Banana Caramel Cheerios? More like, Caramel Banana Cheerios!

That’s it.

That’s the whole review.

Go on, you’ve got like, Neopets to feed, right?

…

Okay fine, I’ll elaborate.

Describing caramel cereals is hard for me, because I feel I lack both the vocabulary and gastronomy experience necessary to adequately articulate what makes a good caramel, nor how to distinguish caramel from similar browned or toasted sweetnesses. Regardless, I think I can confidently say that these new Cheerios taste less like bananas and caramel and more like caramelized bananas.

Which is to say, there’s a definite ripe, browned toastiness to these Cheerios’ banana flavor, but it’s much more of a subtle accent than a distinct component of the cereal. To a laypalate (which I still feel I have), this is basically just a banana cereal. It’s good, and it reminds me a lot of Banana Nut Cheerios, which I liked a lot, but its lack of groundbreaking greatness makes me feel Banana Caramel Cheerios isn’t quite worthy of its mouthwatering flavor name. Plus, I reviewed Banana Nut Cheerios in autumn, which feels like a much better temporal setting for a warm and cozy cereal flavor—as it gets sweatier in my soon-to-summer city, I find myself craving a light and fruitier Cheerio, like, say, Strawberry Banana.

God-tier combo right here. If you're one of the lucky few out there who's able to access new Cheerios as well as Texas-exclusive H-E-B cereals, you gotta nosh this mix.

Big thanks to Denver for sending me the Dulce! pic.twitter.com/oJ8CjAu95J

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) May 28, 2022

So YMMV (Your Meteorology May Vary), but Banana Caramel Cheerios were just plain good to me and not much more. Milk helps makes BC Cheerios richer and creamier, as does mixing in a more distinctly caramel-y cereal. But ultimately, with such a crunch-ical mass of stellar Cheerios varieties on shelves right now, I’ll be hard-pressed to buy Banana Caramel again over something from the Oat Crunch line, Chocolate Peanut Butter, or plain ol’ (but not plain plain ol’) Honey Nut.

The Bottom Line: 6 swim-up cereal bars out of 10