Is it time for a Cinnamon Toast Coup yet?

Loose crunchologic records suggest the crazy squared cereal’s cinnamon dynasty dates back to roughly the Byzantine era, while recent calcium dating suggests its dominance began way back in the Earth’s primordial soup, wherein the CTC clan of sugar-specked protozoa were the only ones of their kind that didn’t sog into earlier extinction.

Regardless of its origin, there’s little doubt that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the most popular cinnamon cereal out there. And while I love CTC and its rich pedigree of powdered and breaded breakfast-stuff, I’ve long hoped for a challenger to the throne.

Because if the cinnamon spice must flow, so too must some fresh milk.

Despite Kellogg’s best efforts, they haven’t come close, while Post and Quaker’s strongest cinna-sieges are comfort classics at best. I guess it’s up to Millville, Aldi store-brand underdog and possible puppet organization, to come out of left field with a cinnamon-seasoned seasonal cereal and hopefully blow me away…from my Cinnamon Toast addiction for at least a few merry mouthfuls.

So come, Snickerdoodle Kookies, first of the S. Doodle cereal lineage: show me what you’re really made of, and don’t hold back.

Despite preserving the geometric disc-osity of Cookie Crisp, Snickerdoodle Kookies’ similarities with Chip the Wolf’s cookie-doughed doubloons stop there. Where Cookie Crisp’s baby baked goods have iconic chocolate-brown sugar flavor crisped right into their overtly corny base, these kookier Kookies sand-blast on a desert of cinnamon dessert flavor using CTC-esque cinnamon sugar.

But the taste isn’t quite a Cinnamon Toast Copycat, either. In reality, it’s somewhere between that industry leader and Kellogg’s Cinnabon Cereal—with its own unique twist. That is to say, the detritus-shedding cookies (eating it dry’s like grabbing a fistful of sandcastle) have just enough tantalizingly authentic cinnamon spice to give depth to the otherwise one-note cinnamon-sugar blend.

And this cereal really is cinnamon-driven: the corn base gets largely muted by the thick sugar coating, except for a few hushed tones of buttery sugar cookie-ish ambiguity that shine through with subtly sweet, golden magic.

I know I make this analogy a lot, but it’s truer here than ever before: imagine well-rounded Cinnamon Teddy Grahams, a comparison that surely reveals just how charmed I am by Millville’s outwardly unassuming take on the holidays—those krazy-eyed Kookies mascots would scare off even a blood-lusted CTC cannibal.

As cookies are regularly documented to do, Millville’s groundbreaking Junior ‘Doodles are simmered to perfection by a nice milk-dunking. Milk’s liquid entropy allows for a festive union of golden-buttered sugar cookie and cozy cinnamon, making me wonder if Snickerdoodle Kookies are actually a prototyped missing link between Cinnamon and Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch that went rogue and escaped the General Mills factory, seeking asylum in the remote snowy hills of Millville.

(Which suggests some sort of upcoming evolution into a half-cookie, perhaps half-gingerbread mutant, but that’s a story for another Christmas.)

So while there tragically wasn’t really much competition, Millville Snickerdoodle Kookies is the best brand-new holiday cereal I’ve encountered so far this year. A snow-angelic fusion of two classic cookie flavors makes it simultaneously safe and creative for holiday homebodies and thrill-seekers alike, while its shape and avalanche of flavor powder makes wonderful endmilk…

…or endnog, if you really want to grab this holiday season by the reindeer antlers.

The Bowl: Millville Snickerdoodle Kookies Cereal

The Breakdown: Not unlike sledding through a fresh drift of buttered cinnamon sugar, Snickerdoodle Kookies need only a hardier base flavor to catapault it to holiday stardom—though it’s still certainly a worthy first bearer of its snickerdoodlian cereal title.

The Bottom Line: 9 entropic dairy forces out of 10