BRB, changing the name of my site to Curmudgeonously.

Why? Because the longer I write about cereal, the harder it gets for a new cereal to excite me. Don’t get me wrong, my heart still yearns and burns (figuratively) for cereal, but after reviewing 450+ breakfast products, the next plain ol’ chocolate, vanilla, or cinnamon-flavored cereal has to do a lot different to capture my attention. At a certain point, my trusty cartful of adjectives starts to get stale.

That was my mindset going into this newest flavor of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Not that Cinnamon Roll is really new territory for the brand. There were Cinnamon Streusel Mini-Wheats in 2007, and Cinnamon Roll Little Bites in 2012. The only thing 2021’s Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats have that the others don’t is….a kinda ugly box. The grey-blue is uninspiring, the cinnamon roll watermarks make it look like an off-brand DUPLO, and, well, I’ve already voiced my distaste for the redesigned Mini-Wheats mascot many times.

this is like one of those botched painting restorations pic.twitter.com/8MS9X0MjVp

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) December 12, 2020

But all hesitations notwithstanding, I must go into this review unbiased. Even if I want to punt the mascot with a pair of steel-toed boots.

Okay, picture a cinnamon-flavored Frosted Mini-Wheat.

And there you go. Review over.

Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats are simply that: exactly what you’d expect. Now, what that means is that these aren’t super potently cinnamon’d. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a lick of spiciness amidst the powdered sugary base of these thatched bricks. No, I’ve come to expect this from Frosted Mini-Wheats: a thin veneer of lite-mode flavor atop a big ol’ hunk of toasted bird’s nest.

So are Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats bad? Heck no! They fulfill their namesake in characteristically modest fashion. Though these particular Mini-Wheats are a bit too mouth-drying to eat dry, unless you’re trying to build your jaw muscles.

That’s why, in my opinion, Cinnamon Roll and all other Frosted Mini-Wheats should definitely be eaten with milk, all the time. These things are built for absorbency! And when a Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheat does drink in that creamy ivory nectar, its cinnamon-sugar frosting unrolls new layers of flavor depth. By the end of your bowl, the last few swollen survivors taste like actual cinnamon roll cores, albeit heavily wheat-floured ones.

In the end, Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats is a solid new variant for a familiar formula, even if it’s not all that innovative given previous Cinna-Mini-Wheat iterations. I’ll be honest, I don’t buy Frosted Mini-Wheats all that often, and when I do I lean toward more nuanced flavors, like Maple Brown Sugar or Chocolate Little Bites. However, if you’re a big shredded wheat fan and want to indulge in the spice of life, Cinnamon Roll is a good variety—even if it’s low on spice.

The Bowl: Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats

The Breakdown: A little cinnamon, a kiss of sugar, and a whole lot of toasted wheat: Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats break no ground, but their sweet simplicity is nevertheless comforting and hard to dislike.

The Bottom Line: 6.5 interstellar mascot catapults out of 10