This is a tough review to write.

For one thing, its name and eye-catching box art alone are sure to make Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch one of this summer’s most hyped cereals. Second, there’s a lot going on here: like if someone threw a bunch of butter and caramel and milk and cinnamon and ten other things from a confectioner’s cupboard into a washing machine—and then threw that washing machine, plus a dryer and two fridges (for good measure) into an industrial rock tumbler.

But as your friendly neighborhood cereal blogger, I will do my darnedest to demystify these squares and their witch’s brew of golden goo.

From the classic trilogy of Peanut Butter, Frosted, and Chocolate Toast Crunches to the breaded spinoff gang of Strawberry, Blueberry, and Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunches, the TC franchise has quite the appetizing extended family of “flanker” flavors to hanker for. PB, Strawberry, and Blueberry, especially, forever have my heart, and I’m truthfully pretty sad that GM has abandoned the baby bread shape approach in favor of a strictly square philosophy.

That said, I just don’t think Dulce de Leche reaches the same highs as those three. I think the reason I loved Peanut Butter, Strawberry, and Blueberry Toast Crunches more was because they either had minimal or no cinnamon presence, instead letting their headlining tastes dominate the forefront. Sure, a cinnamon complement makes more sense in Dulce de Leche, but it ends up struggling against the caramel flavor, instead of with it, leading to a final cereal product without any one distinct taste.

Ultimately, each spoonful ends up tasting ambiguously golden brown, yet still extremely, almost overbearingly sweet. The caramel is of a syrupy and treacle sort, whereas I was hoping it’d be a little more earthy and bronzed, as it were, to mellow out the x-treme sweetness Toast Crunch cereals are known for.

As one might expect, Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch shines brighter in milk. The overall taste doesn’t change too much, save for a butterscotchy finish, but the twice-leche’d milk left behind at the end of a bowl is so stupendous that I want to use it as coffee creamer.

And as a blood transfusion.

If you have talented taste buds capable of dissecting several subtle layers of chemically entwined flavors, Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch is sure to make every spoonful an odyssey of an edible autopsy. But if you’re partial to sensory overload and like your cereals to have a “hero flavor,” this densely concocted Toast Crunch could taste like watching a YouTube video at 2x speed: too much, too fast.

The Bowl: Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch

The Breakdown: A potent fusion of cinnamon and caramel, Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch tries doing a whole lot but has trouble accomplishing any one thing distinctly. It’s still good, but this is a cereal for thrill seekers, while creature-comfort crunchers might want to stick with something cinn-pler.

The Bottom Line: 7 long-lost lil loaves out of 10