“I love this thing. I actually just had Froot Loops at 3a.m. last night—cereal really is great at any time of the day.”

You know a milkshake is gonna be good when you order it and the Burger King cashier feels inspired to gush over cereal. It was this serendipitous cereal fanboyism that made me certain BK’s new Froot Loops Shake would be true to its namesake breakfast classic before I even tried it.

When I first heard about this cereal milkshake, I was instantly excited. It sounded like the ol’ creepily masked monarch who gave humanity the Whopper had really outdone himself this time by mixing vanilla soft serve, Froot Loops cereal bits, a tantalizingly ambiguous “sweet sauce,” and whipped topping. But would the actual thing live up? I emerged from my tent outside a local Burger King bleary-eyed and thirsty for  gooey, iridescently sugar-chunked dairy.

(Okay, I didn’t actually camp out waiting, but my brain hasn’t thought about anything else for this past week except Froot Loops Shakes and the occasional Reese’s Egg.)

The Froot Loops Shake doesn’t appear too spectacular at first glance. Overwhelmingly white with clustered rainbow specks, it just looks like a unicorn with chickenpox. But beneath that Funfetti exterior lies an undeniable truth: this shake tastes just like a buffed-up bowl of Froot Loops.

Just how buffed-up am I talking? Picture a bowl of Froot Loops who trained for years with Sensei Toucan Sam himself on a mountain, opening all 7 rainbow fruit chakras in their doughnut-shaped bodies. Then imagine pouring a cup of ultra thick, perfectly chilled milk on them, letting them steep for a decade, then using the resulting cereal milk to start the process over again.

In less cosmically zen terms, Burger King’s Froot Loops Shake tastes like a child’s rose-tinted memory of their first Froot Loops bowl. Here, BK’s already creamy, buttery, and nearly custardy soft serve base is infused with a secret “sweet sauce” that gives the thick ice cream the instantly recognizable, ambiguously tropical flavor of Froot Loops cereal, which simultaneously smacks of candied cherry, sweet lemon-lime, some kind of atomic blue raspberry, and whatever you’d get if James’s Giant Peach had a baby with a strawberry from John Lennon’s dreamy fields.

And did I mention it was thick? You really have to channel your inner Hoover when first getting your Froot Loops Shake, but it’s a suck where the pay-off doesn’t suck. Because before long, a delightfully crisp Froot Loops chunk is sure to pop onto your palate like a BB pellet through a fire hose. The actual cereal pieces are all perfectly diced to fit through the straw while still staying large enough to bring a fun textural contrast to the whole shake. When compared to the sauce-seasoned soft serve, the bits don’t have much flavor, but that’s okay: I’ll still love ’em like they’re my children—even as I gobble them down like Cronus.

This tastiness alone makes me hope Burger King will partner with Kellogg’s again. I’d love to see a Chocolate Chip Krave Chunk Cookie, a Smorz Pie, or a Corn Pops-Stuffed Whopper.

Hey, the slogan is “Have It Your Way,” not “Have It Only In An Appetizing Way.”

The farther you get into the Froot Loops Shake, the more pieces you’ll find. It’s almost like the Froot Loops bits can sense their impending doom and start desperately multiplying to preserve their evolutionary line.

The cruel irony is that, while the fruity fragments rev up their reproduction, the creamy environment around them starts to crumble. It becomes easier to drink the formerly viscous soft serve once the melting whipped cream merges essences with its ice cream brother, but this new fluidity turns the Froot Loops bits soggy, squishy, and sad. By the bottom of the cup, you’ll be left taking them out of their misery while whispering, “Shh, shh: this is going to be even less fun for me than it is for you.”

Even worse, the once-delightful “sweet sauce” becomes cloying and syrupy—unbeknownst to me, it had formed dense little pockets in the shake’s nether regions that are far too potently sweet to drink with a straight face. Young kids may love it, but let’s just say that if you’re old enough to remember who Grimace from McDonald’s is, the end of this BK shake will probably leave you grimacing.

And that’s really the bottom line for Burger King’s Froot Loops Shake. Its first half is deliciously nostalgic, but just like growing up, it ultimately becomes wistfully bittersweet. Unless BK releases this treat in a smaller size, I recommend sharing the shake with a friend to keep your shake’s climate from getting “shook up” too soon. And though it’s a breakfast product, I can’t really recommend eating a Froot Loops milkshake before noon, unless you like arriving to your afternoon appointments with a sleepy, sloshy belly.

I think my shake-sharing comrade—who graciously spent part of her birthday photographing hallucinogenic dairy products in a sticky and sunny Burger King parking lot with me—put it best as we rolled out out of the restaurant:

“I feel like I need to eat some vegetables.”

The “Bowl:” Burger King Froot Loops Shake

The Break Down: It may taste like sweet Saturday morning cartoons, but this Froot Loops Shake shouldn’t be enjoyed all afternoon. Drink it fast and revel in the potently syrupy nostalgia, or else you’ll be wallowing in its grossly granulated dregs.

The Bottom Line: 7.5 Apple Jacks Cinnamon Rolls out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 720 calories, 103 grams of sugar, and 16 grams of protein per Froot Loops Shake)