Imagine if you bit into a Twinkie, and it tasted like a stick of margarine.

Picture this: your fully factorized cheesecake is naught but Crisco and gelatin.

Or perhaps you wake up tomorrow, and your mom’s chocolate-chip cookies are actually worse than oatmeal raisin in disguise: they taste like unsweetened raisins and uncooked instant oats.

That’s the type of disappointment you can expect from Kraft’s new Jet-Puffed Lucky Charms Magical Marshmallows. Yes, I was already put on guard when ordering these online—to this day, my conspiracy theory is that, since Kellogg’s and Post were founded in Michigan, General Mills has cursed us with poor product distribution—because all online listings for these bear impressively unanimous one-star reviews. And it’s not hard to see why.

It can’t be sugarcoated: these are just plain marshmallows in Lucky Charms shapes. Was I wrong to hope for more than this? Sure, you could argue that Lucky Charms marbits don’t have much flavorful nuance when eaten alone. But the understatedly awesome combination of a marbit’s crisp, snappy mouthfeel and whatever glimmers of sugared-oat glaze have rubbed off on it from neighboring cereal pieces makes for colorful marshmallows with character, which makes their beloved reputation well-earned. Whether it’s marshmallows with a firmer, faintly toasted exterior or marshmallows dusted with vanilla-oatmeal crumbles, Lucky Charms marshmallows deserve better Mega Evolutions than these Magical(ly Lazy) Marshmallows.

I know there’s a weird, dedicated community of marshmaniacs out there, but I have various nutritional and ethical issues with straight-up eating more than a few marshmallows straight from the bag—and even then, it’s only when they’re appetizers before the fireside s’main course. The sheer opportunity cost of spending 30 seconds of my life gumming up sticky dextrose-plasm, when I could have eaten four Oreos in that time, just isn’t worth it. And yes, I guess you could use these Magical Marshmallows to make some trippy tie-dyed s’mores, a sweet potato casserole that’s an affront to God, or perhaps a tray of Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Krispies Treats, but such pretty and pretty complacent conceits should never make you forget what could have been. I mean, if there can be milkshakes and oatmeals that do the Lucky Charms palate–palette right, themed marshmallows shouldn’t be too much of an elasticized sugar-goo stretch.

Perhaps what irks me even more than the dearth of unique flavor is Kraft’s choice of Charm shapes. Sure, the blue moons are totally valid, and I suppose the pink hearts are fine—if we over-optimistically assume that these aren’t just recycled Valentine’s marshmallows—but the plain green clovers are now only seen in St. Patrick’s Day edition Lucky Charms, but as far as I can find in my research, plain ol’ yellow stars haven’t been rendered in cereal form. Granted, the original Lucky Charms marshmallow line-up consisted of just pink hearts, green clovers, stars (albeit orange ones) and moons (albeit yellow ones), but somehow I doubt these half-baked jet-puffed marshmallows are meant to be a tribute to the classics. And even if it were, I’d argue there are more-jumbo-worthy modern marbits, like purple horseshoes, tri-colored rainbows, or a dearly departed timekeeper.

With clenched teeth and venom perspiring off me like a Glade plugin, I did to these marshmallows what I knew had to be done for this review. Something properly humiliating to reluctantly induct these marred-bits into my archive of reviews. But as I watched the disturbing creme-color of the only milk I had on hand (vanilla oat, which felt only appropriate anyway), I realized I couldn’t disgrace my own character by swallowing the equivalent of damp sticky tack. If I was going to be ridiculous, I might as well make it a theatrical ordeal.

Unfortunately we’re on the border between new cereal release seasons, so my choices for piece-pairing were scant. Fearing that to choose Donettes would send me to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Morgue, I chose Elf on the Shelf Cereal, hoping its buttery sheen could scare my Magical Marshmallows straight.

I was, of course, incorrect, as the mouthfeel of spongy sucrose studded with enriched bonemeal made me feel like I was cosplaying as a bio-hazardous waste receptacle.

I feel I’ve given Lucky Charms Magical Marshmallows more words than they’re worth, so I’ll summarize by saying you shouldn’t buy these for anything more than packaging, prankish, or hallucinogenically aesthetic purposes. I plan to boil mine into a fine putty and sculpt it into an iridescent Gumby.

The Bowl: Kraft Jet-Puffed Lucky Charms Magical Marshmallows

The Breakdown: They’re just marshmallows, and not even historically accurate ones at that. Only eat them if you need to add a little color into your pre-existing, private marshmallow-munching rituals.

The Bottom Line: 2 cool marbits—the whale and hidden key marbits, to be specific—who didn’t die for the conceptual cause so this could become of their legacy out of 10