Like most of the off-season posts we have here, it all seemingly starts with someone sending us something ridiculous in our social media mentions. A post by Discontinued Foods was made on Bluesky and we got tagged into the mentions. What we found was a post containing Boomer Spooners cereal.

My first instinct was to search eBay to see if I could find this item for sale. And guess what I did! I found an unopened box with cereal and also one signed by Bob Stoops for sale! Thinks to myself “Do we want to buy the unopened box and eat it?”

We discussed this post on one of our podcast episodes and started to dig into this a bit more and wondered if any other schools had their own cereals. Much to our delight, there were other schools in this too!

We even found a press release from 2000 for the cereal!

For the first time ever, alumni and fans can purchase their schools' officially licensed cereal brand via the internet through www.collegecereals.com. (This website sadly doesn’t exist anymore)

PLB Sports, Octagon, Woolf Associates and Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) have formed a partnership to bring schools, and their fans, officially licensed cereal brands. The partnership is being kicked off at each individual university campus this fall. Last winter, PLB Sports and Octagon launched Hokie Toasties cereal for Virginia Tech's drive to the National Championship.

OH MY!! WE GOT SOMETHING CALLED HOKIES TOASTIES???

Apparently cereal idea was launched with the Hokies run to the National Championship game in the 2000 Sugar Bowl.

"We are extremely excited about this new sports venture. We hope to have a number of university cereals available at www.collegecereals.com by the end of this upcoming school year so that fans and alumni can stock their kitchen cupboards with their favorite school brand," said Melissa Heber, Vice President of PLB Sports.

The partnership brings these officially licensed cereal brands this fall: Aubie Flakes (Auburn University), Crimson Crunch (University of Alabama), Cornhusker Crunch (University of Nebraska), Hog'Ems (University of Arkansas) and Maize N' Blue (University of Michigan). Additional schools will be released soon. A portion of the proceeds generated from the sale of these products goes directly back to the universities.

WELL TIME TO FIND THE REST OF THESE CEREALS IF I CAN!!

This was the only picture of the Crimson Crunch I could find! The box was quite crunched. Only $10 on eBay if you wanted it.

Cornhusker Crunch was very easy to find. Also, Nebraska seems to have cereal made for their teams a few times. I added a bonus cereal I was able to find quickly.

The bonus Nebraska cereal I found.

I think this is my favorite name out of all the cereals. HOG'EMS!! Just look at this box. The stripes make it seem like Arkansas is in some sort of jail. I don’t think I have ever seen Arkansas with any sort of pinstripe on the uniform.

The Maize N' Blue Cereal eluded me in my search. I couldn’t find anything on eBay or in an image search. I could only locate a limited edition of Froot Loops that said GO BLOO on them. Also, it was a really difficult search as the Maize and Blue Cupboard kept coming up in searches. Which is a great program for students with food insecurity https://mbc.studentlife.umich.edu/. If you can find a picture of this cereal let me know.

I was kind of disappointed in the cereal itself. It appeared to be the same type of cereal in every single box. Some sort of what appeared to be a Frosted Flakes knockoff. I was hoping for some sort of variety. Why couldn’t HOG’EMS be like Honey Smacks with Dig’Em? Why wasn’t Cornhusker Crunch like a knock off of Captain Crunch? Why wasn’t Crimson Crunch the same but with some maroon Crunch Berries? Why was it Aubie Flakes and not Auburn Navy and Orange Fruit Loops?

As we saw at the beginning, these only lasted for about one year. I can just picture them now, on an end-cap in your local grocery store, just begging to be that impulse purchase you throw in your cart or that cereal your kid bugs you for just because of the team on the box. It’s a novel idea for something that was launched due to the Virginia Tech Hokies run to the National Championship game in the aptly named Sugar Bowl. But alas, they didn’t last.