This is a momentous review. The kind of review that deserves a content warning: this article contains atomically divisive statements, polarizing particles capable of sparking a potential second Cereal Civil War—we all remember the seismic defeat of Quake by Quisp in the Great Quaker Quarrel of ’71. Anyway, if you made it through that sentence, I figure you’re ready to weather my scalding hot take:

Post’s Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is better than Cinnamon Toast Crunch. In fact, it’s not even close—it’s a bona fide cinnamon slobber-knocker. For with one sweet and sweeping swing of its ingredients list, Honey Maid Graham Cereal simply bests CTC at a foundational level, rendering it undeserving of further comparison.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch is one of the most popular cereals of all time. That’s why I’m ready to accept the zinger slings and meme arrows of many doubtful Cinnamon Toast Crunchers. But I advise you, before saying more, to try a box of Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal for yourself and decide. You may not agree, but I doubt you’ll be disappointed you tried. Anyway, on to the real meat of this graham-burger beefcake of a new cereal.

Here’s my hypothesis: Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is so good because it’s been training like a reclusive jiu-jitso hermit for two years now. Seriously, this stuff’s very existence before me feels like a miracle. Around this time in 2018, there were a whole slew of pixelated Post product photos buffering around the internet. From a new Teddy Grahams Cereal to a pair of toothsome-looking Pebbles, these rumored cereals had a blurry allure that was never satisfied, as months and years went by without further news. The first of these cryptid-quality leaks to actually yield new updates was a Dunkin’ Caramel Macchiato Cereal, which has been spotted again (but not on store shelves yet) more recently with a Mocha companion.

That said, Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal, which was first rumored around when Honey Maid S’Mores Cereal released, didn’t even get a public spotting before Post slid into my DMs and slid a box onto my doorstep days later. So against all odds, this unassuming powerhouse pulled a Luke Skywalker and returned from seclusion to Force Push all the right buttons. And friends, it tastes a whole lot better than an astral projection.

It’s the graham, plain and simple: where Cinnamon Toast Crunch uses a base grain combo of wheat and rice flour, Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal uses a heartier concentration of wheat flour with cornmeal—and while I’m usually not a corny cereal advocate, in this case it creates a far denser, crunchier, and more gratifying cornerstone for the cereal’s flavor to build from. Because the cinnamon sugar flavor on this Honey Maid cereal is nearly identical to what you’d find on any CTC square: it’s primarily sweet with only the faintest dream haze of caramelized cinnamon.

Because these two sugar-spiced quadrilateral cereals are similarly sweet, it is, again, that richer base grain with a kiss of comforting honey that elevates Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal over General Mills’ decades-old incumbent. I’ve been saying since this blog’s beginning that Golden Grahams deserves a spinoff, because it’s a simply amazing cereal with great potential to be remixed—a lot of that potential being quite obvious, including a cinnamon edition. In fact, that did happen for a brief time in ’97, when G. Mills dropped a Cinnamon Grahams cereal that was basically Cinnamon Golden Grahams in every sense but shape.

Just as that product was mystifyingly discontinued, it was equally confusing that they never tried such an experiment again. Post’s Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is proof that plain ol’ Golden Grahams have likely been neutered for the public’s protection—you start adding too much flavor to those golden boys, and there’s no stopping their flavor potential from colonizing Mars…or something.

But I continue to excitedly digress. The point is that, especially in milk, when that golden-amber flavor enchants every aspect of your bowl, Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal is amazing. One might even call it cereal at its finest, stripped down to its barest goodness and uncontested in its beauty. In a year of ho-hum, cookie-cutter or simple ugh-yeugh new cereals, it’s refreshing to enjoy one I can’t find any fault with. Just like Powdered Donettes and Honey Cheerios Oat Crunch before it, you’re looking at a serious Cerealously Cereal of the Year contender right here.

In fact, I wouldn’t even mind cancelling the rest of 2020 now to get it over with.

The Bowl: Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal

The Breakdown: It’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch 2.0: now featuring denser grain and tantalizing honey! What’s not to love?

The Bottom Line: 10 tastes you can see…transcending into godhood out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 170 calories, 17 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, & 2 grams of protein per 1 cup serving)

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