P. is for pouches, they’re foiled & grand!
O. is for OH YES!, my response to the brand.
P. is for pouches, c’mon can’t you read?
– is the hyphenated joy of a fast feed.
T. is for toasted, as all Tarts should be.
A. is for awesome, this crust fills me with glee!
R. is for Raspberry, the worst compared to Strawberry.
T. is for the filling: is it good? My answer: very.
S. is for sweet icing, a true sort of edible art.

And those, my friends, are the reasons I love Pop-Tarts.

Okay phew, I’ve put the Kellogg’s execs reading this to sleep: now let’s talk about how good these Toaster Strudels are.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little Toaster Strudel experience. I grew up on P-T (which is, in a sense, the opposite of P.T. the game), and with that kind of lifelong conditioning, anything more than tearing open a crumb-spewing pouch with the elegance of a resident campsite raccoon feels like too much work to get a toaster pastry in my stomach.

But if there’s one flavor I’d move mountains for—assuming there’s a rich vein of graham’d ore to suckle beneath them—it’s Golden Grahams. Though I have no proof of this, Golden Grahams seems to be the most popular cereal that never gets flavor variants, despite how obvious the possibilities are. Perhaps this is just a testament to Golden Graham’s chaste and pure breakfast beauty, but with a bunch of other s’mores cereals out there using Golden Grahams-esque pieces, it’s kind of strange that the General Mills brand has only given Golden Grahams the S’Mores treatment in cereal bars and now flaky strudels—maybe when GM’s legendary S’Mores Crunch was discontinued way back, the S’Morecerer casted an unbreakable “do nut resuscitate” spell in retaliation.

Unblazed cereal frontiers aside, I’m excited to get my large rectangular graham on, a little thicker than usual.

GGs Golden Grahams. GGs.

What makes a s’more? It’s deceptively simple: graham cracker, toasted marshmallow and chocolate, right? Yes, but proportional distribution of each component is important, too, and S’Mores Golden Graham Toaster Strudel has a funny way of interpreting it.

Foolishly, I expected Golden Grahams goodness to be infused at the deepest, most crustular level, but here the base Strudel is consistent with my previous cereal pastry experiences: flaky, buttery, and golden-browned, albeit with the sort of faded luster that comes with any defrosting experience. Rather, the raw Golden Grahams essence I signed up for is entirely contained within the over-the-taupe icing. It’s delicious, honestly, to take a prospective sip straight from the included icing packet: it’s genuinely like they condensed an entire bowl of Golden Grahams with milk into a glistening goo. But once you apply this scant bit of satisfaction to a toasted Strudel, its compact glory loses its impact when forced to cover so much meal estate.

In fact, it’s hard to taste this Golden Grahams extract at all once you take a big marsh-meaty bite of the thing. Yes, the decidedly un-toasted marshmallow element inside every Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel steals the show, for better or worse. S’Mores isn’t a new flavor for Toaster Strudel, but I can’t say whether this is a problem consistent with every camp breakfast interpretation of the fireside treat. All I know is that each bite grants a fluffy burst of custardy sweet, cream interspersed with meek ribbons of melted chocolate.

Aside from the filling’s quasi-gelatinous texture, I have to admit I still thoroughly enjoyed this experience. Once I realized that my hopes for a deeply graham’d Toaster Strudel were dashed and drizzling onto my plate, I grew to appreciate these squishy S’Mores bricks for what they really are: quadrilateral eclairs, or perhaps de-longated Long Johns.

Do I feel Golden Grahams—or s’mores, for that matter—have been done justice here? No, not really: General Mills would have been better off piping these pastry shells full of the icing they include to put on top. But when I’m beset on all sides by boring vanilla cereals and FunkO’s, I’m taking whatever crispy-creamy joys I can find. And these? These are joyful enough for me to inhale like a human toaster.

The Bowl: Pillsbury S’Mores Golden Grahams

The Breakdown: Graham forward? Absolutely not, but these Toaster Strudels are doughnutty and golden enough to make for an excessive breakfast, satisfying dessert, or campfire companion.

The Bottom Line: 7.5 appetizing acrostics out of 10