Kookies generic no frills Cookie Crisp

I’ve been waiting for a no frills version of Cookie Crisp for years.

Cookie Crisp has always been an expensive cereal. It comes in a tiny box. It’s pricey as hell. Then when you get home it’s gone in less than 24 hours because it’s so damn good. If Jack Bauer were to torture me, he’d have the most success withholding my Cookie Crisp. A man can only stand so much without his Cookie Crisp.

I could never understand why lesser cereals like Cheerios and even Grape Nuts had generic knock offs but not Cookie Crisp. It was like Cookie Crisp had a top secret encrypted recipe that no one could break. Somehow the task of making small chocolate chip cookies is too daunting for anyone out side General Mills HQ. I know of at least one instance of a no frills company trying to lure away Lt. Mills with a tempting promotion, but the recipe remained safe.

Target stepped up a few years ago when they started carrying Cookie Crisp for $2.50 a box. That was a solid deal. Just recently, however, I snagged my first generic Cookie Crisp knock off.

Kookies generic no frills Cookie Crisp cereal

This is Kookies by America’s Choice. Yeah, look, in terms of truth in advertising, it is a colossal failure. See how many chips are in the cookie bits? Let’s compare to what’s actually inside the box. I placed three actual bits on the box picture.

Skimping on the chocolate chips.

I thumbed through a lot of cereal to find the one on the right. Most look like the other two: sadly devoid of chocolate chips. That is some penny pinching right there. A metric ton of miniature chocolate chip flakes costs what, two cents? Gimme an extra dash or two of them chips, Kookies.

That gave me an idea of what to expect taste-wise. I’ve eaten decent knock offs before. This is not one of them. It’s not that the cereal is bad. It’s actually very close to real Cookie Crisp. But it’s off. Off enough in a weird, cheap way that doesn’t leave your taste buds for several hours. I imagine Kookies developers crawling through corn fields to find the oldest, most bug-bitten corn cob not yet carried off by misfit field mice who’ve been ostracized from the rest of the mouse community and their higher quality cobs.

I’ll finish the box, because it’s edible, but this is not the Xanadu of cereals I hoped it might be.

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