You ever have that one kid at your school who was really weird back in the day but is now doing super cool stuff?

You know, the kid who would eat paste like pasta sauce in elementary school, hiss at kids in the hallway in middle school, and insist on being called “Chuck” in high school, even though his name was like, Roger? The kid who would eventually grow up to make crazy science stuff, or build bridges? Or at least build cool LEGO dioramas in his basement?

Haha, I know you all had a kid like that, but there definitely wasn’t one in my school. Ahah, why is everyone looking at me.

Long autobiography short, Great Value is like that kid. I’ve never once had a Great Value Toaster Pastry—I always preferred Kroger’s store brand because of its crudely adorable Toaster Treats mascot—but seeing them release a mystery flavor, before even Pop-Tarts or Toaster Strudel (who knows, Toaster Treat might be brewing up a fan-elected flavor)

Great Value just turned its bargain rectangle reputation into one that’s handsome and enigmatic. Could it be an appropriately Walmart flavor, like Fruit Punch Pickles? Could it be a Dum-Dum-style production error (like Fruit Punch Pickles)? Or could it be the flavor of a Walmart floor itself?

Only the unseen foiled abyss knows the answer. I’m going in.

First things first, I can’t help but notice that all of my pastries lack the giant shadowy question mark promised by the box. What happened to them? A typographic cat burglar with a chisel?

Maybe that’s the real mystery, because what Great Value Mystery Frosted Toaster Pastries—not to be confused with Mystery-Frosted Pastries, which is what I keep trying and failing to pitch as my office nickname—do right in concept, they do poorly in secrecy.

Instead of the appropriately stealthy “Natural Flavors,” “white grape concentrate” is right there in the ingredients list. So while Scooby-Doo might refuse this mystery for being “roo easy,” when I look at the craggy beige topography of these Not-Tarts, I can’t help but be enticed by the specificity.

And at first bite, Great Value toaster pastry crust is surprisingly awesome. Like a mix of sugar cookie and croissant, the charmingly near-Play-Doughy softness and literally biscuit doughy, golden flavor makes this a refreshing toaster pastry (I refuse to abbreviate that to t.p.) crust to rival Pop-Tarts’ comparatively crumbly infrastructure.

So while the frosting is good and the icing is well, sugary icing, the hazy jelly inside each Great Value P?stry, is less exciting. While it may look just like grape jelly slathered inside, it lacks a distinctively punchy grape flavor. I get that white grapes are typically milder (making it a weird choice for a frosted slab of sugar to begin with) but this tastes more like, say, Tropical Punch flavor that grape is just one part of, along with citrus, strawberries, and whatever else it takes to create one vanilla sugar-tinged, homogenous fruity luau.

Which, between good crust and okay jelly, really puts my enjoyment of this toaster pastry in limbo.

I’ll pack my bags.

Thankfully, toasting is a pretty powerful solution for Great Value Frosted Mystery Toaster Pastries. The densely malleable crust gets a nice mouthwateringly browned crust of its own, and the the hitherto crowd-sourced fruit filling takes on a winier ripe grape bite—though definitely more “ghost of champagne” than “vampire’s chalice.”

The other nebulous fruit juices are still there, but my taste buds can better hone in on the presiding juicy-tart signature of grape.

Bonus points for the satisfying frozen jelly pull. And for the frame-worthy mystery foil.

Freezing these vexing pastries has a similar effect, subduing the crust and icing to let the grape concentrate shine a little more concentratedly. But it also brings what I perceive to be a sharper blueberry flavor. It’s a fitting complement to the grape, but I think in this case I prefer the more focused zest of the toasted ones.

I  am a man of culture, he says, spewing white crumbs across his black couch.

So while “Fruit Punch,” might have been the intended mystery flavor—thus making my guess almost right, for lack of sheer force of dill—but if the white grape ingredients listing biased my taste buds into wanting something more than the “Wild Berry meets Gilligan’s Island” mish-mash in Great Value’s Mystery Toaster Pastries. The crust is great, but I’d love to see it housing a different Great Value flavor, or more-defined Grape Pop-Tart innards instead.

Hey, maybe I could perform a frosting transplant surgery? Nurse, get the vacuum hose, a lot of duct tape, and a crazy straw.

The Bowl: Great Value Frosted Mystery Toaster Pastries

The Breakdown: With high crust potential held back by an inner self who can’t decide its fruity brand, these are best toasted for a post-dinner date dessert, ideally paired with a fine Brie and a moonlit Tuscan view.

The Bottom Line: 7 Faux-ster Strudels out of 10