I hope you have a great 2025!! Let me know if you find any cool snacks or cereals.

Yours,

Cabel