Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Review

"Bring back the tea trolley for your office!" screams the Press Release for Kellogg's new range of Nutri-Grain variants, backing this all up with stats on 11am and 4pm snacking and encouraging us to eat 3 meals and 2 snacks a day. Which I can only assume means 2 bowls of Special K, 2 Nutri-Grain bars and an apple.

So for when hunger strikes* let's take a look at their new range of Elevenses and Soft Oaties they were kind enough to send over.

Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Soft Oaties

Hot off the bakery oven comes Soft Oaties, a remix of the Nutri-Grain formula in to something more closely resembling a cookie or slightly oversized biscuit. Size wise they fit somewhere in between the two so are a god snaking option if you fancy the thickness of a biscuit and the size of a cookie.

Unlike lower quality cookies they also stay together rather well upon biting and don’t crumble apart in the first instance. The downside of this is that the Soft-Oat & Raisins Oatie I sampled did have quite a dry texture to it. This put them a million miles away from the soft goey centres of the Elevenses bars, making eating two or three without a drink a challenge.

Thankfully the taste itself did embody much of the same flavour as the Elevenses bars with ginger as one of the key flavours in the Soft-Oat & Raisin Oatie. The Raisins themselves had the right textures, with just enough taste without being too dry.

The range also offers up a Soft-Oat & Choc Chip variety which we sadly were unable to try but anyone who has tried one please leave your views on the tea trolley below.

Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Elevenses

We also received a bunch of Elevenses which aren't especially new, but are now sporting a new Carrot Cake flavour. Not nearly as nasty as it sounds, the bar mainly has a light orange and ginger taste, with tiny carroty chunks throughout.

Sitting alongside this bar are Ginger Bakes and Raisin Bakes but the real jewel in the crown are the Choc Chip Bakes. Perfect snack time portions with very rich chocolate chunks and a rich goey texture. If you like those people who bring cakes in to the office then eating one of these is like becoming their best friend and being invited into their secret cooking room. Snacky time, all the time (well 2 a day is what Kellogg's recommend

You can sign the bring back the Tea Trolley petition at http://www.nutri-grain.co.uk/petition.

*Ok so technically Shreddies say that, but I miss those averts...

Get your product reviewed - FREE

With the launch of the first Blagman.co.uk book in August and our second season in full swing there’s never been a better time to get your product reviewed on Blagman.co.uk. We started the website as an experiment to see what products we could get simply by asking and in return gave an honest review on everything that arrived. The whole process is completely free and all we ask is that we can keep the product when we’re finished with it.

We’ve reviewed everything from kitchen sinks to pizza makers, limited edition trainers to new video games. Many of our products have never been reviewed anywhere else and we pride ourselves on surprising our readers with reviews of absolutely anything.

For more information simply contact mike@blagman.co.uk.

Contact Us

Blagman’s true identity is Mike Essex, a 23 year old living in Birmingham with his fiancée Marie and 3 cats. He currently works for The Studio 4, a design agency in Telford, UK and is on strict orders not to blag the wedding.

Mike regularly writes on blagging, the art of free stuff, product reviews, and just what exactly it means to be a ‘reviewer’ and is happy to share his views in interviews and freelance articles.

Why not get in touch on mike@blagman.co.uk

Xbox 360 and Pizza (Blagman Undercover)

Rather than rely on the Blagman name for freebies I from time to time go undercover. In doing so I can see which companies are willing to give something away without the promise of a free review, those companies that truly value their customers.
Both of the products in this review, were gleamed thanks to some rather excellent customer service, and I hold these two examples high as companies that were prepared to shell out of their own pockets when something went wrong:

Microsoft Xbox 360
For all intents and purposes I shouldn’t have an Xbox 360 right now. It should be sat in a scrap yard somewhere doomed to never work again. The reason is below:

A cat? Yes my rather ingenious cat Pepper is responsible for exploding my Xbox. How? Well hearing the device making its usual grinding and hoping to not have my system overheat I pulled it out from under my TV, only for Pepper to walk on top of it. Instantly a loud grinding sound could be heard and three red rings appeared on the device signalling the death of the console. After trying a ridiculous trick involving overheating the console with a towel, and giving it a week to rest I decided it was time to bite the bullet and pay for a repair.

So I rang Xbox customer support hoping they would be able to assist in my hour of need. Taking my card details down they asked me to send it in the post, paw-prints and all. So I did, and after a week they sent me back a replacement once again working and without a single charge to my card. With the console was a note from Microsoft apologising for the console breaking as well as a voucher for one months’ free online gaming.

So it seems ‘acts of cat’ are covered under warranty....

Domino’s Pizza
My love for Pizza is well known and alongside making my own I also opt for the occasional take away. We’ve used various Dominos over the years and found our favourite is a Pizza called ‘The Meteor’ which has been discontinued but is something most Domino’s still know how to make up on request.

So we put in our request only to arrive and find a ‘Mighty Meaty’ in its place. After opening its box the manager could see my distress, and realising his staff on the phone was a complete muppet he promptly created a new pizza for us free of charge and even provided us with the original Mighty Meaty (which I must confess was also bloody nice).

