Albert Pujols' Cereal Is, Like His Time With the Angels, Just Average

Albert Pujols played his final season of baseball this year and finished out his career in a St. Louis Cardinals jersey, the same one he started in. Honors have poured in for the slugger, and next month the Musial Awards will give Pujols its highest honor: a Lifetime Achievement Award for Sportsmanship.

But before that, he has gotten something some may argue is a little bit better: his own cereal.

That's right, Pujols is getting the Wheaties treatment. The box of the breakfast bounty known as Pujols Crunch features images of a smiling Pujols and a Pujols at bat in Busch III (super imposed next to each other, a la those cool 1990s senior portraits). One thing it notably doesn't feature is anything Cardinals-related. Clearly, the cereal's manufacturers did not want to run afoul of the MLB.

So lamentably, Pujols is not in anything resembling a Cardinals jersey and instead wears a nondescript black and white uniform. But in case you think the idea is to sell the cereal in Los Angeles, where St. Louis' prodigal son briefly and forgettably played with the Angels and the Dodgers, Pujols is thankfully wearing his No. 5 (which he didn't wear when he left) and there's a huge Arch in the background.

The cereal, which is only available at Schnucks, benefits the Pujols Family Foundation.

We went to Schnucks yesterday morning to pick up the honey-nut-toasted-oats concoction and found that it was not on shelves, but there were some in the back. An inquiry with an employee got us the goods.

The cereal set us back $4.79 (before tax), which seems on par with other brand-name cereals. (Full disclosure: We have not bought cereal in a while.)

As a service to you collectors out there, we went ahead and tasted the stuff so you could keep yours in pristine condition. Though we don't recommend letting cereal moulder in a box for years, if you are buying this specifically to price-gouge on eBay after Schnucks inevitably runs out because you purchased 100 boxes, then don't bother holding a box back to give the cereal a try. It is very mid.

That is not to say it's bad. In fact, one taste-tester asked if the cereal was legal because it tastes exactly like Honey Nut Cheerios (with a more satisfying crunch). But for one thing, noticeably absent is any connection to Pujols inside the box. In addition to there being no prize (again, we haven't bought cereal in decades, when did they remove the prizes?) there's not a single 7 thrown in with all those 0's as a nod to his entrance to the 700 home-run club (seriously, that seems like a no-brainer).

It's also a little unsettling to munch on a foodstuff that is shaped like a tight little "o" and sports the specific phonetics that accompany the word "Pujols." But maybe we're just being anal.

Still, out of all the cereal options pandering to you by putting your favorite athlete on the box, this is definitely a better choice than Wheaties. Congratulations Al!

• Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get the latest on the news, things to do and places to eat delivered right to your inbox.
• Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Google News.