If you thought the name “Cerealously” was a real mouthful—which should really be the site’s official slogan—well there’s a new toothsome, tongue-twisting portmanteau in town. That is, if your town falls anywhere in the Lone Star State.

While they may not be entirely new, H-E-B’s distinct and diverse line of “Cerealology” chef-inspired cereals/granolas are certainly new to me. With huge thanks to Empty Bowl listener Douglas, who not only sent me all of the above cereals but a box of Lactaid for my lactose-hating stomach as well, I can now try H-E-B’s whole crunch-ography for myself. And with a whole bunch of exciting names, with innovative mix-ins never before seen in cereal history, this geologically vast study of Cerealology is sure to turn up at least a few lovingly pressurized gems.

Since I’ve got enough cereal here to feed a lecture hall of hangry biology students, I’m going to try to be succinct when reviewing each Cerealology flavor. So grab your milk-colored lab coats and a microscopic spoon, because we’re about to be munching and mulling at a molecular level.

Granola Quinoa Nut Crunch

For lack of a proper methodology—my energy is currently all focused metabolically gut-ward—I’ll be reviewing Cerealology’s catalogue purely in the order my whimsical appetite chooses. Desiring a neutral springboard for all the tastes to come, I chose this absolutely nuttily nut-packed granola. Between peanuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts and coconut, this is the purest burst of mixed earthiness I’ve ever experienced in my breakfast bowl.

Like the entire cocktail party bowl in a single spoonful, Granola Quinoa Nut Crunch dries out your mouth real fast. As a pretty salty granola medley, milk bizarrely works well to give the whole experience a wholesome and energy-rich appeal, even if it lacks a single potently memorable taste note.

The Bottom Line: 7.5 gulped GORPs out of 10

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Cinnamon Mocha

WHOA. While this isn’t the first mocha cereal, and likely not the last, I sincerely doubt I’ll ever experience coffee, chocolate and cinnamon in the same product ever again. Yet, what could’ve been a once-in-a-brown-moon cereal supergroup isn’t balanced quite as well as I’d hoped.

If cinnamon could ever be truly called cinn-ful, it’s here and now. There are certainly pleasant pops of rich chocolate, quality granola and robust coffee, but it’s drowned in an ever-crashing crimson tide of potent cinnamon spice. I’m all for an authentic cinnamon cereal experience as a respite from the likes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but this is a little overwhelming. For me to desire a spicy cinnamon cereal is a rare event when compared to chocolate cereal cravings, so while it’s an honorably innovative mix, Cerealology Cinnamon Mocha needs to get its priorities checked.

The Bottom Line: 5.5 Fireball Cereals out of 10

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Salted Caramel Popcorn Granola

Jumping back into granola, I feel this stuff is the karmic antithesis of Cinnamon Mocha. While having literal popcorn bits in your milky cereal may sound texturally vexing, their buttery fluffiness blends seamlessly with the soft caramel bits and hearty granola to make the best caramel corn cereal the world may ever enjoy.

A far (Star Wars galaxy-level far) cry from Cap’n Crunch’s painfully hollow interpretation, Salted Caramel Popcorn Granola tastes like something a distant family member you don’t really know would bring to the Christmas party, the kind of thing you’d miss the chance to ask about and would later page through 12 Google result pages to find a worthy facsimile.

The Bottom Line: 9 bowls of it—I can eat it. I can eat it 9 times—out of 10

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Fig & Nut Crunch

Oh man, this one totally buries the lede. No offense to figs, but without the newton it’s not exactly one of the cereal mix-ins I’ve been dreaming of. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what dried figs taste like. Well at least in the case of Cerealology Fig & Nut Crunch cereal, the aesthetically pleasing shriveled slivers don’t taste like anything. They really just add a chewiness to a cereal charmingly ruled by honey and yogurt.

The wizards behind H-E-B’s figgy facade, the duo of yogurt-glazed frosted flakes and honey-coated multigrain flakes is simple, yet extremely satisfying—especially with the roasted nuances added by quinoa and walnuts. The whole thing is a Honey Bunches of Oats flavor in berserk mode, and I couldn’t be happier. I just wish there was a little fruitiness to it to round out the otherwise concise flavor profile.

The Bottom Line: 8 Biblically prosperous cereals out of 10

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Fruit & Maple Crunch

A truly noble concept, Cerealology Fruit & Maple Crunch aims to literalize the blueberry–maple goodness artificially attempted by Cap’n Crunch and Eggo. And while the real maple syrup is certainly the highlight here, its spotlight could stand to shine a lot brighter. For despite the pleasant, oaken and smoky maple syrup ribbons in each bite, it’s the cornu-copious dried fruit mix-ins that dominate the Fruit & Maple Crunch experience.

