Ahh, okay. The extended Elven cereal mythos is starting to make sense.

So seventeen years after the events depicted in the 2003 Will Ferrell holiday family comedy Elf, an unfleshed-out character tribe known as the South Pole Elves resurfaced in reality, when known Chaotic Neutral trickster archetype “Elf on the Shelf” escaped from an Antarctic prison, as described in my recent post on the Shelved Elf’s upcoming second cereal.

We can then assume that, since Buddy the Elf & the North Pole’s noble proletariat are the Nice List antithesis of Elf on the Shelf’s menacing malice, General Mills’ new Elf Cereal must be on a divine Clausian crusade to restore wholesome holiday energy to the breakfast table. I mean, why else would an Elf Cereal take nearly two decades to happen? And no, we don’t count the false prophet.

Personally, though I think Elf is a well-written Christmas movie, I’ve seen it enough times that my fanaticism for its fa-la-la follies tapered off after the first decade or so of annual airings. Nevertheless, I’ll be reviewing Elf Cereal, all maple-puffed and pine-mallowed, with the unbiased palate of a…

Line?

Yeah, from Elf, or at least Buddy’s Musical Christmas.

Uh.

The unbiased palate of a narwhal. Let’s move on.

First off, if you’re going to resurrect a modern classic in cereal form, it better have some thematic thought behind it. Choosing corn puffs and marshmallows as the base schema is pretty dubious, but at least they picked an Elf-appropriate flavor instead of like, sugar cookie.

Since the realm of good maple cereals is pretty much monopolized by Eggo Cereal lately, I so badly want there to be a worthy Waffle Crisp successor. And while Elf Cereal is of the same flavor font as Waffle Crisp, it’s more of a ᵐᵃᵖˡᵉ than a maple, if that makes sense. Just like how Hostess’ Honey Bun Cereal reminded me of a Honey Waffle Crisp, Elf Cereal is Diet Waffle Crisp, with the same sweet and candied chemical composition but only half the spontaneity. The other half of Elf Cereal, sadly is a 35:15 ratio of drab corniness to overbearing marbits.

It’s true: unless you were raised at the teat of a Mama Maple tree, you’ll probably find that the marshmallows in Elf Cereal add just enough saccharine edge to the already sugary maple glaze to make the stuff borderline nauseating. Don’t get me wrong, it’s tasty enough for the first couple hand- or spoonfuls—the smaller, crunchier puff sizes helps downplay a lot of distracting corniness—but a full-size bowl of Elf Cereal is simply not meant for unacclimated human palates. At least not adult ones.

The downside to the smaller puffs is that they get soggy a bit faster, which is a real problem for Elf Cereal, because the corn puffs’ crunchy integrity is the only thing separating their niche appeal from sugared-sludge entropy.

Ultimately, Elf Cereal might be a little too true to Buddy’s hedonistic hankering for molar-melting sweetness. I support the stuff for picking maple over a more generic flavor, and compliment it for trying to trace the snowy footprints Waffle Crisp left behind, but Elf Cereal still suffers from too many licensed cereal tropes to warrant more than, say, 97 minutes of enjoyment.

But hey, if keeping a box of this stuff by my bedside wards off Keter-class shelf elves, catch me weaving a rosary of sugary pastel pine trees.

The Bowl: Elf Cereal

The Breakdown: Beyond crunchiness and a maple kiss from the Ghost of Waffles Crisped, these pines and puffs are both too sweet and too hollow to leave you merrily eating and drinking.

The Bottom Line: 4.5 thrones of lies out of 10