What made this slightly nicer is it was only the third time we had used to store so there was no built up brand loyalty, and we could in all fairness have been the ones to make a mistake. These two examples show the importance of free products when something goes awry and the increased customer satisfaction it can bring.

After my Xbox broke I was all but ready to pack it in and stick to my Wii, likewise there’s no shortage of pizza places to choose from, but thanks to clever use of free products I am now a convert to both brands and will be for a long time to come.

Big 'ol box of pies

Product Number: 228-229

Sometimes companies don't do things by halves and rather than sending just the one sample they decide to clear the warehouse, get rid of all their old stock and bombard you with an obscene amount of free samples. It happened before with Phileas Fogg crisps (although then the reasons were more obvious given that the samples we received were out of date) and happened again today with this bumper box of food:

In this instance a box of 48 Chicken and Mushroom pies seemed like a cause for happiness which is why on opening up the box we were a little surprised to see:

26 Packets of new Walkers Sensations Szechuan Spice, something totally different. Slightly gutted by the lack of pies I embraced the near enough one month supply and started to chow down. Crisps were shared around the office and the general consensus seemed to be that the crisps had a nice light spice without being overwhelming. Initial bites provided brief spicy interludes and continued munching caused the spice to build up leading to a fuller flavor.

I've always been a little curious on Walkers' flavor selection. Do they mess around with flavors in their lab and then pick the closest one to their mysterious result? Or do they carefully take essences from the real flavor and feed them in. Do barbecue sauce crisps really taste like barbecue or merely a days experiment in the lab which produced an obscure new flavor that could only be described in that way?

In any case Szechuan Spice is an obscure enough flavor to indicate a degree of pre-meditated flavor planning and the crisps seem the better for it. If you like crisps with a bit of a zing then give them a try.

KitKat Senses
Ever had the feeling of food deja vu? That notion that you've tried something before but you can't quite place where? Well KitKat Sensations will give you that exact same feeling if you've ever tried Mars Delight. Which itself was a copy of Kinder Bueno so Kit Kat Senses feel like a mix between the two.

For those who haven't tried any of these variants you find a wafer center and a soft praline filling inside the wafer. The chocolate and wafer parts are the same as a traditional Kit Kat Chunky and so it falls on the filling to differentiate the product which it does do well.

It's by no means a taste innovation but there are slight differences between the three products when put side by side. Kit Kat Senses is easier to bite in to than a Mars Delight, and the wafer doesn't explode on biting as can occur with a Kinder Bueno. They're also only 165 calories which is a bit of a winner. If you are already a fan of the Kit Kat chocolate taste then this will emerge as the winner, otherwise give all three a try and take your pick.

Free Offers for June 2008

I wanted to start Season 2 with some generous free products for those of you who have waited so patiently for our return. So I decided the best way to-do this was to browse the Internet for another collection of freebies you can get for just a few clicks and very little effort. As always this information was correct at the time of publishing this article and we take no responsibility for the content on other peoples sites (even if it is free stuff).

Free Magazine Subscriptions and Goodies
Don’t you hate it when you buy a magazine and see a fantastic subscriber offer, only to find all the goodies have already been poached? Well Mag Site.co.uk details all the free trials, special subscription prices and free product offers out there before they make it in to the mags. You’ll always save money on the cover price and in most cases the free gifts you receive will be more than double the cost of subscription.

Free Cinema Viewings
I’ve mentioned Momentum Screenings.co.uk before and have this week spotted Showcase Cinemas are also offering free screenings and other benefits for all new members. Sign up for free and save yourself a tenner every week on a new movie.

Free Cosmetics
Alternating between huge prize draws (King of Shaves are offering 3000 free razors) to mass free sample mailouts (Nivea anti wrinkle cream) almost every cosmetic brand gives a free sample away at some point. Bookmark your favorite brands, check back once a week and you’ll be sure to find a whole host of free samples.

Free Marketing Advice
Although not as instantly appealing as the other products here, Marketing Sherpa could very well be the best bit of free information you hear for your day job. Every day they carry out an independent study or report on the best ways to market, promote your business, and generally sell stuff, with 7 days of free access. A years subscription costs over £200 but if you make sure to go back once a week you can see it all for free and use your new found knowledge to get that promotion you dreamed of.

Free T-Shirt or Hat
Who knows if they’ll honor this one, but Banana Hockey are offering a free T-Shirt or hat to everyone that registers interest in their forthcoming website. The country option includes the UK so why not give it a go?

Free Shopping
Voucher site Tesco 1 has probably saved me £100 on my shopping bill over the last few months and all through absolutely no effort on my part. Do your usual online Tesco shop, drop in one of these codes and save anywhere between £5-£10 on every shop. New codes are added frequently with one usually there for each weekly shop.

Spotted a freebie or got a product you’d like to give our readers for free? Get in touch on mike@blagman.co.uk.