I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again.

Krave is a divisive cereal. Most people either think it tastes like dog food, or they wolf it down like hungry canines at chow time.

Personally, I love the stuff…with milk. When munched straight out of the box, Krave is usually too bland and mealy for my tastes. But with the addition of milk, each piece becomes a soft, biscuity chocolate lava cake, oozing with fudgy goo.

That’s why I had doubts about trying this Krave cereal bar. Would I end up having to inject it with a syringe full of 2% to make it palatable?

But then I saw the word “brownie,” and my fears went away. The word “brownie” conjures up happy images of Grandma’s homemade dessert and cheerful Girl Scouts peddling delicious, definitely not homemade dessert cookies.

So I had to give it a try anyway. With a name like Smucker’s Brownie, it has to be good. Right? I’ll still make sure to have the nurses prepare a Nesquik IV drip, just in case.

I peeled open my foil-wrapped treat like a pack of Pokémon cards, and the cereal brownie doesn’t look like the glued together Krave hivemind I was expecting. Instead of full biscuits, the poor Krave pieces look like they’ve been pounded, mangled, mashed, blended, squeezed together by a heavy-handed toddler, and baked into a rectangle in an Easy-Bake Oven.

As for its taste, this treat is Krave in name only. Instead, imagine a bowl of Cocoa Puffs that licked a Cocoa Krispies Treat during the winter and got stuck to it: A Christmas Story style. Instead of any genuine brownie-like fudginess, I was hit by plain ol’ sweet cocoa powder and flour.

Krave Brownie Treat Bars do differ from Chocolate Rice Krispies Treats in a couple ways, though. The texture in these is far more chewy than crispy or crackly. Chewing through each bite was like working through a chocolate bubblegum niblet (which apparently actually exists. You’ve gone too far, science!).

And instead of marshmallows to bind it together, these Krave Treats have little globs of melted chocolate to act as binding agents. If you’re lucky enough to hit one of these rare gooey land mines, it’s tastier, creamier, and pleasantly butterier than every other part. The chocolate drizzle on top, meanwhile, is too thin to be anything more than cosmetic DLC.

Now I wonder if there’s a GameStop preorder exclusive Krave Treat Bar flavor.

So while this treat isn’t bad by any means, I feel lied to by the word “brownie” on the packaging, since there is nothing very brownie-like about it. All my happy mental images have deflated: Grandma is serving spinach instead, and the Girl Scouts are all out of Tagalongs.

I suppose, though, if you’re looking for a more decadent Cocoa Krispies Treat, the syrupy chocolate bursts in this Krave Treat Bar should at least hold you over until Halloween, when the far superior Count Chocula Treat will rise from his annual coffin.

One thing is decidedly Krave-like about this cereal bar, though. It does taste much better and more chocolaty in milk!

The “Bowl:” Krave Brownie Treat Bar

The Breakdown: Falling somewhere between Snap, Crackle, and Chocula, this only mildly chocolate-stuffed and decidedly brownie-less cereal treat just barely chews its way through the Cereal Bar Exam.

The Bottom Line: 6.5 giddy Thin Mint daydreams out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 200 calories, 17 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per bar)