Holy early Autumn, Bartman! Just yesterday I was fending off the Sprites of Summer with honeysuckle and incense, and now you’re telling me the Bats of Fall are already echolocally a-knockin’?

Well forget the onion bread we have in the oven: it’s garlic season.

But not until after a brief detour through Dog-Day Eager Beaver season. See, the likes of Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, and now the constituents of some Count Choco-Peanut Buttula love to release their annual signature cereals before the dog days have finished yipping. While this is great for Halloween cereal lovers, it’s admittedly a bit sad when I overeagerly and unrestrainedly review them all before mid-September and I’m left writing about the trigonometry of Frute Brute’s incisors by 10/31.

So while I’m admitting I have a problem, instead of doing anything about it I’ll just pretend I’m eating Reese’s Puffs Sideways TIE Fighters.

A cereal’s best role model? Ruffled potato chips.

That sentiment rings true when eating each of Reese’s Puffs’ flat-headed chocolate-peanut butter Sour Patch Kids. Because like Reese’s Eggs or their bunny/Yoshi-shaped predecessors, Reese’s Puffs Bats instantly become tastier than their parent cereal simply by changing their geometry.

Because like ridged potato chips, the added surface area, and in this case less airy inner-corniness, allow for more of the good stuff. By this I mean the delicately powdered milk chocolate sweetness and more peanut-syrupy nuttiness of Reese’s Puffs signature surface sheen that, on these nook ‘n’ niche-laden bats, acts as a sugary analogue to the spatially delicious, salt-strewn landscape of, say, Lay’s Ruffles.

Now that I’ve nearly sugar-crashed just writing that sentence, I can confirm that adding milk does an even better job of keeping the corny bane of regular Reese’s Puffs’ existence a whole world away from these Bats. All that’s left is a symphony of natural, yet seemingly artificial due to the sugar content Reese’s flavor that, though it may not have the iconically oiliness of its forefather candy, still manages to be a deliteful can of Fudge Lite with a dusting of twinkling fairy-nut dust.

I would definitely recommend Reese’s Puffs Bats, not just being a good cereal for easing yourself into the Halloween Spirit (just tell yourself they’re Reese’s Puffs Hammerheads), but also because this is how Reese’s Puffs should always taste. I hope General Mills keeps inventing new shapes to keep this Egg/Pumpkin/Tree-esque Reese’s delight around all year.

Reese’s Puffs Krampuses, anyone?

The Bowl: Reese’s Puffs Bats

The Breakdown: Better than Reese’s Puffs, these Transylvanian temptations bring the magic of surface area to its starchy ancestors’ legacy. Could use a little more grounding base flavor, though, from something like rice or oat flour.

The Bottom Line: 8.5 Reese’s Yoshi Eggs out of 10