Wow, I can’t believe we’re finally getting a cereal flavored like my favorite regional Midwest ice cre—wait, what? You’re telling me the “Blue Moons” in these Frosted Pandora Flakes have nothing to do with the sorcerously ambiguous berry-marshmallow nectar of my youth?

Yeugh. Well fine, I’ll still give this Avatar: The Way of Water / Kellogg’s collab the time of day (2:05p.m. EST, to be specific), but only because I love this new trend of letting Tony the Tiger flex his cinematic bravado instead of putting any actual movie characters on the box. You can just tell he’s begging to be roped into somebody’s movie multiverse.

Okay, if there’s one thing Kellogg’s knows how to do, it’s artificial blueberry flavor. In my book, Kellogg’s Blueberry Fruity Snacks—y’know, the ones that look like Covenant plasma grenades—are the (indi)gold standard when it comes to fake blueberry goodness. And the “Blue Moon” spheres in these Pandora Flakes taste just like those squishy gummy globules. A lot of the times, cereals going for a blueberry flavor will go the authentic blueberry route, but I’ll argue that the actual juicy acidic sweetness of blueberries the fruit is a little too nuanced to every fully translate to a dried-grain vehicle

That’s why I prefer to taste (or perhaps be tasted by) a true-not-blue fake blueberry cereal that isn’t afraid to baste on the fake fruitiness. And these Blue Moons are the most potently fake blueberried cereal I’ve had since Blueberry Tiny Toast (rest in piecelets). They’re great. I love them.

The problem is that they aren’t the only piece in a bowl of Pandora Flakes. Yeah, uh, there are Frosted Flakes, too. And they don’t have any blueberry flavoring at all. Think about this: sure, these Blue Moons aren’t once-in-a-you-know-what rare. You’re probably going to get one in like, every spoonful. But its tongue-punching goodness is going to be inevitably diluted by the sea of blandly sweet corn shards around it. Why should we have to settle for that?

I had this same problem with both Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Mashups—it just ended up feeling pointless, like I was eating worse Froot Loops or worse Apple Jacks. But in the case of Pandora Flakes, that worse is kind of even worse because I don’t even have the option to go to the store and buy a box of Oops! All Moons instead. Sure, I could just eat all the Blue Moons first, but then I have to plow through a bunch of Tony’s One-Note Wonders. I simply don’t like Frosted Flakes that much; I know many of you will disagree—because FF is a very popular cereal—but if I’m going to pay money for a cereal, I expect layers of flavor and decadence, not just sugar³.

Which is all to say that Pandora Flakes tastes good, but feels like it could be a lot better. Though I will concede that milk makes Pandora Flakes’ core problem way less of an issue for me, because whatever vaguely sinister blueberritanium flavor crystals they bake into these Blue Moons dissolve when dairied and diffuse all throughout the bowl. This doesn’t completely absolve Kellogg’s—would it’ve killed them to spend a fraction of a penny more per box to add the same flavoring from the Moons into the flakes? Or did the new CGI Tony model suck up the budget like, y’know, Avatar?—but ultimately, as far as movie cereals go, this one is at least memorable, between its mostly good taste and neat box art.

Who knows, maybe they’ll add some Muffiny flavor to Pandora Flakes for the sequel. Or the sequel to that. Or the sequel to th—

The Bowl: Kellogg’s Avatar Pandora Frosted Flakes

The Breakdown: I love the Blue Moons here, but much like the proud Na’vi getting murked by a bunch of bland white people, these sweet spheres have to fight against plain ol’ Frosted Flakes to survive.

The Bottom Line: 7 equally disappointing Superman Cereals out of 10
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