The Best And Worst New Cereals Of 2023 So Far

So far, most of the new cereals of 2023 are good ones. However, there are a few duds. Over the past few years, we've seen many strange and outrageous cereals come and go. While there are plenty of new options in 2023 that are trying to capitalize on iconic flavor experiences, there are several that we hope become classics. Whether you're looking for the high of a new flavor experience or looking for a brand with specific characteristics, your favorite cereal companies have you covered. New this year are brands designed as a late-night snack to help you sleep. You'll also find brands that fit special dietary needs like keto cereals, ones with low amounts of sugar, and alternative-grain or even no-grain cereals.

Most of the new cereals of 2023 are ones you can find at your local grocery store. However, you may have to look at specialty health food stores or online to find others. Ultimately it comes down to customer opinion as to how well these flavors do on the shelves and if we will see them for years to come or if they turn out to be big flops. Will you buy a weird new cereal just once to give it a try, or will it become an all-time favorite? We invite you to look through our list of best and worst new cereals of 2023 and then try some of the best ones to decide for yourself.

People who have grain sensitivities and peanut or soy allergies or who are looking for a really low-sugar cereal have been quite pleased with the lineup Three Wishes has brought to the world. Some of the other flavors available from Three Wishes include strawberry, cinnamon, honey, cocoa, fruity, and vanilla frosted. There's even a completely unsweetened one. The latest flavor is Three Wishes marshmallow. While it doesn't actually contain any real marshmallows, the new marshmallow flavor is making customers very happy. This grain-free cereal is made from chickpeas, tapioca, and pea protein. It only has 3 grams of sugar, but it still tastes incredible.

The new marshmallow flavor tastes a little like the vanilla frosted ones and gives some people the nostalgic taste of Clifford Crunch. It's quickly becoming a top fave of customers who have tried other Three Wishes flavors. One thing to keep in mind is that Three Wishes uses cane sugar and monk fruit as its sweeteners, so if you are looking for a sugarless option or aren't a fan of monk fruit, you might not like them. Otherwise, if you're looking for a tasty grain-free option, you're going to want to look for this one.

If you have a habit of eating a bowl of late-night cereal, Post wants you to try one that the company says will help you sleep. In the company's PR release about the product, it says the Sweet Dreams cereal lineup contains "a nighttime herbal blend and vitamins and minerals including Zinc, Folic Acid and B vitamins to support natural melatonin production." Post's Blueberry Midnight Sweet Dreams cereal is made from whole-grain wheat, rice, and degermed corn. It also contains almonds. Ingredients in the blueberry midnight flavor associated with good sleep include blueberries, chamomile, and lavender.

Some people find the brand helpful for falling asleep, while others find it merely calming. If you think about the effect that lavender and chamomile normally have on you, you're likely to get an idea of what to expect from the experience. The ingredients stay crunchy in milk, and the herbal lavender and chamomile flavors aren't too overpowering. For people who have difficulty relaxing enough to get to sleep, this might be just what they need.

Post's other Sweet Dreams flavor is honey moonglow. This one has lavender and chamomile, as the blueberry midnight flavor does. However, this cereal is supplemented by honey and vanilla flavors. Customers seem to rate the honey moonglow flavor slightly higher than the blueberry midnight one. Though blueberries aren't a featured ingredient in this flavor, Post uses both blueberry and carrot concentrate for coloring.

Like the blueberry midnight flavor, this one stays crispy in milk the whole time you're eating it. You'll also find bits of honey throughout your bowl. Consumers find it as helpful for relaxing as the other flavor. In fact, Vee Warwell said in her Amazon review, "I had no idea I was that tense until I had this cereal." While it may not be the best idea for a breakfast cereal and your results with the relaxing properties of the cereal will certainly vary, curling up with Honey Moonglow Sweet Dreams as a late-night snack might be a more comforting experience than you ever expected.

With Lucky Charms already boasting marshmallows, it makes sense that a chocolate version would gravitate toward a s'mores flavor. Whether you're a s'mores fan, a Lucky Charms fan, or both, we think this new flavor is going to delight you. When Lucky Charms released its s'mores flavor in January 2023, customers found the box filled with chocolate cereal pieces, graham pieces, mini white marshmallows, and traditional Lucky Charms marshmallows. After all, it wouldn't be Lucky Charms without the charms-shaped marshmallows.

