Something about unfrosted Mini-Wheats make me uncomfortable. It’s probably the thought of stuffing small hay bales down my throat that makes me irrationally itchy all over.

I mean, Mini-Wheats always resemble tiny bales of hay, but at least when they put on their sugary clown makeup I can ignore my silly phobia and blissfully suck strawberry powder from their faces.

Speaking of which, 5 minutes of frantic Google searching have revealed that, even though there are phobias for fear of the pope (papaphobia) and fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth (arachibutyrophobia), there is no named phobia for “fear of eating hay bales.” Looks like the perfect time for “Danophobia” to become a thing.

But at least Kellogg’s new line of Mini-Wheats Harvest Delights have a lacy yogurt lingerie drizzle to cover their naked, grainy bodies. But will this compliment their fruity flavors well? I bought the Cranberry flavor (I couldn’t find the Blueberry Vanilla…yet) to find out.

Each individual biscuit—I absolutely love how the box calls the pieces “biscuits,” so much so that if I ever get a pet Beagle, you can bet your biscuits I’m naming him “Biscuit”—is pretty boringly beige. They have a bit of reddish maroon peeping out from their thatched innards and the aforementioned white yogurt abstract art piece on top.

Munching on a dry biscuit, I was rather disappointed. The overwhelming flavor was of bland, crunchy shredded wheat. It was so overwhelmingly underwhelming that my tongue had to play a game of “find the cranberry in the haystack” to taste anything else.

And when I finally “won” that game, my fleeting reward was a momentary burst of muted cranberry tang. I wouldn’t say there was anything uniquely “cranberry” about it, either; Kellogg’s certainly didn’t inject a syringe full of your grandma’s homemade cranberry sauce into the belly of each biscuit. The mildly fruity flavor could just as easily been called raspberry, and I never would have known the difference.

Oh, and that yogurt drizzle? Its taste was nowhere to be seen. Like the abstract art I compared it to before, the yogurt was pretty to look at, but I didn’t really “get” it.

This all changes when you add milk, but not in a good way. The soggy wheat tastes exactly how it sounds, while the yogurt gets a faint vanilla creaminess but also a faint bitter aftertaste. And like a Gremlin, when the cranberry gets wet, things start to get ugly (I would hate to see what happens if I eat these after midnight). The cranberry-milk mix oozes out a nose-wrinkling medicinal flavor that’s pretty comparable to cherry cough syrup.

At this point, I had to channel my inner Mary Poppins: if anything could make this medicine go down, it would be a spoonful of sugar. So I drizzled some biscuits in sweetly fruity strawberry kefir, and the clash of bittersweet fruit and yogurt flavors made a decent pairing.

Taken as a whole (or as a bowl, rather) Cranberry Mini-Wheats Harvest Delights are really only worthwhile for those who need a large box of kefir/yogurt mix-ins, or for those who want an edgy, edible contemporary art piece they can glue to their walls.

Otherwise, these biscuits are just too boring, unsweet, and at times…pharmaceutical. Even those looking for a healthy shredded wheat are better off with a more boldly wheat or bran flavored brand.

I’m still holding out hope for the Blueberry biscuits, but it looks like I’ll have to put these lil Cranberry doggies out to pasture. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to feed them plenty of hay.

The Bowl: Cranberry Mini-Wheats harvest Delights

The Breakdown: Only a hint of fruit and yogurt tartness emerges from a nearly flavorless wheat haystack. Don’t bother giving them a milk bath, but do give them a fruit yogurt Jacuzzi.

The Bottom Line: 4 cereal Mogwai out of 10