We Tried Kellogg's New Hocus Pocus 2 Cereal. Here's How It Went

In the mid-summer of 1993, Walt Disney Pictures released a movie with an all-star cast and a pretty great premise. Per IMDb, said cast included Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler, and Kathy Najimy, among others in supporting roles. The film was "Hocus Pocus," and the premise was the resurrection of three semi-evil, semi-charming witches 300 years after their execution in Salem, Massachusetts. The most notable thing about the film, at first, was that it lost the studio many millions of dollars when it underperformed.

But as often happens with deserving movies, "Hocus Pocus" would develop something of a cult following, steadily growing in popularity to the point where now, nearly 30 years later, a sequel is coming. And as befits a sequel to a 1990s movie, among the marketing efforts being organized around "Hocus Pocus 2," which will debut on Disney+ on September 30th, 2022, is a "Hocus Pocus 2" cereal thanks to a partnership between Disney and Kellogg's. In case you weren't around back then, or you weren't paying much attention to breakfast cereal/major motion picture promotions, this sort of thing was common in the '80s and '90s, per Mental Floss. Examples included "The Addams Family" cereal, "Batman" cereal, "Gremlins" cereal, and more.

Disney "Hocus Pocus 2" Berry Brew cereal is available now, so you can sink your teeth into this sweet stuff before those three devilish witches light up the screen again later this fall. But should you?

Primarily, you'll find corn and sugar in this new Disney/Kellogg's promotional cereal. And some wheat and oats, too. There aren't that many ingredients, really, unless you count all the coloring agents (which we do), though many of the ingredients you will find are best avoided when possible. Let's go ahead and look at the entire list, as read directly from the side of the box of Hocus Pocus 2 cereal: Corn flour blend (which is "whole grain yellow corn flour and degerminated yellow corn flour"), sugar, wheat flour, and whole grain oat flour. Then we get to the "contains 2% or less" section, wherein we find: oat fiber, salt, soluble corn fiber, natural flavor (a bit vague, no?), wheat starch, invert sugar, yellow 5, yellow 6, red 40, blue 1, yellow 5 lake, red 40 lake, blue 2 lake, blue 1 lake, and BHT "for freshness."

Also listed are several vitamins and minerals to fortify the cereal's nutritional profile. Basically, you have some starchy ingredients with lots of sugar, some flavoring that's not quite explained but may or may not be berry-related and is natural though mysterious, sprayed-on vitamins, and lots of artificial coloring. 

So, to be clear, this is a pretty small box of cereal. This is not a knock — it's a unique promotional foodstuff, so we'd be more confused if "Hocus Pocus 2" Berry Brew cereal came in some huge family size 18-plus ounce box like Honey Nut Cheerios. Still, at a mere 7.7 ounces, the box of "Hocus Pocus 2" cereal is pretty small. Do factor that in when you consider the price. And note that the price of this new Kellogg's cereal seems to vary pretty widely depending on where you browse for it.

For example, we found a box of the stuff listed for $4.29 sold via Instacart, but we also saw the same 7.7-ounce box selling for just $2.50 via Giant. Also note that, according to Brand Eating, Kellogg's is also releasing a 12-ounce box of "Hocus Pocus 2" cereal which will apparently sell for $5.29, but we could not immediately independently verify that cereal box size or pricing, so don't spend too much time seeking out the bigger box. Our advice, if you really want to try the cereal, is to order whatever size you can at any reasonable price you see, because as you'll see, this cereal is going to pull a little disappearing act soon enough — one that will be a fair tribute to the magical witches that star in the breakfast cereal's namesake movie.

We can't tell you exactly how long Disney/Kellogg's "Hocus Pocus 2" Berry Brew breakfast cereal is going to be around, but we can tell you this: it won't be around forever. This is a planned limited-time food offering and it has been right from the start: It says it right there on the box, reading "limited edition" in all capital letters. There is not a set date for the cereal to be pulled from store shelves (or digital shopping carts, more like it) as you often have with limited edition menu items at fast-food and restaurant chains, but we imagine there was a limited production run of Berry Brew cereal, so once the stuff sells out, it will be gone forever.

