Picture this:

You’re 8 years old. You just finished a long night of successful trick-or-treating. You even remembered to avoid Old Lady Cruthers house. No way you were gonna fall for her candy/dental floss switcheroo this year! You take off your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles headpiece and empty your pillowcase of loot onto the living room floor.

But to your gasping surprise, the only thing that comes out…is beans!

This is the stuff Halloween nightmares are made of, right? Well, maybe not: don’t smash all your jack-o-lanterns in disgust just yet, because Love Grown Foods has released the latest in their line of bean based cereals: Bats & Boos Chocolate & Vanilla.

Not to be confused with a party featuring baseball and alcohol (look for your invitation to “Bats & Booze” coming soon!), Bats & Boos cereal is made of a blend of three beans—navy beans, lentils, and garbanzos—that are all dressed up in cute chocolate bat and vanilla ghost costumes. Let’s carve into a bowl, shall we?

Munching on the pieces dry, the bean sensation is more intense than a carnival next to a campground (sorry about that one). if you’ve never had a Love Grown Foods cereal before (and you should; the Strawberry Power O’s are probably this reviewer’s favorite), the bean taste will likely intrigue and/or surprise you. The blend provides a strong vegetable starchiness and a more than a hint of earthy bitterness.

In the case of Bats & Boos, the dry ghosts don’t impart any real vanilla flavor, while the cocoa notes of the ghost are subdued at best, and not particularly sweet. For both pieces, I really just thought I was noshing on crunchy beans that someone accidentally spilt Nesquik on.

But don’t send these garbanzos to the garbage just yet. Because in milk, this cereal really comes alive. Whoops, sorry. I forgot it was Halloween. What I should’ve said was:

“They’re….ALIIIIVEEEE!”

The previous bean-y bitterness (again, don’t get that confused with a hatred of hipsters: that’s “beanie bitterness”) is balanced well with the sweet embrace of milk. I chose vanilla almond milk for my bowl, since the theme of this cereal costume party appears to be “sweet legumes, seeds, and nuts.” The nuttiness is a perfect compliment for the beaniness.

The milk-soaked vanilla ghosts impart an added creaminess, but the real MVPs here are the chocolate bats. The cocoa bitterness, when mixed with milk, makes for a sophisticated, uniquely dark chocolate cereal. And the end milk is certainly nothing to wave your broomstick at, either. It’s syrupy, rich, and thick, like a good glass of Dutch chocolate milk.

So for those overwhelmed by the cloyingness of traditional chocolate cereals, I invite you to embrace the power of the bean. The bats and ghosts here make for a classy, healthier substitute to Count Chocula’s corn pieces and marshmallows.

Or, if I may be so bold, the “cookies and cream with a vegetable aftertaste” experience tastes like a bowl of Oreo O’s that decided to reject the trappings of suburbia and start its own bean farm.

Bonus points goes to Love Grown Foods for including Halloween fun on the back of the box for me to do as I sucked down bats and ghosts as if I were a human version of the Poltergust 5000. Unfortunately, since Halloween is a time of no rules and pure anarchy, I finished the maze with little difficulty.

But Halloween is also a time for embracing the unknown—be it the dark of night, a scary new movie, or the taste of Circus Peanuts, which you’re pretty sure you still hate but you haven’t had one in years so who knows, right? So even if it’s just for the sake of a brief breakfast adventure, Bats & Boos are worth your time.

Wait, you mean I made it through this whole review without making a Mr. Bean joke or a Beanie Babies joke? I’m embarrassed.

The Bowl: Bats & Boos Chocolate & Vanilla

The Breakdown: Dry bean flavor is too earthy, but milk produces a pleasant bittersweet pairing for those in the market for a dark chocolate cereal.

The Bottom Line: 8 still gross Circus Peanuts out of 10

***NOTE: I reached out to Love Grown Foods when looking for a box of Bats & Boos to review, and they very generously provided one. Many thanks, Love Grown Foods, and have a Happy HallowBean!***