I found this in one of my favorite stores….the 99 Cents Store! Okay, the lineup of boxes in the window looks 20 years old and yucky, but inside, their produce is ok, so I took a chance the cereal would be, too. (Coincidentally, on very cool  open-air bus tour of Los Angeles, I met a man who has a whole blog devoted to making meals bought from the 99 Cents Stores: the 99 Cent Chef!) I’ve never tried Life cereal before – looks too much like Shredded Wheat, which I don’t like. But isn’t this a fantastic image of chocolate in the life font?

The cereal was fresh. But the taste? Just, no thanks. The cereal part is OKAY, I guess, but who’re we kidding; only the chocolate counts and it is the teeniest little morsels of chocolate that look like dirt – or something. Yet I still kept eating it til the end because the box is just so purty and chocolate-y… I’m a chocolate dork! And this just goes to show you, like my sign painter teacher at Art Center used to say: “Buy everything if it has good design.” The box reeled me in.

Candyaddict has a press release and some reviews of this and Special K chocolate cereal (which I haven’t tried, drat.) She adds:

Apparently, these aren’t truly a breakfast cereal as the companies are encouraging folks to indulge in something they’ve already been doing: late-night snacking on sweets.

I don’t know about that; with milk and a spoon on the cover I’m still thinking breakfast. When I looked it up online to see if they still make it, they do, but the photo is different: here. But it’s all java-y or something, so I can’t copy the image. It’s poorly designed now, with a generic dark-haired father and daughter, the kind that indicates, “We love all races, but we won’t commit to any.” And an ugly big heart, and a spoon.

Sorry, I don’t buy cereal with people on the box. And chocolate isn’t a group activity, either.