Between blueberries, cranberries and apples, there’s so much fruit here that the whole cereal becomes incredibly chewy. Calling to mind a Canadian Christmas fruit cake, Fruit & Maple Crunch is a real tiring jaw workout. I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, but a little more maple forwardness here would do the overall flavor balance a lot of good—plus, big clumps of milky gelatinous fruit have the sinister mouthfeel of some martian membrane.

The Bottom Line: 6 bowls of Big Tree Chew out of 10

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Salted Pistachio Popcorn Granola

Aw, this one is sad, man. As a conceptual cousin to Salted Caramel Popcorn Granola (and with something as ritzy as its namesake nut), Salted Pistachio Popcorn Granola had great potential to be one of Cerealology’s best. But instead, it lacks any semblance of a sweet ingredient and as a result comes off as incredibly salty. Granted, as this is a granola mix, it’s entirely possible some people want it to be salty, but as my mouth is sucked dry by each consecutive handful of corn–nuts, the more I wish there were white chocolate bits or yogurt flakes to make this taste more like pistachio ice cream.

Milk kind of helps in a weird way to balance the saltiness, but again, without a playful punch of butteriness or vanilla, Salted Pistachio Popcorn Granola tastes more like a wonky power bar for people tougher than I am.

The Bottom Line: 4.5 cries of “aw, nuts” out of 10

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Granola Strawberry Matcha Fusion

Once again, this Cerealology flavor has so much going on, it’s hard to know where to start. Yes, matcha is another cereal curio, but isolating its unique taste amongst the puckering strawberry and strangely subversive cinnamon is tough. I’m glad the matcha was infused into tiny white chocolate squares—this is what Salted Pistachio Popcorn Granola needed—because those demure quadrilaterals temper this otherwise aggressively fruit-syruped experience.

I enjoy how prominent a single fruit’s presence is in Strawberry Matcha Fusion, but the whole thing is such an ambrosial cavalcade of sensory overload that it feels out of place amongst Cerealology’s comparatively more wholesome and grounded selects. Were the cinnamon removed and the strawberry slightly muzzled, this could’ve been a flagship flavor, but as it stands I can’t eat more than a bowl without giving my overworked taste buds an hour or two to breathe.

The Bottom Line: 6 monstrously Frankenstein’d Starbucks orders out of 10

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Granola Quinoa Tropical Fruits

Woof, there are still two more? Forgive me, but my stomach has endured enough granola today for my craggly intestines to rival the Himalayas in terms of jagged roughness. And as much I love the idea of passionfruit in a cereal—it’s my favorite La Croix flavor, even if the real fruit looks like rotten garmonbozia disguised as a fruit—Cerealology Quinoa Tropical Fruits is pretty boring.

Like Salted Pistachio Popcorn Crunch, it lacks a creamy or yogurty element to elevate the interesting fruit notes into something with re-munch value. Passionfruit is difficult to detect here, but the citrusy orange ambiance in every bite is nevertheless pretty satisfying—I almost got creamsicle vibes at certain points, though only when milk was deployed to fill this cereal’s yogurt-coated flake-sized void (I really, really like those suckers). Ultimately forgettable, Granola Quinoa Tropical Fruits just doesn’t have enough punchiness to help it standout against its eight ambitious cereal siblings.

The Bottom Line: 5 aptly phantasmic La Croix cereals out of 10

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Morning Sunshine

I…I did it. I finally survived this dark night of the soulfully hearty cereal and reached a new dawn. And luckily, the Morning Sunshine that greets me, with a beaming ensemble cast of just about every fruit I’ve tasted up ’til now, is actually really good. Though the wide spread of fruit here—orange, peach, strawberry, coconut—makes it hard to suss out a single flavor, citrus excepted, the presence of the blessed yogurt flakes makes this one taste like an actually fruity spiritual successor to Fig & Nut Crunch.

A real renaissance cereal, what Morning Sunshine lacks in a single defining taste note it makes up for with a wealth of healthy (and less chewy) bursts of sweet juiciness. It’s like every Special K variety fused into a single appetizing Voltron.

Though it isn’t the most exciting end to my Cerealological spelunking expedition, Morning Sunshine is perhaps the line’s most well rounded offering. On a journey that spanned espresso, matcha, and way too much cinnamon, it’s nice to know there’s something inoffensive and relatively universal to make Cerealology truly a cereal lineage with something for everyone.

The Bottom Line: 8.5  morning bedtimes out of 10