It’s a peanut butter battle between Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Reese’s Puffs

The first month of 2026 was a big one for new cereal releases. I kicked off the year with reviews of Cocoa Loops and Froot Loops Glazed Blueberry Donut Holes before moving on to Confetti Cheerios, Cap’n Crunch’s Mystery Crunch and most recently the Super Mario Galaxy Movie-themed variants of Lucky Charms and Trix.

For this edition of Snackology, I’m going to mangle one of the more iconic phrases in food branding history: Hey, you got peanut butter in my breakfast cereal.

General Mills is going all in on peanut butter, introducing Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter and Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate. I’ve been mixing both new cereals into my breakfast rotation over the past week or so, and I have some thoughts on just how much peanut butter belongs in your cereal bowl ...

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What they cost

Both a 19.3 oz. box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter and a 19.3 oz. box of Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate were $4.97 on Walmart’s website.

My thoughts

Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Reese’s Puffs are both cereals that are often in our pantry. Are these new varieties ones that’ll make it into the permanent lineup?

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter

I’m on record calling Cinnamon Toast Crunch a hall-of-fame cereal. It’s as close to perfect as any cereal can be. It has just the right amount of sweetness. It holds up in milk longer than a lot of cereals, which means you’re likely to still get a crunchy bite whether it’s your first spoonful or your final spoonful.

When I saw that General Mills had added peanut butter to this classic cereal, I was excited. Cinnamon Toast Crunch has been rolling out hit after hit when it comes to new flavors — both Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Mexican Style Hot Chocolate were fantastic — and I figured Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter would keep that going.

Not quite, it turns out.

While there’s nothing bad about Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter, it didn’t blow me away like those other flavors or the original. After eating a few times, I’m settled on the problem being that peanut butter can bring with it a ... weight? If you’ve ever thought you were being culinarily creative and added peanut butter to a pack of ramen noodles (I swear some former Bon Appétit star told me it was OK), you’ll know what I mean. You get the flavor of peanut butter, but you also get a heaviness to that specific flavor.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter feels heavy when you’re eating a full bowl of it. I enjoyed snacking on the cereal, but in a large quantity, the flavor is too much.

Snack score

🍪🍪🍪 (3 out of 5 cookies)

Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate

Our daughter has told me that Reese’s Puffs are her favorite cereal. I don’t know if that’s true. She’s also told me that same thing about Frosted Cheerios. But she clearly has good taste to put Reese’s Puffs into consideration for that honor.

I was very curious what a dark chocolate version of Reese’s Puffs would taste like. I’ve eat my fair share of dark chocolate over the past 25 to 30 years, so I was wondering if this was just going to be a more bitter version of the cereal — and how that would play out in terms of eating a full bowl.

It turns out Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate actually delivers a richer chocolate taste compared to the classic Reese’s Puffs. They’re in no way bitter. I don’t quite get how or why General Mills had dubbed this cereal “dark chocolate,” but it works.

Snack score

🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪 (5 out of 5 cookies)

If you happen to pick up a box of both Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter and Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate, do yourself a favor and mix them together. I hate to give Travis Kelce credit for something, but the guy knew what he was doing when he and his brother put the classic versions of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Reese’s Puffs together in Kelce Mix.