Upsetting Day: Ambush Universe Reese’s Puffs (Patreon)

Certain words put positive emotions about food into our brains, words like “sizzling,” “flavor-blasted,” “pasta shapes inspired by the film Batman Returns,” etc. One thing you do not expect food to do is “AMBUSH” you. You don’t want to be like, “Oh no, oh fuck, it’s Reese’s Puffs cereal!” Yet…

“Ambush” is one of the least delicious words. It makes it sound like Reese’s knows you have a peanut allergy. This box looks like a threat to me. They may as well have called it “Reese’s Puffs; Look Out Bitch We’re Coming to Get You.”

What are they ambushing you with? Is it the flavor? Is it not going to taste like Reese’s Puffs or something? Is it going to taste bad? If I pop this open expecting Reese Puffs and get pork chop-flavored cereal, I would certainly consider that an ambush. Surprise! You thought you were getting good cereal, you RUBE. In the very best case scenario, that is what this box says to me.

It turns out Ambush is a high-end fashion brand I’m not cool enough to know about. They have almost a million Instagram followers, and their clothing is so extravagant and expensive that ordinary people can’t even comprehend it’s fashionable. If you want to look like you’ve successfully hunted and killed the Easter Bunny, it will cost as much as a month of groceries and an EpiPen.

Ambush Reese’s Puffs is part of a new Reese’s Puffs branding strategy that attempts to make their cereal boxes into high-priced collector’s items. This means they have a rapper, an artist, or a designer put a special touch on the box and then sell a commemorative edition for triple the price. Travis Scott made one where he just wrote his name in Sharpie on the box and then took a picture that looks like he’s accepting Reese’s Puffs as his lord and savior. It’s as close as Travis Scott could have conceivably done to tell everyone, “No, I’m not fucking doing that.”

The placement of Travis Scott’s name on this box makes it look like they’re selling Travis Scott flavored Reese’s Puffs. In fact, the best thing about this for Reese’s Puffs is that they don’t change the flavor of the cereal at all. Limited edition flavors of cereal have been big since the ’70s, but changing the taste or shape of a cereal involves all kinds of cereal science. Adding or removing an ingredient from a General Mills product means bankrupting a precarious banana republic. Travis Scott writing his name in Sharpie on the box just costs General Mills a little extra printer ink. Then they can charge $50 a box for the limited edition version, which looks like one of my absolutely perfect Canva photoshops. This looks like something Travis Scott made to tell his middle school art teacher he still can’t read:

The Ambush Reese’s Puffs collaboration is more than JUST a couple of cereal boxes, though! It represents the next step in Reese’s Puffs brand journey, which actually gets even stupider, and it involves the Metaverse, or as they call it “the Breakfastverse.” It took me forever to figure out what exactly the Breakfastverse was. There were allusions to it in all of Reese Puffs’ marketing material, but it all said, “The Breakfastverse is an immersive breakfast experience,” and what the hell does that mean? Is it eating? I have an immersive breakfast experience every morning when I put food in my body and it becomes me. How could it get more immersive than that? I looked into it more and learned that the Breakfastverse is a futuristic multi-dimensional breakfast actuality and also a trans-Atlantic, brandsexual meal experience. In the end, it was just this:

Does the splendor of the Breakfastverse blow your mind? It’s a video game where you battle to get to the “chrome throne,” which I can’t confirm is a toilet, but if it’s not, it’s at least a metaphor for a toilet, right? I think you’re playing as an expressionless spoon battling other breakfasts for Reese’s Puffs supremacy. I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s super messed up that the spoon man has no mouth. He lives in a universe of breakfast but can’t eat? That’s hauntingly stupid. That’s some TRAVIS SCOTT’S Twilight Zone shit.

Finding a few screenshots of the Breakfastverse on Ambush’s website finally gave me some context for why the “designer” boxes look so terrible. They have to look like shit because they’re going in the Metaverse. That’s the dress code for the party. The back of Ambush’s box has a big belt buckle spaceship that looks like something straight out of Reboot. Is it supposed to be fashionable? Is it supposed to make me hungry? Should…should I eat the belt buckle?

If you want to enter the breakfast dimension today, you’re unfortunately out of luck. ReesePuffs.World is no more. However, Shop.ReesePuffs.World is still perfectly accessible. For some reason, it seems like the chrome edition of the Ambush cereal box was not as limited as they expected. The price has dropped from the original $50 to $25, and it’s still very much on sale. You could “Eat the future of Breakfast” right now. Well, not right now. After 6-8 weeks of shipping. The “future of Breakfast” is apparently designer chocolate balls old enough to have watched their creators’ empire rise and fall.

The only difference between the chrome box and the regular Ambush Universe box is the color scheme and the $20. The shop also contains the “chrome puff,” which is the third and final piece of the Breakfastverse puzzle. Ambush is apparently known for their accessories, so they created the “ultimate breakfast accessory of the future.” A chrome orb “scientifically designed to double as a handbag and a cereal bowl.” Man, how depressed do you think the engineers and designers were the day they gave up their hopes and dreams to develop this? All those years of school to cover the dumbest idiot’s wallet and tampons in cereal milk.

Imagine seeing some maniac set their purse on a table and pop it open to reveal that it’s full of sticky, wet things. Who would want that? Oops, it’s me! I want this purse so bad! I love orbs! I want to unnerve people by pretending my cereal purse is perfectly normal. I want to carry loose milk on me at the mall and use it to accessorize evening wear. I want it so bad.

The Chrome Puff does include a silicon divider designed to keep your lipstick from becoming the secret prize in your breakfast cereal. It also has a collapsible spoon that connects to the inside of the bowl. So many innovations in breakfast from one single collaboration! Sure, it’s innovation in the same way adding a scorpion to a bra is innovation, but it’s definitely a new idea.

When we saw the Ambush Reese’s Puffs box at the grocery store, my husband confidently said, “Oh, I bet the milk changes cool colors!” in the way only men who are wrong can state things with absolute confidence.

“You gorgeous, optimistic, little fool,” I replied. I knew there was nothing special about this cereal. The new trend in junk food is trying to create the next Prime energy drink, which had bottles reselling for hundreds of dollars in the UK last year after influencers managed to make it into a status symbol. Now it’s not just your clothes and car that have to be cool, but there are cool snacks that don’t even need to taste good. You won’t catch Kim Kardashian eating some nerd food like a grape or some lame shit these days. If your potato chip hasn’t walked the runway, I won’t even look at it.

Why yes, I do have terrible scurvy; thank you for asking. It’s the sexy kind of scurvy. The kind you get from being dedicated to fashion. The kind that comes from having quested for the Breakfastverse.

Metaverse died right around the time Reese’s Puffs was getting into it, and that wasn’t a good look for them, so both Ambush and Reese’s Puffs seem to have agreed to make this collaboration disappear, burying the unpurchased cereal in Tennessee grocery stores, and their social media posts about the partnership deep in their Instagram feeds, never to be mentioned again. Ambush did post about the whole thing fairly recently, linking to a Spotify playlist themed around the collaboration. Unfortunately, I couldn’t check out what was on it because the playlist link led to a PowerPoint presentation for a Brazilian fashion brand that I’m pretty sure their social media manager will be getting in trouble for:

I wonder if Reese’s Puffs will continue to ambush people with insanely expensive cereal boxes after this. They could make a briefcase that’s also a cereal bowl, or a hat that’s also a cereal bowl, or shoelaces that squirt milk. The possibilities are endless when you are filling your clothing with breakfast options!

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brian Seiler, who has only ever endorsed Brian Bites, the only hot dog flavored intensely poisonous cereal byproduct for seniors.

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