Oh, you thought cereal was for you and your taste buds? Nope, sorry buster: this cereal is specifically for your stomach. Your gut. Your food wallet. Whatever you call it, it better be ready for a healthy migration of gut flora, because Kellogg’s new HI! Happy Inside cereal line is here to culture abdomens everywhere.

We’ve been aware of HI! Happy Inside for a while now, but it was largely only available in location- or cost-prohibitive value packs. My local chains have finally begun to stock the stuff in smaller pouches, so I’m taking a cautious first spelunk into this protozoan belly of the beast with Simply Strawberry—ostensibly the fruity front-liner of this howdy-happy cereal trilogy that also includes Bold Blueberry and Cocoa Crunch.

I was hesitant to try this stuff to begin with, since, generally any healthy cereal that brands itself from head to intestine as an anatomical expedient ends up abandoning my appetite somewhere near the gall bladder. But as I wait for other new cereals that are less stomach-friendly and more gut-punchy, I figure it couldn’t hurt to brace my body for impact. Each HI! Happy Inside cereal boasts a three-in-one benefit of prebiotics, probiotics, and fiber, so even if I hate this stuff, maybe this review can still be cited for some kid’s science fair project.

Though it may look like a complex gravel of GORP-worthy ingredients, Simply Strawberry HI! Happy Inside can be broken down (very easily, by any amount of force) into four main components:

The flakes do not exist. Or rather, they do exist in the sense that half of them will end up crushed between my couch cushions, but once you pop a flake fragment into your mouth, it vaporizes without a flavored trace—seemingly violating the law of conservation of energy, it doesn’t even impact your hunger, let alone your dynamism.

The mixed grains are a motley lot. I wasted no time trying to decipher their taxonomy of names and health benefits, preferring to jointly classify their taste as “roasted ‘n’ vacuous.” Yes, don’t alert the conspiracy theorists, but each handful (and these make up at least 80% of the cereal) of crisped whole grain is hollowly earthen, like sown-again popcorn or Cowboy Krispies.

The dried strawberries are, and I shudder to say this, simply delicious—because any pop of flavor between dry grains is a welcome contrast. Thankfully, HI! Happy Inside features a fair number of strawberry nuggets, each bringing a tart pop of concentrated strawberry to otherwise arid spoonfuls. I’m glad this twist of flavor can permeate through manifold layers of toasted something-or-other, because without this component, H!HI–SS would be too hard to stomach.

Finally, the yogurt squares, like the strawberries, nearly crumble from the sheer burden of carrying this whole cereal on its back. But whereas the strawberries make regular cameos, these creamy, vanilla-tinged morsels require isolation or teamwork for their mouth-moisturizing goodness to the pouring grain and flitting no-flakes. If the pouch were filled with just these yogurt bits, I’d grab some milk and a Capri-Sun straw and suck myself into sugary oblivion.

Eaten collectively, HI! Happy Inside’s various nuts and bolts would make for a meagre morning’s breakfast. The strawberries and yogurt bits help bring welcome berries ‘n’ cream undertones to every bowl, especially in milk, but there are just so many other granolas out there that could bring bigger flavor with similar health benefits. In all honesty, HI! Happy Inside Simply Strawberry just tastes like smithereened Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal. So unless you’re the type of person who adores the cereal dust at the bottom of a Special K bag but hates pulling out the ol’ family mallet to pulverize an entire bag, you’re probably better off buying a cheaper cereal…

…and mixing it into the original tastemaker and bacteria PR rep: tubbed yogurt. Because when it comes to tasty probiotics, you’ve earned something more genuinely churned-out than this.

The Bowl: HI! Happy Inside Simply Strawberry

The Breakdown: With ample dried strawberries and tasty, albeit thrifty yogurt bites, this stuff is a passable way to get some quick nutrients. But much like a modern Polaroid, this stuff’s high price tag and overbearing graininess can’t match the quality of its wholesome contemporaries.

The Bottom Line: 5 Assless Chaps, Crackles, and Pops out of 10