You ever see Carpenter’s The Thing? You know, the one with the cute dogs and frosty alien visitors that nefariously replicate human life? Well in its 1951 ancestor film, the evil extraterrestrial is made of blood-lusted plant life. Now I’m not saying we should call up Kurt Russell, but it seems like Trader Joe’s latest cereal might have mixed the parasites with the parsnips, because it appears to be a familiar flavor with more vivid veggie DNA.

Trader Joe’s Neapolitan Puffs likely their Cocoa Puffs-mimicking concept and flamboyantly show-stopping box design as a glamour, to hide its most basic ingredients: beans and brown rice. Now, I will concede that there is a niche of noshers out there whose mindful eating habits would be excited by a more excitingly flavored, gluten-free alternative cereal, but in my experience most beaned breakfast cereals can never seem to properly complement (let alone mask) the lingering legume flavors of its constituent ingredients.

Not to mention the fact that Cocoa Puffs Ice Cream Scoops were a clumsily taste-balanced mirage of perfumed maize, in their own right. Two cones way down.

I’m not saying the deck is stacked against Trader Joe’s Neapolitan Puffs, but I will say that if whatever pallet of wine the cereal is stacked against in the TJ’s were to topple onto it, it likely wouldn’t be a great loss (and may taste way more intoxicatingly juicy).

Thanks to redditor /u/obleake for sharing this photo. If you have a fresh cereal scoop of your own, ice creamed or otherwise, we welcome them on our Submissions page.