How high is too lofty of an ambition for a bland-by-nature shredded wheat brick?

It seems that the once humble bales are no longer content with simply sweet flavors like Blueberry and plainly Frosted. Now they’re aiming higher, seeking to be in the same strata of flavor decadence as cinnamon rolls, vanilla lattes, and now chocolate-covered strawberries.

With the expectations those desserts carry with them, that’s a heavy burden of responsibility for a crate of thatched wheat to bear. I’ll go into Post’s latest variety with an open-mind, but there’s one thing I’m calling up front:

A shredded wheat biscuit will never be an aphrodisiac.

I will say, the color is impressive. In contrast to less thoroughly flavored varieties, like the affirmations cinnamon roll, chocolate strawberry Shredded Wheat presents a starkly “emo middle school girl circa 2007” pallette.

And the flavor potency, now that the chocolate is practically baked into the wheat, is stronger too.

Just one problem: the strawberry flavor hits like a mouthful of Kirby fist.

That is to say, its candied, practically bubblegummy artificial strawberry flavor is to my taste buds as perfume is to my sight buds. Its borderline medicinal fruit concentrate flavor totally overwhelms the chocolate’s, who leaves traces of promising fudginess but little else beneath strawberry’s cotton candy haze.

Strawberry fields for never.

But wait, before we give up on these unbalanced bricks, it’s worth discussing how a little milk irrigation makes Chocolate Strawberry Shredded Wheat so much better.

See, milk efficiently dilutes the strawberry frosting’s strong flavor, subduing it into something much creamier but still rich, like boiled Gogurt or watered-down strawberry ice cream.

Which the chocolate then gets a chance to make into 2/3 of a Neapolitan. The equally richer and no longer constrained cocoa-chipped layer admirably balances toasty chocolatiness and graininess, producing a net flavor with the fruit that calls to mind some sort of whole-wheat Chocolate Chip Pop-Tart that’s always blushing.

That’s all to say that this is a tale of two Chocolate Strawberry Shredded Wheat. Dry, it’s overberryingly strawberry smacked, but when milked, it’s just about one of the strongest shredded wheat flavors I’ve seen since the undisputed G.O.A.T.

So maybe you’re not an aphrodisiac, Choco-Straw Shredded Wheat. But still I’ll take you on a nice date to the dairy farm.

The Bowl: Chocolate Strawberry Shredded Wheat

The Breakdown: Try it, if you dairy! That’s the only way to find the shinnering diamond of milky strawberry in the otherwise biohazardous rough.

The Bottom Line (divide by 4 if not using milk): 8 steamed Danimals out of 10