Ahh, Trader Joe’s.

With its Hawaiian shirt-wearing employees, its whimsical wordplay, and its overwhelmingly campy atmosphere, I’ve always thought of it as the grocery store equivalent of Uncle Joey from Full House.

And just like how everyone’s goofy uncle has some sort of kitschy obsession, Trader Joe’s goes absolutely bananas pumpkins during the fall season.

That’s right. I just turned pumpkins into a verb.

And just one of the many things Trader Joe’s has injected the sweet orange lifeblood of pumpkins into is breakfast cereal. Pumpkin O’s are just one of many in a line of “Joe’s O’s” which include Honey Nut, Strawberry Yogurt, and even High Fiber (I can’t believe they rejected the name “Makes You Poop Loops” for that one).

Pumpkin products tend to fall into two camps: those that contain actual pumpkin, and those that contain “pumpkin,” a catch-all term that means they’re just crammed with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.

It’s enough to make me imagine some great civil war between flesh-and-blood pumpkin purists and “pumpkin” cyborgs that bleed Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

Pumpkin O’s fall more into the first category, as pumpkin sits prominently on its ingredient list. In fact, the only pumpkin spice listed with it is cinnamon. And as I crack the box open (quick sidebar: Trader Joe’s has the best and sturdiest cereal boxes. Bravo, Joe: these boxes actually close every time!), I’m hit with the earthy scent of a vegetable patch.

The sticky little cedar-colored doughnuts (considerably thicker and flatter than Cheerios) are flecked with dark brown specks. They have a surprisingly loud and hearty crunch for their size. Real pumpkins certainly don’t crunch like that when you bite them.

How would I describe the flavor? Brown.

Let me elaborate. While the pieces contain oats, their base has a strong brown rice profile. It’s very starchy and woodsy, and the squash-flavored starchiness of the pumpkin only makes this more obvious.

Pumpkin spice junkies are likely to be disappointed, though (I’m imagining a Dune parody here: “the pumpkin spice must flow”), as the light cinnamon notes and brown sugar coating of the O’s merely give the strongly organic vegetable and rice overtones a more pleasant sweetness and a lightly spicy finish. It certainly can’t hold a pumpkin-scented candle to a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Though I do wonder what would happen if I poured a PSL over a bowl of these. If this is the last blog post you read here, I guess you’ll know how I died.

The crunchy pieces do take a long time to get soggy, and the milk gives the pumpkin flavor a nice creamy finish. But mostly, adding milk just emphasizes the cinnamon. In fact, this is pretty much what I’d imagine a subdued Pumpkin Spice Toast Crunch would taste like.

All in all, Pumpkin O’s aren’t terribly exciting, but I could see myself enjoying a bowl at night whilst listening to a podcast and contently whispering “Ahh, adulthood” to myself.

They strike a unique balance between the raw, straight-from-the-patch pumpkin of Pumpkin Puffins and the artificial frankenpumpkin experience of Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats.

When the Great Pumpkin Civil War comes around, these guys are gonna be Switzerland.

The Bowl: Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s

The Breakdown: Cinnamon and brown sugar beef up an otherwise tame and rice-y pumpkin. Seriously, who let the rice patch breed with the pumpkin patch?

The Bottom Line: 7 Full House reruns out of 10