Malt-O-Meal definitely lives in an alternate universe—an alternate timeline, if you will. In this version of breakfast reality, Cookie Crisp was less corny, Count Chocula never changed after the ’90s, and Post didn’t release Oreo O’s first—that’s like America losing the Space Race!

Oh, and French Toast Crunch’s squared form survived Y2K.

What do I mean? Well if you recall, French Toast Crunch—the clear ancestor of Malt-O-Meal’s French Toasters—started as bread shapes, changed to curved, Cinnamon Toast Crunch-like swirled squares, then disappeared (or at least disappeared to the Canadian tundras, where they remained available through 2012) until their 2015 rebirth. Yet now, here’s French Toast Crunch bizarro cousin, keeping tradition alive.

It took me too long to find this cereal (it came out a year ago—but my stores haven’t carried it until now. I blame the second coming of bread-shaped cereals), so I’m looking forward to some closure on my search for: it’s time to see if F. T. Crunch’s dark reflection (and I mean that in the best way) can keep its flavor modern.

Alright, no more funny stuff—we don’t have much time (because I want to eat more), so I’m gonna cut right to the chase:

More fire than a wildfire at a mixtape factory, M-O-M’s French Toasters aren’t the ugly stepchildren of the Toast Crunch legacy: they’re its nieces and nephews. See, these powdered little squares hail from the Golden Grahams family, with their Mother Graham’s de-swirled textures and their Father Golden’s warmly baked-in and honey nectar-like flavor—rather than the hollow core of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch piece, built merely as a slipshod scaffolding for the cinnamon sugar coating to dance on.

On top of their biscuity base, these French Toasters have a thick dusting—or perhaps even drifting—of sweet, sweet flavored crystals. And they taste like dehydrated syrup! Not real maple syrup of course: I’m talking about the Golden Goo. The Log Cabin’s Pride.  Blood of Butterworth. Yes, the coating on every decidedly not bread-shaped square, in tandem with the near-doughiness of what’s below, brings to mind the humble buttered pancake in its plainest essence.

You know, a grade school fundraiser pancake. Not some pretentious restaurant cake.

Milk only makes the experience better. While the pieces’ coating may seem more honey-flavored than maple when dry, it turns far more syrupy with the emulsifying power of milk. The squares may get soggy quick, but the longer you leave them to ferment in their dairy dwelling, the richer, butterier, and more nostalgically fake pancake-y it gets.

I say pancake, because with a lack of potent cinnamon flavor and no egginess to speak of, French Toasters can’t fully live up their name as well as French Toast Crunch. Nevertheless, I find it so fantastic I can’t dock the cereal points for this. French Toasters are fully capable of going toast-to-toast with General Mills’ lil slices taste-wise, and for that I must give them the same score.

Bravo to you, Malt-O-Meal: with two perfect scoring cereals in a row (though not chronologically), whatever alternate timeline you’re living in, it certainly it certainly isn’t the darkest one.

The Bowl: Malt-O-Meal French Toasters Cereal

The Breakdown: They’re Maple Golden Grahams. Need I say more? Honey meets syrup meets graham cracker in a symphonically swirled bag of guilty, nostalgic pleasure.

The Bottom Line: 10 Malt-O-Meal Pancakesters out of 10