*Extremely Ferris Bueller voice*

You’re still here? It’s over. Go home—then get in your car and go to the store and buy this cereal!

Seriously, you need a review to tell you that CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is good? You’d think it would only take one look at the box above to stoke the very same deep, primal hunger for cinnamon-coated graham goodness that helped early humans evolve beyond simple hunter-gatherers and into sophisticated graham miners, their crude pickaxes chiseling away at vast veins of golden grain.

I joke, but seriously: there’s something about graham, be it crackered, pie crusted, or Teddy’d, that just gets my motor runnin’, directly counterintuitive to the anti-prurient origins of the foodstuff itself. And since, two years ago, we already got a spiritual predecessor to this CinnaGraham Toast Crunch in the form of Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal—which I called my Cereal of the Year—I went into this review beyond confident that General Mills’ latest Toast Crunch crusader couldn’t possibly fail.

But what if I told you…I was wrong?

Well, uh, in that case, the real me would tell you to kill that nefarious doppel-dän-g.-er immediately, ’cause it ain’t me. And you know why? Because of course CinnaGraham Toast Crunch delivers, silly!

Just look at that gorgeous, brooding color alone, and you know you’re in for something special. To paraphrase the great N. Flanders: if it’s pale and auburn–yella, you’ve got Cinnamon Toast Crunch there, fella. If it’s burnt sienna & brown, you’re in graham town!

And boy oh boy, does the graham ever shine through here. From first bite, it’s clear the base grain here is denser, crunchier, and baked with a more darkly brown sugared sweetness, complete with molasses-y notes and a (smacking French) kiss of honey. It’s way less like noshing into a graham cracker and way more like big-dipping into an indulgent ursine Dizzy Grizzly cookie.

But let’s talk about the one, admittedly unexpected drawback of CinnaGraham Toast Crunch: it feels like it has substantially less punchy sugar and cinnamon than regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Perhaps this was a deliberate power nerf to keep CinnaGraham from usurping its parent cereal’s massive popularity, or maybe it was done to let the honey and graham shine a little more clearly, but beyond a slight, tingling sprinkle of swirled cinna-sugar atop these other, more complex flavors, cinnamon is definitely playing second fiddle here. Ultimately, I don’t really mind, because I’m this for the graham anyway, but I do think it’s kind of funny that a cereal called Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal did the cinnamon part better than the cereal spawned from the most famous cinnamon cereal ever—and it’s doubly ironic that CinnaGraham Toast Crunch conversely has the more distinct honey taste of the two.

Milk is a good choice for CinnaGraham Toast Crunch, but it’s not essential. Either way, you’re getting the same satisfying graham goodness, but I will say that the golden-browned endmilk left behind with this stuff is simply sublime. As an added bonus, the heartier graham base gives CinnaGraham Toast Crunch better anti-sog stamina, which lighter and airier Cinnamon Toast Crunch has always sorely (and soppingly) lacked.

Over all, CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is a no-brainer and an all-time-great-grainer. I may gently bemoan the perceived reduction in cinn-tensity, but this stuff’s undeniably improved base grain just serves to make one thing clear: CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is way better than Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and it could even replace the stuff permanently for all I care. That may sound controversial, but the last thing I want is to be pining for CinnaGraham to come back just because General Mills decided to bury it out back with other long-gone GOAT Toast Crunches like Peanut Butter and Strawberry. Maybe then they can just bring it back as a Golden Grahams variant instead (which it always should have been, in my humble, grumbling opinion).

Though if nothing else, hopefully CinnaGraham Toast Crunch is easier for most cereal fans to find than the elusive Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham was. CinnaGraham is a twinkling testament to the awe-(and drool-)inspiring potential of graham in the cereal aisle, and I just hope someone out there who holds the gilded spoons of power is taking notes with their other hand.

The Bowl: CinnaGraham Toast Crunch

The Breakdown: While it may be a little cinnamon-lite based on what you’d expect from Cinnamon Toast Crunch, this graham-child brings everything else in spades: molasses, honey, hefty crunch, and a heaping helping of golden godliness.

The Bottom Line: 9 proud Ponyboys out of 10