What makes a good cereal shape? For the overwhelming most part, cereal pieces fall into three categories: puffs, flakes, and squares. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, from your basic puffed rice to the geometric marvel that is the stuffed Krave pillow, but I don’t believe my palate’s ever encountered anything else quite like Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros.

While most of my cheers and jeers about this noodly cereal medium can be found in my original review for plain CTC Churros, they’re worth reiterating as I dive into this vaguely cylindrical Chocolate sequel.

Pros: The churro pieces are crunchier than normal CTC squares.

Cons: They simply don’t hold the same density of choco–cinnamon sweetness. The Toast Crunch family of cereals certainly isn’t known for sugary subtlety. No, when you pour a bowl of crazy swirled squares, you expect to be gobsmacked with granulated dopamine, nutrition be darned. With these wacky waving tube pieces, though, it’s more like a 50:50 taste split between flavor dusting and base grain.

While I certainly wouldn’t complain about more base grain goodness in a heart oat cereal like Cheerios, the fundamental taste of rice-heavy Toast Crunch cereals is pretty airy, vacuous and boring. Ordinarily, this is all by design, so the cinnamon sugar has no competition and you get a burst of unadulterated hedonism in every bite. Overall, this just makes me feel like I’m getting less bang for my buck—and by ‘bang,’ I mean hardier heartbeats.

Another con for Chocolate Churro Toast Crunch may be more unique to unhinged munchers like me, but when I’m eating a super sweet cereal, I tend to scarf it down speedily. Yet hasty inhalation of a Churro’d Toast Crunch can easily end in one getting lanced in the palate—a feeling I would only wish on my singular worst enemy: that one dude at the soup shop who chuckled while ogling my failed attempt at parallel parking. I hope you spill bisque on your lap, too.

Okay, textural concerns aside, Chocolate Churro Toast Crunch doesn’t taste bad. Picture an 80:20 split of sweet cocoa powder to over-sweetened cinnamon sugar. It’s basically a crunchier, slightly less potent form of your typical Chocolate Toast Crunch. It’s unlikely to blow you away, but since cinnamon & chocolate is a relatively uncommon cereal aisle pairing, if this sounds right up your alley, it just might be.

For me, personally, it’s kind of forgettable. This unremarkability is more apparent in milk, where Chocolate Churro Toast Crunch’s flavor intensity is further diluted.

I’m not saying the Churro Toast Crunch line has been a waste of time for General Mills—the shapes and concept are fun enough—but I kind of hope Chocolate is their last attempt at it. The Toast Crunch family just has so much potential for flavorful variety, as evidenced by Sugar Cookie and the long-discontinued Peanut Butter Toast Crunch, that tweaking the shapes of existing Toast Crunches no longer excites me.

Unless, of course, they were to do something totally radical. Like, say, Biblically Accurate Angel-shaped Cinnamon Toast Crunch Twists.

The Bowl: Chocolate Churro Cinnamon Toast Crunch

The Breakdown: A decent mix of cocoa and cinnamon sugar that’s been made a bit more tepid thanks to its form’s modestly sweetened surface area. Worth a try for those looking for more Crunch out of their Toast, but the rest of us are better off staying square than…going there.

The Bottom Line: 6.5 choco–cinnamon mouth wounds out of 10