If you know anything about dessert, you know cupcakes are the hottest thing around, and have been for years. Wherever you look, cupcakes are huge — often literally, what with all the kits you can buy for making the damn things as big as your increasingly lard-padded head — and even when they’re normally sized, their prices are bloated enough to make up the difference.
And if you know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to breakfast foodstuffs, you know that nobody hops on a culinary trend like our good friends at Post. I mean, who can forget Bacon-Wrapped Alpha Bits? Or Golden Crisp with Quinoa? Or…Cupcake Pebbles?
Yes, that’s right. You heard me. Wipe that drool off your chin and hustle down to your nearest supermarket, because Post has done it again. In a sugar-mad blend of old and new, classic and cutting-edge, those crazy fuckers have taken yesterday’s “you cannot possibly be considering eating that for breakfast” menu and added a bold new stroke.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to surf the next wave of deeply inappropriate first meals, I’m going to try and give you an idea of what to expect — but oh my God, you guys, I wish the Web was scratch ‘n’ sniff, because words can’t describe the overpowering blast of cupcakeness that uncoils itself, panther-like, and lodges in your nostrils when you open a box of Cupcake Pebbles. It almost literally punches you in the face. If Betty Crocker and Mike Tyson decided to open a bakery together, I think they would aspire to the visceral scent-clubbing this cereal delivers — it’s so thick, by the time you tear open the bag, you feel like you’ve already eaten several bowls.
But don’t let that stop you from chowing down, because I’m here to tell you that if you’ve ever wished you could eat hundreds of tiny cupcakes in a bowl of cold milk, shoveling them madly into your mouth during the 35 seconds before they get soggy — and who hasn’t? — then Cupcake Pebbles is a dream come true. The only bad thing about it is that I can’t imagine where in the hell the “dessert as diabetes-inducing alleged breakfast” game can possibly go from here. All I know is that the dudes who make Cookie Crisp had better respond to this quickly. (Hint for Cookie Crisp dudes: Figure out how to turn ice cream Drumsticks into a cereal.)
In fact, Cupcake Pebbles are so clearly a horrible idea for breakfast that, in an industry first, Post has pretty much given up pretending you should eat it for anything but dessert. It’s sold in the breakfast aisle, but nowhere on the box are Cupcake Pebbles shown anywhere near a bowl, spoon, or milk; instead, you’re given all sorts of helpful tips on how to throw yourself a “Pebbles Party.” I was too busy shoveling myself into a sugar coma to read closely, but from what I can remember, “Pebbles Parties” are pretty easy to put together — all you need is a box of Cupcake Pebbles (natch), a box of yellow cake mix, an oven big enough to fit a cupcake that Dino can jump out of, a belt with at least three extra holes in it, and a terrific health plan. Oh, and family members who will drive you to the hospital for a shot of epinephrine instead of simply disowning your disgusting ass when they come home and find you passed out in a puddle of sweat, pink milk, and soggy Cupcake Pebbles.
But you know what? No one ever said it was easy, living life among the culinary vanguard. You have to pay a price for stepping outside the bland Midwestern standards other people have set for themselves at the breakfast table. Trix? Apple Jacks? Please — that shit is tired. Tomorrow’s fake breakfast cereals will beg for literal tubs of frosting even as they promise to be excellent sources of vitamin D, and Cupcake Pebbles are a delicious harbinger of that future. These are truly exciting times. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go swallow a bag of uncooked rice to try and soak up whatever the hell I just ate, and find a toothpaste strong enough to scrape the smooth coating of self-loathing off my teeth. What does Andrew Zimmern use?
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