Customers were thrilled with the latest Lucky Charms flavor, giving it a 4.6-star rating on Amazon. It's a new twist on a classic cereal, and the company did it right. The graham pieces are reminiscent of Golden Grahams, which isn't surprising since Golden Grahams is a fellow General Mills brand. The only worry with this new cereal is that Lucky Charms will use its marketing magic to make this new flavor disappear from shelves too soon.

The spry Cap'n may not look it, but he's turning 60 in 2023. Cap'n Crunch had a real-life birthday bash at the Margaritaville Resort in Palm Springs, California, on April 15. It was free to attend, but you had to be lucky enough to snatch up one of the tickets while they were still available. If you missed the part (most of us did), you can still help the Cap'n celebrate with Cap'n Crunch's Birthday Crunch. Since it's a birthday cake-flavored cereal, you can even use it to celebrate your own birthday or that of a family member or friend.

Despite the name, not many people think Birthday Crunch tastes like an actual birthday cake. A better approximation might be cotton candy. So if you're having Cap'n Crunch Cotton Candy Crunch withdrawals and aren't willing to pay eBay prices, this flavor might be a good alternative. Although, others have said they can taste a little birthday cake flavor, even if the cereal on the whole reminds them more of the Cap'n Crunch Oops! All Berries flavor. Either way, it's an interesting new Cap'n Crunch flavor to try.

The Walt Disney Company turns 100 in 2023, and you've probably already seen Disney 100 Years of Wonder merchandise popping up in stores. Beyond T-shirts and other memorabilia, you'll also notice Disney 100 Years of Wonder cereal in the cereal aisle. Throughout 2023, the boxes will feature a rotating cast of Disney and Pixar characters from productions we all know and love. So you can bet people will be collecting every box and selling them on eBay for years to come. But don't neglect to actually try tasting them while they're still on shelves in 2023 because it's tasty. The fruity version is blue and red and looks like miniature Mickey Mouse heads, which makes them abnormally large. Meanwhile, the confetti cake version is simply round and contains no dyes.

Super collectors will be on the lookout at Walmart (and later on eBay) for a $40 Mickey Mouse-themed metal time capsule box, which is the premium collector's item from this series. Inside, you will find another collector's item — a box full of Disney 100 Years of Wonder cereal designed to look similar to a 1934 box of Post Toasties. Post Toasties was the first cereal Disney and Post created together.

The latest Post and Disney collaboration seems to be a customer-pleasing invention. The confetti cake-flavored ones are very crunchy and smell and taste like vanilla-flavored cake. It's impressive as far as cake-flavored cereals go. The fruity version of the series is comparable to the flavor of Froot Loops or Trix, but the size makes them interesting.

Trader Joe's has several great cereals, and when we tried Trader Joe's flakes and strawberries cereal, we were fairly impressed with it. The cereal itself is wheat and rice flakes, like Special K. The freeze-dried strawberries among the flakes enhance the overall flavor of the flakes as they plump up in milk. You'll appreciate their ability to stay crispy in milk so that you don't end up with a soggy mass of wet cereal and fruit in your spoon by the end of your breakfast. These can be easily compared to Kellogg's Special K Red Berries cereal, but we think the Trader Joe's version tastes better. It's hard to beat the price at only $2.99 a box, while the Special K version sells for $4.98 and up.

A serving of either one of these brands is only 140 calories. However, a serving of Special K Red Berries is only one cup, while a serving of TJ's flakes and strawberries is 1¼ cup. They have the same amount of fat, sugar, and protein, but everything else is different. The Trader Joe's version has 10 more milligrams of sodium, fewer carbs, and less fiber. While it's cheaper and comparable in most areas, the real difference comes in the vitamins and minerals. Trader Joe's version has no vitamins D, A, C, B12, or E and no riboflavin. It has less iron, folate, and niacin than the Special K version. However, it provides more thiamin and potassium. It also provides pantothenic acid (also known as vitamin B5) and zinc, which Special K doesn't have.

The new Pebbles Crunch'd varieties featured Barney and Fred as rock stars and were a total flop. However, Berry Pebbles, which celebrates "women who rock," has been a hit. The back of the box features women who have been pioneers in their professional fields, like the first female veterinarian to receive a degree in the United States, Florence Kimball, as well as the first American woman to fly in space, Sally Ride.

