Happy Birthday, Cereal! I made you a milk-filled cake, invited your friends Oatmeal and Toaster Pastry, and even put up your favorite ring-shaped strea—

Wait, you’re telling me National Cereal Day doesn’t commemorate the birth of cereal: the moment so many years ago when a prehistoric oat plant miraculously popped out a Cheerio? Man, I went to the wrong Sunday school.

Regardless, I can’t let this National Cereal Day pass without reviewing something birthday cake flavored. It’s just too convenient that General Mills’ Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp arrived on my doorstep (thanks GM!) just in time for the big day. An odd duck—or at least a lone wolf—of a new cereal, Birthday Cake Cookie crips has ironically debuted with little fanfare or celebration. I was at least expecting a downtown NYC jubilee featuring a giant cookie-shaped cake that some B list celebrity would pop out of.

Now I’ll have to fulfill my dream of seeing Brad Garrett covered in buttercream some other way.

This cereal looks suspiciously similar to both 2009’s Sprinkles Cookie Crisp and 2016’s Holiday Sprinkles Cookie Crisp, but until we get a proper revival of O.G. Vanilla Cookie Crisp—I’m talkin’ bearded Cookie Jarvis and all—I’ll happily give any cake, pastry, muffin, or even donut-flavored Cookie Crisp a try.

The bad news is that Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp really does taste almost exactly like its merry sprinkled predecessors. The good news is that, stylistic ancestors aside, the stuff is pretty addictively good.

From the start, I get strong funfetti vibes—so much so that I half expect the Pillsbury Dough Boy was enlisted as a production consultant, if not as a…*shudder*…ingredient. Each pale, pastel polka-dotted cookie disc has pops of buttery sugar that are glazed with subtle but mouthwatering notes of custard. Couple that with a less-corny-than-average Cookie Crisp base that smacks of golden-baked dough, and you’ve got a bowl of perfectly round, crunchy cupcakes.

But unoriginality isn’t Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp’s only fault. Its flavor profile lacks nuance, meaning the fairly one-note sweetness can get boring or straight-up overwhelming depending on the longevity of your bowl. Though I suppose the same could be said about real birthday cake, so this was either a deliberate decision by General Mills to match the cereal’s source material or a rallying cry for us consumers to petition for a pie, or at least an ice cream cake, cereal next year.

Cookie Puss Crisp, anyone?

Speaking of dairy products, milk is a great pair for Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp. While I can’t recommend slathering a real birthday cake in milk—that is not a good life hack for re-moistening dried out party leftovers—here it gives the milquetoast base cookies the creaminess its buttered overtones needed, while making the base taste like dunked shortbread (if not a lite Dunkaroo!).

Better yet, the hardy cookie base and the cröonchy sprinkles do a solid job of resisting milk’s soggification power, leaving you with a cereal that stays the course even through the third chorus of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

So while Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp doesn’t cover much new ground, it’s still a comfy munchie—the cereal equivalent of sweatpants—that’s actually available in non-winter months (at least for a limited time). Whether you choose to just eat it or use it to stud the crust of a custom cereal milk-flavored birthday cake that you intend to send to my PO box is up to you: just be sure to have a glass of milk or microwaved funfetti to wash it down with.

That said, happy National Cereal Day to my whole bunch of fellow breakfasters. Feel free to tag me on Twitter with your Cereal Day creations and celebrations. I’ll already be busy after the awesome care package Post sent me.

There may not be any new Peanut Butter Chocolate Pebbles here yet, but hey, I’ll Judd Nelson fist pump to this National Cereal Day all the same.

The Bowl: Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp Cereal

The Breakdown: All the devilish buttered shortbread goodness of a real cake, these familiar cookies nevertheless lack the nuance of more refined pastries. There’s a reason I’ll always pick muffins over cupcakes.

The Bottom Line: 7.5 Pillsbury D’oh! Boys out of 10