The Worst Cheerios Flavor Tastes Oddly Similar To Another Cereal

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If you've been tasked with buying Cheerios for your family, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the choices facing you down at the grocery store. Cheerios offerings change regularly, but you can typically count on dozens of them being available at any given time. To help Cheerios shoppers choose which ones are worth bringing home, we reviewed 18 Cheerios flavors and ranked them from worst to best. Our reviewer found a clear winner in Cheerios Oat Crunch Almond, and she also had no trouble choosing her least favorite: Fruity Cheerios.

Fruity Cheerios, she noted, tastes overwhelmingly like Froot Loops. "Seriously," she said, "in a blind taste (and sniff) test, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference." Not being a fan of Froot Loops herself, she disliked Fruity Cheerios and called them disappointing. Much like Froot Loops, each cereal piece is the same flavor. 

Now, our reviewer is admittedly not a fan of fruit-flavored cereals. Of course, if you are a Froot Loops lover, the similar taste profile of Fruity Cheerios may well come as good news to you. If you enjoy the taste of fruity cereals, you might also like some of the other Cheerios options that our reviewer didn't find all that appealing, like Very Berry Cheerios and Strawberry Protein Cheerios.

Others around the internet largely agreed with our reviewer about the similar taste profile, but didn't always agree about it being a bad thing. Some pointed out that both Froot Loops and Fruity Cheerios also taste similar to Trix, for instance. While no one is going to bat for the originality of any of these cereals, many people don't mind the overlap. Some reviewers who also noted a similarity to Froot Loops were fine with the flavor and enjoyed the nostalgia factor. (Cereal lovers who grew up in the 1970s might also find the flavor similar to the now-discontinued Kaboom cereal.)

Reviewers on Amazon commented on the similarity as well, with many of all ages enjoying it. (In fact, we struggled to find anyone that didn't like it. Our reviewer appears to be unique in her Froot Loops distaste.) Many reviewers mentioned childhood nostalgia as a key reason they enjoyed Fruity Cheerios, and at least one person called it a healthier alternative to Froot Loops. However, whether this is true depends on how you define "healthy," and your own allergies or dietary restrictions. Both are sweetened cereals with added sugars — Fruity Cheerios in the form of corn syrup and Froot Loops with about 12 grams of added sugar per 39-gram serving — and Froot Loops contains added food dyes that you may not appreciate.