Smooches. Pecks. Snogs. Canoodles.

I’m not saying Hershey picked one of the lamest, most ironically vanilla word for the union of impassioned lips, but plain ol’ Hershey’s Kisses? Even the white chocolate Hugs light a hotter fire under my stomach. But perhaps it’s just my own deep-seated disinterest in purely unadorned and lower-mid quality milk chocolate—especially when sculpted into a dainty form that a) always has its fragile tips break, and b) leaves behind a wholly unnecessary second wrapper component in the form of an annoying miniature fortune cookie fortune. One that never changes.

Despite all this, I’ll try my best to set aside these misgivings (that likely stem from the unendingly obnoxious death knell of the Kisses Christmas commercial) to impartially review Hershey’s Kisses Cereal, a creation that somehow dances around every other erotically nougated candy at the party to Kiss the chocolate frog in the corner, who ends up transforming into a cereal that looks something like, uh, this:

As perhaps the first cereal to resemble both a bear’s nose and a cat’s turds, Hershey’s Kisses Cereal is, if nothing else, a marvel of crunchable geometry. I’m not saying they don’t look like actual Hershey’s Kisses, but the strangely knobbed tip of each little erupting choco-volcano leaves a lot to the imagination. Between muddy Santa Hats and abstract genitalia, your interpretation of each miniature Kiss will depend largely on how prurient your interests are.

Unfortunately the supple shapes are the only part of Hershey’s Kisses cereal worth complimenting at length. Sure, the cereal is tasty enough, but it’s a literal scale replica of Cocoa Puffs. Not that I didn’t fully see this coming—as a cocoa-flavored puffed corn cereal, what else was it gonna taste like?—but until opening the box I held out a little hope for a richer glaze, or perhaps a thorough fudge-dusting: anything to make this more than a one-munch wonder.

Nope. Just the same mildly cuckoo cocoa powder sweetness and slightly too brazen maize base. Existing fans of Cocoa Puffs who want to revitalize the mouthfeel of an old favorite can’t really go wrong here, but if you’re seeking a next-level chocolate cereal experience, there are more innovative things to fill your chocoholic’s pantry with.

Much like its flavor doppelgänger, Hershey’s Kisses Cereal doesn’t really earn its fudge stripes until it meets milk. Sure, the formerly dry cocoa taste becomes more like its namesake milk chocolate, but the true glory is the endmilk, which gets thick and Hershey’s syrup-y in mere moments, eventually churns into a fine Nesquik worth both spooning and slörping.

Overall, these Cocoa Caltrops aren’t going to French kiss your brain, but if you lower your expectations to the same level you’d sink to for a real, simplistic milk chocolate confection, you’re sure to find some idle enjoyment in Hershey’s Kisses Cereal’s familiar flavor and thought-provoking/palate-poking shapes.

Heck, you might even be able to wedge a few of ’em inside a Hershey’s Fillow and call it a night.

The Bowl: Hershey’s Kisses Cereal

The Breakdown: It’s Cocoa Puffs, if you kind of pinched them into concave triangles. Expect nothing more and you’ll have a golden-brown standard chocolate cereal whose milk is worth bottling.

The Bottom Line: 6.5 milquetoast New Year’s Kisses out of 10