Chocolatey & Fruity: the Adam & Eve of cereal flavors. Or to be more secular, the Dialga & Palkia. As two admittedly broad classifiers. Chocolatey & Fruity nevertheless encapsulate the vast majority of non-Honey Nut cereals—we’ll call that one Giratina.

But while “Fruity” is a very malleable term, representing every cornucopious blend from Trix to Froot Loops, “Chocolaty” deals primarily in shades of subtlety. Sure, texture aside, you could probably tell the tastes of Cocoa Puffs & Pebbles apart, yet daring revolutions in chocolate cereal technology are rare. Usually things just get fudgier, or tweaked with a supplementary flavor enhancement. I want to know what it tastes like when a cereal brand focuses on refining chocolate and chocolatey flavor alone, which is why General Mills’ Ultimate Taste Comeback—particularly the cocoa’d duo of the four—have high expectations to live up to.

Well that, and we’ve already been slightly disappointed by Retro Recipe Golden Grahams, as well as unimpressed that Ultimate Taste Comeback Trix didn’t actually change anything (further evidenced by the fact that when General Mills sent me all four cereals to sample, they included old Trix box art rather than the fresh, big rabbit-headed version seen in Ultimate Taste Comeback graphics).

Enough exposition! Let’s expose these Puffs and Cookies for what they really are…

Ultimate Taste Comeback Cookie Crisp Review

…mediocre. Well, sort of. UTC Cookie Crisp’s box makes a poorly worded promise: “More Chocolate Chip Coooookie Taste!” Aside from irking me, the type of person who needs to set the TV volume to an even number, with five Os, the claim simply isn’t entirely true. This new–old Cookie Crisp does not have more chocolate chip flavor. But it does have a fair deal more cookie flavor, to the point where it nearly obfuscates whatever chocolate flavor remains.

Now, when I say “cookie flavor,” I mainly mean a buttery vanilla sheen, with a touch of brown sugar. Which is on all Cookie Crisp, but I think General Mills really cranked their glazer beam up to 11 for this edition. Don’t get me wrong, buttery vanilla isn’t bad, but as I’ve expressed in countless birthday cake cereal reviews, it gets old after a while. I wish General Mills gave us more morsels for our money, as the chocolate chips here simply can’t compete and only really show up for the first moment of each bite.

But hey, with this little cocoa content, maybe Chip the Wolf could sink his canines into this Cookie Crisp without poisoning himself.

If there’s one positive here, it’s that More Chocolate Chip Coooookie Taste Cookie Crisp seems crunchier than the mealy exoskeletons of its past self. If you do buy this stuff, you probably won’t hate it, but it could’ve been so much better. Milk helps even things out, too, but it’d be easier to just mix the stuff with Cocoa Puffs* to get the chocolate element Cookie Crisp needs.

The Bottom Line: 5.5 micro-dosing wolves out of 10

Ultimate Taste Comeback Cocoa Puffs Review

*Editor’s correction: do not mix Cocoa Puffs to make Cookie Crisp better. Mix in Cookie Crisp to make Cocoa Puffs salvageable. I have no idea how General Mills managed to release a Cocoa Puffs cereal solely dedicated to adding more chocolate taste, and somehow make it less chocolatey.

Let’s get the good out of the way: like Cookie Crisp, these Cocoa Puffs seem crunchier than their predecessors, somewhat smaller and more compact. This is a textural plus, because it means less cratered corniness to bore nor bore into your palate.

But sadly, the satisfaction stops there. I’ll admit that, aside from during early childhood, Cocoa Puffs has never really been my favorite chocolate cereal. This is because, as its name implies, Cocoa Puffs is less of a dark or milk chocolatey cereal and more of a strictly cocoa powdered confection. It’s particularly funny, because four years ago, Cocoa Puffs released a version with 50% more real cocoa, and that time, the difference was palpably positive! But alas, any net gain from that excursion has now been washed away. Instead, UTC Cocoa Puffs are Cocoa Puffs at like, 50% of their previous cocoa powder power. If anything, maybe there’s a slightly higher degree of toastiness/roastedness in these Cocoa Puffs, as if they pushed the snooze button after the industrial oven dinged, but this is more of a passing curio than a compliment.

Again, much like UTC Cookie Crisp, these Cocoa Puffs aren’t awful, especially when tangentially redeemed by milk, but the sheer disparity between the Cocoa Puffs I was promised and what I received is pretty much unforgivable. Rather than alluding to some unquantifiable past benchmark for a “Taste Comeback,” General Mills should’ve really remixed Cocoa Puffs with little cacao nibs or a Krave-esque chocolate filling.

The Bottom Line: 4 clinically sedated cuckoo birds out of 10

Ultimately, this Taste Comeback needs to go back to square one. I just can’t confidently say that any of the four reformulated cereals are improvements. If General Mills really wants to play the nostalgia card, they need to put their money where our mouths are and be bolder. Restoring the Monster Cereals to their original recipes is a no-brainer, but wouldn’t it be a more marketable commitment to nostalgia if they brought back cereals like Hidden Treasures or Sprinkle Spangles? Sure, you could argue that they’d only appeal to adults, but I’m still young enough (and have listened to enough vaporwave) to know that vintage stuff has a mystic appeal to those who are barred, by temporal circumstance, from experiencing its origins.

Y’now what, forget I said Sprinkle Spangles. I couldn’t bear to see its name fall into the hands of today’s birthday cake cereal ennui.