When it comes time for the annual onslaught of Christmas and "Holiday" repackaging, we know not to expect too much in the way of effort.  Add some red and green, throw a snowman on the front, but by and large, don't expect too much effort.

Clearly, you don't attain the high rank of Cap'n by doing the bare minimum.

Like he did with Halloween Crunch, Cap'n Crunch goes to the annual effort of a solid re-theme.  Cereals used to do much more with Christmastime theming.  Cookie Crisp turned its cookies red and green.  Lots of cereals came out with "Winter" varieties.  Winter Lucky Charms was made even somewhat recently, though I haven't seen it in at least a few years.

Pebbles did a "Winter" theme for a while, but they will always be best known for their commercial, when it comes to Christmas efforts.  I doubt there's many people who were alive during the years it aired, who don't remember the "'Tis the season to be sharing, Fred." commercial.

Despite other cereals' attempts, no one has been holding it down come Christmastime like the Cap'n.  Christmas Crunch has been around for almost twenty five years.  That is dedication to the craft.

One of the more impressive parts of that long streak of production is sticking with the Christmas Crunch name.  I get the concept of inclusion, and wanting people of all religions and such to be able to enjoy the mania in December.  Or, more cynically (and more accurately), wanting all people to be able to spend lots of money in December.  But if a company wants to make money off Christmas, at least have the guts to use the name. 

Like Halloween Crunch, Christmas Crunch goes for a solid re-theme, but it only goes so far.  You know to expect Crunch Berries, but with some different colors and shapes.  That's at least some extra effort - instead of just red and green Berries, we get red Santa hats, green trees, red stars, and, uh... green snowmen.  Clearly, some accuracy had to be sacrificed for the greater good.

The box lists a number of activities you can do with Christmas Crunch - provided you already bought other products to use it with.  Instead of "How to build a gingerbread house out of Christmas Crunch", they suggest, "Buy a gingerbread house and just stick some of this stuff on there!"

Out of the three activities, stringing some Crunch together is probably the most simple, but I couldn't be bothered with that, either.  Popcorn stringing seems like something people probably stopped doing once stores were invented, where you could go out and buy decorations for the Christmas tree.

As you can see, there is a slight loss in detailing from packaged pieces to actual cereal pieces.  But considering that just being able to sort-of see what a piece of cereal or marshmallow is supposed to be is considered a massive success for cereal, this fits right into that territory.

Unlike Halloween Crunch, Christmas Crunch makes no promises about coloring the milk.  Although that's not too surprising - it would either leave the milk blood red, or the same green that they already said was "Spooky".  So neither is a great Christmas option.  Since the milk doesn't really get colored by the dyes, they should just brag it will turn the milk "White as snow!"

So a round of applause for the Cap'n, for keeping his long-running tradition alive.  If you stick an ornament in there as a cereal prize next year, this would improve its standing as one of the best Christmas products out there.