Believe me, the strawberry life is a tough one to live.

I would know: I’ve tried it. Always being the sweetest and most loved in the room? It’s not a proud path to follow, but you hand out enough free gum and anyone can be the most loved kid in 5th grade American History class. And having to hang out with Franken Berry? Respect to his legacy, but as a conversationalist, he’s a bit of a dolt—or at least a pain in the neck.

I did like wearing pastel pink though.

That’s all to say that Quaker’s new Strawberry Life cereal faces a questionable judge in this review. I found that there have been very few fruity Life Cereals (Pumpkin Spice doesn’t count!), and perhaps for good reason: I typically associate Life’s multigrain biscuits with richer flavors, so a fruit-filled flavor like strawberry will have to pull some real flavor sorcery to realign my expectation of what a Mikey-approved cereal can be.

Let’s see how much of the strawberry life this can restore to my currently bananas existence.

Immediately, Strawberry Life Cereal has taught me something new: there is such a thing as too much strawberry.

See, previously I would relish the chance to dig out the rosy third of neapolitan ice cream first, and put enough Strawberry Laffy Taffy in my mouth at one time to turn my uvula into a Laffy-lifting Atlas. But since the typically tasteless, if not faintly graham’d multigrain squares make absolutely no palatable impact in comparison to the powerful dollop of artificial strawberry flavor plopped upon it, the latter flavor note gets free reign over the cereal’s crisply submissive squares.

And that’s where the strange part comes in: where other cereals tend to lose their flavor as you savor each bite—signaling you to, you know, swallow the food—the berry bursts of Strawberry Life just keep amping up the candied strawberry viscosity and velocity, as it grows riper, tarter, and syruppier (please recognize this word, Merriam-Webster) before I stop chewing out of fear for its potential power level.

We’re talking a potential Darryl Strawberry line drive to the taste buds, people.

Naturally, my first inclination was to send in…the cows, thus cutting the cereal’s bullish intensity. And this works to a fair degree: the overall experience gets far more smoothie-esque the longer you let it soak. The problem is that Life gets soggy so fast—its shape has all the hydrophobic might of a cheesecloth boat—so I only get a tasty glimpse of this cereal’s properly milked potential before it dissolves like a…parmesan boat?

That may be a stretch, but Strawberry Life does stretch my patience a little. It tastes pretty good and sweet strawberried at certain moments, but it requires too careful of a sog-farming process to make it a repeat buy, especially when the likes of Strawberry Cheerios and Toast Crunch do the same thing, but with much more wholesome and hearty base flavors.

Maybe the Quaker Oats guy needs to chat with Franken Berry for a few hours. They both could learn a thing or two about keeping the right starch in your berries.

The Bowl: Quaker Strawberry Life Cereal

The Breakdown: An overgrown laboratory strawberry let loose, these feverishly fruity squares require a milky zen to make peace with. My advice: go for something crunchy, toasty, and bread shaped instead. Because bread really is life.

The Bottom Line: 5.5 Gobstopper Sisyphuses out of 10