You’ve heard of snack attacks, but what about sneack attacks?

No, that’s not a typo: I firmly believe that Honey Bunches of Oats has perfected the art of the 800-pound guerrilla breakfast bombardment. Not even counting the recent, off-brand and Internet-splintering news of Honey Brunches of Oats Chicken & Waffles Cereal, the now 30-year old cereal brand has a history of dropping sneakily scrumptious new flavors at the start of the year, without the preemptive fanfare we see from most crunch-slingers.

In 2016, the masters of crispy (fried poultry or otherwise) flakes and granola bunches brought back Chocolate Honey Bunches of Oats, and in 2018 we got the criminally underrated Pecan & Maple Brown Sugar HBoOats. Pulling another break-fast one on us, 2019 has now been blessed with Apple Caramel Crunch Honey Bunches of Oats.

More than just an exciting concept, this is only the second major caramel apple cereal after 2011’s bone-mealed Caramel Apple Boulders. Where caramel apple’s sister flavor, apple cinnamon, gets a lot of cereal aisle representation—including an apparently discontinued(?) Honey Bunches variety—I’m glad to see its stickier sibling finally getting exposure.

Even if it is half a year before caramel apple’s typical seasonal setting of booing and bobbing. Guess I’ll just have to cut some eyeholes in my winter-grade weighted blanket before eating.

Despite earning the top billing, the fruit of knowledge doesn’t have the flavorful brawn to make this an apple-forward cereal. Intermixed with the cereal’s classically golden-crisped maize flakes (which serve merely as buffers here between the more sumptuous notes) are real, and real chewy, dried apple slices. When actually sucking down a spoonful of these, Apple Caramel bunches get a welcome pop of puckering green apple—even if they get quickly assimilated into the more dominant taste at play here.

Which of course comes from the dark amber bunches. They seem to be present in a smaller (and more fractured) quantity than average Honey Bunches flavors, but they pack a far stronger and sweeter punch.

Just call them the Little Macs of big-time snacks.

There’s just one big twist about these caramelized bunches…they don’t really taste like caramel. Rather, they taste very strongly of a different darkly decadent sugar product: molasses. The two are tangentially related—molasses is made by refining raw sugar into white sugar, and when the latter is caramelized, you get caramel—but their flavors are distinct, and there’s no mistaking the slower of the two in these Honey Bunches.

Because while I often describe cereals as tasting like molasses, that’s usually shorthand for “they remind me of gingerbread men, but I don’t want to say that and inevitably subject you to another quip about Gingerbread Toast Crunch.” But in the case of Apple Caramel Honey Bunches of Oats, you can easily detect unadulterated pangs of mouthwatering, blackstrapped and darkly roasted molasses in both the body and especially the aftertaste of every bite.

This overall tonal taste shift may be dubious to those who either expected strong caramel notes or just aren’t partial to the idiosyncratic taste of molasses, and even I hoped for a stronger balance of apple and golden goo, but it’s nevertheless an awesomely addictive experience for any holiday cookie fan. Though with the unadorned flakes, sugar cookie diehards may need to bring their own icing piping bags.

Milk introduces another iffy element by rapidly soggifying Apple Caramel Crunch Honey Bunches’ various delicate bits (in classic HBoOats fashion), but by further. However, the christened cereal makes up for it by infusing the apple slices with milk and consequently diffusing their pent-up fruitiness throughout the bowl and sweet, sweet mahogany endmilk. And as a bonus, they lose their disquieting chew in favor of a more homogenous squishiness—because if the whole bowl is halfway to being oatmeal rather than just one part, it’s a lot easier to suspend your discomfort.

Ultimately, Apple Caramel Crunch is another creative flavor fusion from the modest cereal maestros at Honey Bunches of Oats. A bowl of humbly delicious apple pie with a molasses-y twist, this is a cereal perfect for any slice of life that’s tired of the same old, same bowl.

Speaking of which, you should probably alert your grandma that this would make a better treat bowl stuffer than old Werthers and decrepit strawberry hard candies—and way easier on the fillings, too.

The Bowl: Honey Bunches of Oats Apple Caramel Crunch

The Breakdown: More molasses than caramel, with less than a bunch of apple, if you can get past the misleading advertising, this cereal takes an inkling of innovation and makes it wholesomely inhalable.

The Bottom Line: 9 King HippO’s out of 10