Review: Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Raspberry Cereal Bars

I'm at a conundrum here, dear readers.  I've reviewed so many things that I'm finding myself at a crossroads of reviewing things that I know what they are going to taste like even prior to tasting them.  It kind of sucks that things are so predictable and sometimes I wonder why I even bother to review them, yet like a little kid that keeps putting his hand on the hot burner even though they've been told not to, I continue to do it.  With that, I'm led to a review of another Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bar with this review of the basic Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Raspberry Cereal Bars.  I picked up a box of eight of these on sale at Marsh for a ridiculously low 50% off price of $1.74.  Each bar in the box is 1.3 ounces and has 120 calories and a puny two grams of protein.

Remember how I said that I already knew how these were going to taste in advance.  It's the same way with the physical appearance too since this is a product intended to reach MASSIVE markets and be available at all (just like freedom...ha, ha, just kidding...we all know that's not true).  To cover it real quickly though, this is the standard cereal bar with the fruit filling of choice, which in this instance is raspberry and since it is that, it's a dark red in color like raspberries themselves.  The filling also was quite grainy as well like a raspberry jam can tend to be, so at least it was somewhat real (I'd hope so since the wrapper claimed this was made with real fruit).  The filling did smell tart like raspberries too, so they nailed the physical characteristics.  The cereal portion of the bar was unexpectedly (compared to some of the other Nutri-Grain bars) soft and pliable, but I'm sure that had more to do with the fact that it had been sitting out in the light on my desk all morning and not in a lukewarm and dingy pantry.  The bar was then topped with a dusting of loose cereal grains.  Fun.

Biting into this was no surprise at all.  It tasted like...raspberries mixed with a cereal bar.  Wow, total shocker there.  Sarcasm and cynicism aside, the raspberry flavor was tasty and did have that tartness that raspberry jam/filling typically possesses.  The grainy quality of the filling also brought some textural break up to the filling and also to the cereal bar portion of the bar as well.  As for that cereal bar portion, it was soft, doughy and moderately dry, but again, that's just the same as the rest of the cereal bars.

Buy It or Fly By It?  The only thing that was moderately surprising about this bar was the level of detail in the raspberry filling in the respect that it had the typical raspberry graininess, so that was a nice feature.  Outside of that, this was still a boring bar, but in this case, that's not a bad thing.  It was a nice and safe flavor that's worth eating if you are looking for something for breakfast or a mid-day snack and for that reason, it gets a BUY IT rating.

BUY IT!!