(Update: My closer look at Christmas Crunch 2016 is here!)

“It’s just Crunchberries in different shapes. It’s just Crunchberries in different shapes. It’s just Crunchberries in different shapes.”

I can remind myself again and again that Cap’n Crunch’s annually released holiday cereal is the exact same as his year-round fare, just color filtered and molded into barely recognizable trees, snowmen, stars, and Santa hats. But every year, I just don’t care. Christmas Crunch’s yearly return always fills me to the brim with Yuletide merriment, and in a way, it’s a heralding angel of all the winter fun that’s soon to come.

I spotted the above cardboard igloo of Christmas Crunch boxes at my local Spartan store, but the light-bedecked Cap’n has also been spotted at Target and many other major stores.

The first thing that Christmas Crunch connoisseurs will notice is that we’ve got a brand new box design for 2016. This comes after what felt like 1,225 repeated iterations of that infamous gaudy red box. Of course, knowing the talented mind behind Cap’n Crunch’s illustration, I’m not at all surprised that this year’s Clark Griswoldian box is so mindblowing (and presumably fuse-blowing).

I want to do an annual re-review of Christmas Crunch right this very moment, throwing all Thanksgiving plans to the wind and blasting “Wonderful Christmastime” out my window with the intensity of a JG Wentworth commercial. But I know it’s too soon: if I review every holiday cereal so impulsively, I’d run out of seasonal content by Black Friday. And you really don’t want to see me spend December desperately trying to connect Raisin Bran to the holidays.

I’d imagine it involves sadness, a VHS copy of the SpongeBob Christmas special, and a lot of crushed up scented pinecones.

So look for a full review of Christmas Crunch 2016 in the coming month. For now, know that it’s out there and grab a box of your own for an early espresso shot of holiday cheer. And if you’d like to see your own picture or thoughts featured on Cerealously’s next “Spooned & Spotted” post, all you have to do is head over to our submissions page or email us at cerealously.net@gmail.com.