Unlike the Crunch'd cereals, Berry Pebbles kept its original rice cereal recipe, just with a new berry flavor. So the trick seems to be for Pebbles to not change the texture of a classic cereal. Post announced that Berry Pebbles was a limited-edition cereal that would only be available briefly starting in March 2023 for Women's History Month. Pebbles fans loved the new flavor, and it became an instant favorite. Upon first taste, customers were wishing berry was a permanent flavor and were scrambling to buy extras so they'd have them after the limited supply runs out.

Kellogg's released a special-edition Rice Krispies spring color mix in 2023 with blue and green colors. It was a good idea, as you can see from the inset picture on the box, which demonstrates that you can use them to make cute, spring-themed Rice Krispies treats. The colors of the normal tan Rice Krispies complement the pastel blue and green Rice Krispies, which definitely embodies the feeling of spring.

Don't expect a new flavor here, though. If you're buying them just to have differently colored Krispies than usual, you'll get what you expect. In terms of ingredients, the only non-vitamin difference in the ingredient list between the original Rice Krispies and the one with spring colors is the addition of Yellow 6 and Blue 1 coloring. The original version has no food coloring in it. So if you're trying to stay away from food dyes, this might not be the cereal for you. However, if you're looking for a color twist rather than a flavor twist on classic Rice Krispies, you'll like them.

Kellogg's introduced Froot Loops Color Mix-Ups in 2022, a new spin on the classic cereal, this time including multicolored loops. In 2023, the company decided to try another type of mix-up with size mix-ups rather than color mix-ups. When you open up a box of Froot Loops Mega Mix-Ups, you'll find that it includes both regular-sized and jumbo-sized Froot Loops in the same box (though with more regular than mega-sized cereal pieces). Froot Loops Jumbo Snax first came on the scene in 2020, and this is the first time we've seen both large and small loops together in the same package.

Since the new Mega Mix-Ups just combines sizes of a classic flavor, the only gamble is whether the smaller, traditional-sized loops might get soggy before the larger jumbo-sized loops. Luckily, both stay crisp while you're eating them, so this never became an issue. Since the new version has the same flavor as the original sugary and citrusy cereal that fans have grown to love over the years, it has been a hit.

As of May 2023, there are 18 flavors of Cheerios available. For those of us who remember when there were only plain and honey nut cheerios available, this is like winning the lottery. However, not every flavor is equal. General Mills rang in the new year with a new oat crunch berry Cheerios flavor. Customers looking for a multigrain cereal flavored with natural fruit were likely happy to have this option on the shelves. It is made from whole-grain oats, corn, and rice. While it does contain sugar and corn syrup as the third and fourth ingredients (respectively), it also relies on raspberry, blueberry, and strawberry puree for sweetness and flavor. So it ends up with only 11 grams of sugar per serving instead of a bucketload. We also like that it relies on vegetables, fruits, caramel, and annatto for coloring rather than fake dyes.

Customers, though, tend to be lukewarm about it. They say it reminds them of the flavors from other brands like Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries and strawberry Honey Bunches of Oats. While it doesn't have real pieces of fruit like strawberry Honey Bunches of Oats, the real fruit puree in the ingredient list gives it a berry flavor that not everyone likes, and which seems to be too strong and sweet for some but indiscernible for others. The new cereal is actually the lowest-rated Cheerios box on the Cheerios website, with only 2.8 out of five stars. This rating is fairly disappointing considering that another Oat Crunch variety, oats 'n honey, has 4.8 stars.

Sometimes "limited edition" means it's a flavor we're going to beg to see back on the shelves when it's gone. Unfortunately for the frosted lemon-flavored Cheerios, that's probably not going to be the case. They're not horrible, but they're nothing special either. We're disappointed they were so lackluster because a lemon cereal done right could be amazing.

For the most part, reviewers don't feel like they taste much like lemon. If you taste them without knowing what flavor they're supposed to be, you'd likely not guess they're supposed to taste like citrus. Since there's no lemon on the ingredient list (just "natural flavor"), it's not that surprising. Frosted lemon Cheerios are sweet and have a citrus-esque taste that might remind you of Froot Loops, but they're really nothing outstanding. They're simply made from whole-grain oats with a slightly citrusy taste and only 11 grams of sugar per serving, but you're probably not going to miss them when you can't find them anymore. As of May 2023, Cheerios no longer lists them as an available flavor, and you can only find them online.

