French Toast Crunch

General Mills introduced French Toast Crunch in the mid-1990s as a companion to the already-successful Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The cereal delivered on a literal premise: tiny slices of French toast, each piece with a baked-in syrup flavor. The box credited baker mascot Wendell with cooking it up, and TV ads promised "the taste you can see" — and with those little toast slices, you genuinely could.

Along the way, General Mills reformulated the product, replacing the distinctive tiny-toast pieces with plain curved squares closer to Cinnamon Toast Crunch's shape, and in 2006 the cereal was discontinued in the United States entirely. It never actually died, though: Canada kept selling it — as "French Toast Crunch" and "Croque pain doré" — in the original tiny-toast form, so the real thing lived on just across the border while American fans petitioned for its return.

In December 2014, General Mills gave in, announcing the cereal's comeback and saying it had been "overwhelmed by the consumer conversations, requests and passion for the cereal to come back." French Toast Crunch returned to U.S. shelves in early 2015 in its original tiny-toast shape — a rare case of a discontinued food actually answering the nostalgia that mourned it.