Ah, now that Thanksgiving—with all its bountiful feasts, plentiful horns, and wishful bones—is over, it’s time to dive into the holiday season with everyone’s favorite yuletide tradition.

Which one, you ask? Decorating the tree? Crudely icing gingerbread cookies to look like your most cannibalizable loved ones? Or perhaps foisting reindeer antlers on your soon-to-be ho-ho-homicidal cat?

Oh, no, we’re talking about the most treasured, timeless Christmas rite of all: hiding a wretched little uncanny creature around your home who will proverbially invade your privacy with its eerie omnipresence!

Seriously though, does anyone actually like The Elf on the Shelf? I certainly haven’t met anyone who does. I’m convinced the whole thing’s a psyop by The Elf itself, who’s collected enough damning nocturnal footage through its prying (beady, sinister, soulless) eyes to blackmail the global marketing elite into helping its species reproduce.

And reproduce it has. Somehow, 2022’s new North Pole Snow Creme is the fourth EotS cereal to hit shelves (and stay there, unsold). Between the earlier Sugar Cookie one, the Peppermint one, and the Hot Cocoa one, the quality of this Elf’s oeuvre runs the gamut from awful to alright at best, so I’m not going into this new one with high hopes. Let’s just hope that if I give him another bad review, The Elf won’t pour glue in my 2%.

Okay, so I obviously buried the lede here: regardless of how it might taste, Elf on the Shelf North Pole has done something groundbreaking (or at least, icebreaking—good luck cracking that North Pole permafrost). Something no cereal has done before: it cools your mouth as you eat it. Coming cold on the hot heels of CinnaFuego Toast Crunch, it’s truly been a banner year for cereals that explore the respective extremes of temperature.

Though unlike CinnaFuego Toast Crunch, which tasted so noxiously like pepper spray that they’ve seriously rebranded it as a prank, Elf on the Shelf North P0le Snow Creme Cereal is at least edible…but that’s about all it is.

The cooling doesn’t kick in until the backend of each bite, so let’s talk about the foretaste—specifically how there really isn’t one. This cereal just tastes like crunchy sugar and not much else. Sure, they at least used a blend of corn, wheat, and oat flour, so there’s a decently dense crunch and no obtrusive corniness, but there’s nothing layered on top of that. Not even any vanilla or butteriness. It’s pretty boring, and the (very rare and very small) marbits don’t add anything, since the stars already tastes like, well, big fossilized marbits.

So how’s the magic cooling? Uh, it’s pretty cool, I guess. Like I said, you only really get it in the aftertaste—the problem is that there is an actual, caustically chemical aftertaste that comes with it. I like that the cooling isn’t overwhelming (though it’s definitely caused by menthol)—it’s less like you just chewed a stick of spearmint gum and more like you just chewed a stick of spearmint gum that someone else spit out. It’s subtle, but taking a deep inhale after a mouthful of this North Pole Snow Creme Cereal does give your throat an intriguing arctic tingle—I half expected my trachea to whistle like the Polar Express.

But then that aftertaste’s detestable tendrils creep in, and I feel like I’ve been the unlucky test subject for some experimental sugar cookie cough syrup.

Milk doesn’t do a whole lot, to be honest. Again, the cereal is pretty flavorless outside of its generic sweetness, so it goes from “crunchy sugar” to “crunchy milk.” Dairy also dilutes the nasty aftertaste, but that means it also mostly washes away the cooling effect, which is really the only novelty this cereal has going for it.

Overall, like I said with CinnaFuego, I at least appreciate the cereal industry trying new things—but you can’t succeed on gimmicks alone. Zany temperature stunts are innovative, but if you don’t pair them with an actually palatable flavor, no one’s going to want to eat it past the first goofy bowlful, unless it’s to have other people try it. I’ll give Elf on the Shelf this much: with CinnaFuego, absolutely none of my friends could stomach it, but I had a couple people who thought this North Pole Snow Creme was weirdly good (with emphasis on the weirdly). I suppose if you love Frosted Flakes or other cereals that bring nothing but sugar to the table, this stuff might sate your sweet tooth—and refrigerate it, too.

Just be careful not to encourage The Elf too much—or his next seasonal trick might experiment with something more dubious than temperature. How about the world’s first oleaginous cereal?

The Bowl: Elf on the Shelf North Pole Snow Creme Cereal

The Breakdown: Sugar, ice, and nothing remarkably nice—this latest Elf on the Shelf Cereal may be the most memorable of the quadrilogy, but it’s a one-note novelty rather than a beloved bowlfellow.

The Bottom Line: 3.5 cereals eaten with both eyes open out of 10