Children are powerful.

They have the power of mind control, just by releasing water from their eyes. They have the thermal potential to make an ice cream cone drip all over the place, just by looking at it. And they have the power to turn an entire car around, just by doing those first two things.

I know this power because I wielded it so many years ago. Although in my case, instead of drippy ice cream it was dropping an entire pizza slice crust side up onto my mother’s plush car floor mat. I think tomato plants have since grown from the stained point of impact.

Case in point, I’m not surprised Kashi harnessed the imagination potential of real kids to design their two newest healthy cereals: Honey Cinnamon and Berry Crumble. Given Kashi’s tendency toward piece homogeneity, I was surprised to see that each cereal contains two totally different cereal players: a flavor-stuffed pillow is unique to both, but Honey Cinnamon boasts tiny cinnamon snail shells, while Berry Crumble boasts indigo orbs.

Of course, it does take childlike whimsy to break corporate sameness, so if a little youthful thinking is what it would take to get, say, a Choco Taco shaped/flavored breakfast product, then I’m all for seeing Kellogg’s pick the developing brains of more cereal prodigies.

Tony the Tiger could play Kindergarten Cop, right?

Kashi by Kids Honey Cinnamon Cereal

This pairing definitely excited me the most. Sure, we see cinnamon and honey cereals often, but since the heavenly passing (and pending revival) of Teddy Grahams Breakfast Bears—may they crumb in peace—the two equally cozy flavors seem to have been estranged.

Better yet? What the name of this cereal coyly hides is the fact that inside of each Puffins-meet-Krave cereal square is also apple flavor! It’s an ambitious three-front cereal battle that, if my cereal history lessons have taught me anything, risks losing a flavor in the tussle for power.

And, getting straight to the point, that’s kind of what happens here. Cinnamon is by far the dominant flavor here. It’s not exactly potently spicy or sweet, but it is comfortingly warm and distinctive, enriching the otherwise densely wholesome swirls and pillow shells with its clean and relatively guilt-free cinnamon taste. In fact, when taken in tandem with the crisp, toasted biscuit flavor of the base—which, despite containing corn flour and lentils, thankfully doesn’t taste like a weird vegan cornucopia—the whole thing reminds me of Scooby-Doo Cinnamon Graham Sticks, which you cannot prove to me aren’t really Scooby Snacks.

Because, like Scoobert Doo’s crunchy bones, the honey flavor in Kashi by Kids Honey Cinnamon merely builds atmosphere, bolstering the largely unsweetened cinnamon with enrobing ribbons of sweet, but not distinctively honey-flavored, golden goodness. I get that one flavor has to be dominant, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t rooting for honey like a a desperate Pooh Bear digging through the ground for his next fix.

But despite my royal nectar disappointment, when the apple flavor kicks in, this cereal begins to work unique wonders anyway. Contained to the chewy mahogany jelly found in every pillow piece (the cereal is probably about 10-15% these, vs. swirls), this apple flavor is also innocently sweet and sort of simply syrupy. Like a spiced purée, the jelly’s infused with cinnamon and the collective effect reminds me of, in series:

1) Applesauce
2) A grade-school apple pie
3) Some sort of Americanized Turkish Delight

Which I guess are three ways of saying the same thing, but I’ll be darned if it isn’t a relaxing and refreshingly authentic cereal flavor that hits all the right appetizing notes, without too much sugar. If you really want sweetness, adding milk doesn’t do much beyond just adding a creaminess to offset the cinnamon’s dehydrating dryness, so I’d highly recommend it.

At least Kashi’s kids are smart enough to not do the cinnamon challenge.

Kashi by Kids Berry Crumble Cereal

After adapting to the beige desert of tonal sameness that was Honey Cinnamon, the shocking contrast between colors in this cereal have my poor dilated eatin’ eyes nearly blinded. Seriously, those things look like (somehow) dehydrated SpongeBobs washed up on in an oil.

On the figuratively bright side, what Honey Cinnamon lost in complexity-deluded sweetness, Berry Crumble makes up for in indulgently homogeneous by design goodness. The big honkin’ violet boulders are meant to be blueberry-flavored, but my taste buds conjured up an ambiguous cool-hued fruit, perhaps the child of a blueberry and a grape, who was then disowned and adopted by, say, a blackberry and a blue raspberry. But the blue raspberry was always at work.

The ultimate effect gives them the lofty analogue of Scooby-Doo Fruit Snacks (two Doos, one review? Woo-hoo!). Specifically a Scooby-Doo fruit snack that was raised by a blue one and a purple one, but…

Just kidding, I’ll move on: the corn-floured pillows here taste much more nostalgically sweet, echoing the wispy goodness of a strawberry wafer stick (which makes two Keebler references, too). The also-gelled insides bring that bit of airily floral strawberry fruit flavor you also find in most strawberry sodas. Despite including apple, I can’t say I tasted any notes of it.

In milk, Berry Crumble finally shares a specific trait with its Honey Cinnamon brother: it tastes like a grade-school multi-berry pie, with the milk-soaked pillows giving off seriously nose-lifting, pie-crusty vibes. All in all, it’s like a hipster grandma dessert cereal.

Which is a fancy way of saying I liked both Kashi by Kids cereals. A lot, actually. So much so that after 900 words too many here, I’ll recommend either flavor for someone who wants a mouthfeel mix-up to their healthier favorite cereal, because while they’re not perfect, both Honey Cinnamon and Berry Crumble take the pie.

Also, all you hipster grandma readers are invited to my birthday party.

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The Bowl: Kashi By Kids Honey Cinnamon and Berry Crumble Cereals

The Breakdown: One’s cozily spiced and amply apple-y but lacking in honey, the other’s simple and like the chromatic opposite of all-natural Trix, but not quite as memorable.

The Bottom Line (Both): 8 bottles of Gram Gram’s meatloaf kombucha out of 10