We've seen other frozen-treat cereals cycling through the aisles in the past few years like Wendy's Frosty cereal and a Drumstick cereal. However, neither of those creations tried to approximate the sensation of eating a cold treat when they transitioned from frozen treats to cereal. However, when Kellogg's teamed with ICEE to make a cereal flavor, they decided to try to make a flavor that simulates the freezing sensation of consuming a real ICEE. The flavors in the package are cherry and blue raspberry, so eating them together in the same bowl is like, one would assume, getting a cherry and blue raspberry swirl ICEE.

Reviewers haven't been that impressed with Kellogg's ICEE cereal. For the most part, it's just average in the taste department. It has a nice smell that makes you think it's going to be amazing, but the taste profile is simply berry without any real wow factor. It does leave behind a slight tingle like you would experience if you ate it after brushing your teeth, albeit without the mint flavor. So at least it's nice as a newish breakfast experience for people who don't usually mix toothpaste and breakfast, even if you don't end up buying it again.

Before February 2023, there were only three flavors of Wonderworks Keto Friendly Cereal: peanut butter, chocolate, and cinnamon. Now, fruity cereal lovers have a fourth choice with the brand's new "fruity" flavor. The ingredients are nothing you'd expect in a cereal, with ingredients like milk protein concentrate, whey protein isolate, soluble corn fiber, and four different types of oil. The color comes from vegetable juice, and it can claim just 1 gram of sugar since it uses stevia as the sweetener. Unlike most cereals, there aren't a lot of added vitamins.

A small number of reviewers seem to genuinely like this new flavor. However, the majority don't find it very palatable. They talk about it having a bad texture, not tasting very good, and leaving a weird residue and aftertaste on their tongue. For a food with only 1 gram of sugar, it's interesting to see so many people complain about how overly sweet it is, too. It has both natural and artificial flavors, but it seems like the artificial flavor stands out. You're probably best skipping this flavor and trying one of the many good keto cereals instead.

In January 2023, Post announced it was adding a crunchier version of its Pebbles cereal. So if you see your favorite Pebbles cereal with "Crunch'd" at the end of the title and a picture of Fred and Barney as rock stars on the box, you'll know you're getting the crunchier version. You can either add them to milk as usual or just snack on them by the handful. Cocoa Pebbles Crunch'd are puffy cereal pieces made from corn and oats instead of rice, and they come in large, puffy star shapes instead of small flakes.

Unfortunately, cereal fans aren't impressed with Cocoa Pebbles Crunch'd. Rather than tasting like chocolate, Cocoa Pebble Crunch'd reportedly taste bland and like chemicals. The larger shapes should have kept them from getting soggy quickly, but customers reported the cereal turns to mush in no time. Customers who bought them by mistake and people who bought them on purpose were ready to go back to the original Cocoa Pebbles after one bowl full.

When Post decided to release a crunchier version of its Pebbles cereals, it also released a Fruity Pebbles Crunch'd version. Like the cocoa version, the fruity version comes in fruity, puffy star shapes and is made from corn and oats instead of rice. They're meant to be great for snacking as well as eating with milk.

As with Cocoa Pebbles Crunch'd, most Pebbles fans aren't impressed by the changes. One of the few people who seemed to like them said they had lost their sense of taste from COVID-19, so the crunch won them over. However, for people who haven't lost their sense of taste, they weren't too impressed. Like with the Cocoa Pebbles Crunch'd version, many people bought it by mistake because the box is so similar to the original. The flavor isn't the same as the original Fruity Pebbles at all, and most customers who've submitted reviews for the product seem to not like it. Some people compared it to Trix but said it doesn't taste as good. In fact, it's bad enough tastewise that many people said they threw away the box without finishing the cereal.

Both young kids and adults who are young at heart have been playing with and collecting Hot Wheels cars since 1968. Capitalizing on this, Ralston released the first Hot Wheels cereal in 1990, featuring marshmallow cars. You can imagine the thrill of seeing Hot Wheels cereal on the shelves again for a new generation. But what would it even taste like? Somehow, General Mills landed on a lemony flavor that is reminiscent of Froot Loops as the flavor that should thrill Hot Wheels fans. But we're not sure that was the wisest choice. How many lemon-flavored cereals have become fan favorites other than Froot Loops? We won't wait while you try to think of one.

The one redeeming feature of the Hot Wheels flavor is that it has marshmallows. So it's sort of like eating Froot Loops with marshmallows. Unfortunately, it's just not a stand-out flavor with so many other options available. Since it doesn't come with an actual Hot Wheels car prize inside the box, you might as well just eat some other cereal that tastes better — like Froot Loops.