To paraphrase a notable shrimp entrepreneur, “Valentine’s Day is like a box of Crunch Berries: you always know what you’re gonna get.”

And this made-up quote from a made-up character is right: February 14th inevitably means the same parade of uneaten Conversation Hearts, shamefully scarfed Reese’s Hearts, and tentatively nibbled (but ultimately abandoned) coconut chocolate-box rejects. For a Hallmark holiday, it seems to lack inspiration.

The company ought to call Yami Yugi, as it appears to have ignored the Heart of the Cards. Or maybe just shoot a text to Cap’n Crunch.

See, like Valentine’s Day, Cap’n Crunch’s infinitely iterated Crunch Berries cereals seasonally remix the geometry and color psychology of each, without touching the tried-and-true flavor formula. That is, until now, as H.M. Crunch’s Valentine-adjacent Chocolatey Berry Crunch brings chocolate to the Cap’n’s well-oiled chests and strawberry to his lovingly processed Crunch Berries.

Which is all to say that if Cap’n Crunch is breaking tradition just to make us his Valentine, he better buy us dinner too, before we accept his invitation to this dessert of a breakfast. But will this fresh face make him look like a snack, or will his cereal’s fresh duds be just that?

There’s just one way to find out, and I hope it doesn’t involve kissing a sea-brined mustache.

This isn’t the Cap’n’s first time around the block of fudge. While his earliest efforts found cult acclaim, Crunch’s latest journey through Montezuma’s side of the world ended in tragedy, as 2012’s Chocolatey Crunch was panned harder than a choco-prospector’s brown gold.

And it’s sad to say that the chocolate chests in Chocolatey Berry Crunch were most definitely birthed from the same cocoa-belching machine mother. They somehow manage to strip away all the coconut-oiled sheen that makes original Cap’n Crunch so deliriously delicious, replacing it with a dainty veneer of mummified Nesquik. This chocolate infusion tastes like a sepia film of Old West chocolate pioneers: under-explored, faint, and earth-worn.

Thankfully, Chocolatey Berry Crunch strikes a well-composed, if awkwardly distributed balance between chests and Crunch Berry pieces—I recommend shaking the box to help the choco-swamp at the bottom float up to the 99+ luftballons above.

These Pennywise-ready Crunch Berries, despite containing real strawberry juice, totally assimilate any genuinely fruity nuance into their cratered folds of hyper-concentrated fake tropical fruit. No matter how many Chillings-worth’s of scarlet Berries I ate, I couldn’t detect the strawberry. Worse yet, combining Berries with chests mutes the isolated chocolate murmurs to dull cocoa echoes.

Just picture a normal Crunch Berry with a brown lipstick stain—that gives the roof of your mouth more than a few hickeys.

This is the kind of nameless and aimless chocolate that needs more than a little milk to precede it. Properly fonduing/fon-mooing Chocolatey Berry Crunch helps the imposing Crunch Berry sweetness understand its boundaries, while a creamy catalyst also promotes the wan chocolate to a more palpable cacao cameo role. Yet it’s still more pomp than circumstantial, making the only real ace (of hearts) up this Cap’n’s epauletted sleeves the endmilk.

Though it has the weathered aesthetics of roadside Doritos bag, this naturally crimson milk tastes of twin Hershey syrups that crossed streams. It’s a more even experience, even if it isn’t the romantic morning in promised by the seductive packaging.

If every new flavor Quake added to Chocolatey Berry Crunch were cranked up by about 4 or 5 CrunchoJoules, this would be a solid take on the chocolate strawberry concept. But overall minimalism of taste makes this a so-so seasonal that doesn’t register many bars of my enjoyment equalizer.

I’ll expect big improvements from what I hope will be Carrot Cake Crunch next month (hint hint, Cap’n).

The Bowl: Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Berry Crunch

The Breakdown: Overperforming at underdelivering, this cereal’s familiar Crunch Berry fun doesn’t have much chemistry with the ho-hum chocolate. Its muddy endmilk, on the other hand…

The Bottom Line: 6.5 Dark Cereal Magicians out of 10