That is, it will be gone unless you want to pay extra for a box of the stuff some enterprising seller snapped up and later posted for sale on an auction site like eBay. Did you know you can still get unopened boxes of classic movie tie-in cereals like "Batman" cereal there, for example? And often they're not all that expensive, either, these classic cinematic cereals. Though they are surely incredibly stale, so maybe don't eat anything you buy from a third-party seller, especially if it dates from a different century.

If you grew up eating sweet, sugary cereal with an indeterminate mild berry-like flavor, then this cereal is hardly going to be a trek into wildly new territory for you, and that's true in terms of taste and texture. Kellogg's new "Hocus Pocus 2" cereal has a flavor not unlike that of Fruity Pebbles or Froot Loops (yes, we know that the former cereal is made by Post, while the latter is a Kellogg's offering), albeit with a bit less, shall we say, aggressive fruitiness than those cereals have. In terms of texture, Froot Loops or Apple Jacks are an OK comparison, but in terms of crunch and mouthfeel (yes, we're going there with a cereal review — you can hop off at any point, but if you stick with us on this ride, you get the whole story, friends) the closest comparison that came to our minds was that classic General Mills cereal, Trix.

And lo and behold, what are the primary ingredients in Trix breakfast cereal? They are pretty close to what you'll find in "Hocus Pocus 2" Berry Brew, namely: whole grain corn, sugar, rice flour, some oils, some flavoring, lots of coloring, and some preservatives. So if you are familiar with classic cereals like Trix, Froot Loops, and the like, then you are going to be pretty comfortable with this new offering.

You remember how TV commercials for cereal back in the day usually slipped in some subtle language like "part of a complete nutritious breakfast" and depicted the kids enjoying a serving of breakfast cereal also eating fresh fruit, drinking juice, eating some protein, and such? There's a reason that cereals like this are never positioned as the main even for a healthy meal. That's because these cereals are not very healthy. Like ... at all, frankly. Let's dig into the details of the nutrition facts as laid out on the side of the "Hocus Pocus 2" cereal box, noting that we are only referring to a one-third cup servingof the cereal alone.

There's only a gram of fat per serving, so that's good news. There are two grams of protein, which is minimal but not nothing. A serving contains 210 milligrams of sodium, or 10% of your daily value, so that's neither good nor bad. As for carbohydrates, that third-cup serving of this starchy stuff nets you 34 grams, or 12% of your daily total. And then we get to the added sugars, of which there are 13 grams per serving, or more than a quarter of what you should have all day. As noted, you will get some vitamins and minerals, most notably iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, and folate.

Call it a touch of nostalgia for childhood breakfasts from the '90s, chalk it up to an admitted sweet tooth, or perhaps it's a mix of both, but yes, we liked this cereal. The flavor is not striking or all that specific, but simply has that fruity cereal taste (or "frooty," should we say) that so many do, and of course, it's super sweet, albeit not as in-your-face with the sugar as others we have tried, like certain flavors of Frosted Flakes, for example. The cereal was a satisfying snack when crunched dry, it was perfect with milk (we used whole milk, not skim, FYI), and it retained a decent starchiness even after sitting in the bowl of milk for a few minutes.

If you want our advice on how to best enjoy "Hocus Pocus 2" Berry Blend cereal, do an even 50/50 mix of this sweet, fruity cereal with a non-sweetened cereal like a classic Corn Flakes or Cheerios or even with a heartier bran or oat cereal. That way the sweetness will be moderated, the flavor less saccharine, and the nutrition in the bowl will be a bit more balanced. Because while we did enjoy this cereal, it's only going to be a treat in this household, and not one served to the kids, who are better off without all the added sugar.