Six months. Cereal makers have had six months of quarantine to hunker down, cut through the corporate B.S. and dream up something legendary for the breakfast industry, yet I have to admit, their current efforts feel half-baked—and more than a little stale.

Don’t get me wrong, as someone who’s been rallying for retro reversion since he started writing about cereal, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. General Mills’ just-announced “Ultimate Taste Comeback” could be a harbinger of great things to come, but two truths stand out: one, the improved cereals appearing above seem like weak initial efforts, and two, the view of celebrating cereal’s nostalgia would’ve been really hot and timely five years ago. It is the opinion of this cereal scholar that cereal as a nostalgic symbol or vehicle was once so obvious of an idea that it’s become a bit clichéd. Now that The Empty Bowl has made such a splash in the field of breakfast meditation, I presently like to supplement any corporate-driven nostalgic retrovision with an eye for what the individual can constructively make out of their own cereal experience.

But I mindfully and mindlessly digress. Let’s assess General Mills’ Ultimate Taste Comeback lineup:

Trix will feature six fruity shapes again! Wait, wait…they’ve done exactly this for the past two years. So, not exactly a comeback as much as a box art refresh.

Cocoa Puffs will have “more chocolatey taste!” This is exactly the kind of vague promise that irks me about The Ultimate Taste Comeback—how are we supposed to know this is a dedicated throwback cereal if we’re given no proof that diligence was done to recreate vintage Cocoa Puffs?

Golden Grahams is bringing back honey as an ingredient. Between this only being an eight-year throwback and the stuff not really tasting much different, we already know that perhaps the most exciting announcement of these four Comeback cereals didn’t really have that much effort put into it, in terms of palpable change.

Finally, Cookie Crisp promises the same generic chocolatey infusion as Cocoa Puffs, albeit phrased more dramatically by Chip the Wolf. If I’m interpreting his kerning correctly, this Cookie Crisp will have “More Chocolate Chip C∞oookie Taste!” Definitely a bold promise—if this Cookie Crisp grants me anything less than eternal life in a state of divinely cookie’d nirvana, I’ll be disappointed.

Alongside these cereals, as part of their Ultimate Cereal Comeback, General Mills will host The Ultimate Saturday Morning Drive-In, with guest Mario Lopez streaming classic cartoons in California and online, October 3rd. If there were ever a place for General Mills to surprise debut retro Monster Cereals, it’d be there. Just be sure to keep six feet (or cars) away from Boo Berry. Who knows what his ethereal plasm might’ve picked up.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDTt_UVFfNl/

DOWN+B. DOWN+B. DOWN+B.

Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there. I was just playing some Smash Bros. to celebrate Cereal Life‘s leak of an upcoming new Pokémon Cereal from General Mills. My character? Pichu, of course. Who else is there?

But much like everyone’s favorite pre-evolved rat, I might be hurting myself by getting too electrically excited. See, Pokémon Cereal has a very dear reputation, especially to me. With the original Pokémon Cereal released by Kellogg’s in 2000, this General Mills “Berry Bolt” cereal has a lot to live up to. Sure, Kellogg’s version was *just* an oats & marbits cereal, like any ol’ Lucky Charm chaser, but what it lacked in originality—and hey, it still tasted great—it made up for with charm: namely, adorably diverse pastel marshmallows, a holographically embossed box, and bowl pal toys inside.

Will General Mills’ team bring anything so super nostalgically effective to the table? Since as with most of Cereal Life’s leaks, the box art here is far from final, it’s difficult to say—however, as it is a puffed cereal, it’s very unlikely to be anything but corn based (and therefore extremely weak to both Oat and Milk type Pokémon), while its two meager, monochrome marshmallow designs leave me about as giddy as a post-dinner Snorlax.

Maybe they can make up for it with some sort of in-box exclusive—General Mills has been doing Pokémon Card promotions for a while now—but as it stands, you might be better off using a Max Revive on an old eBay box of the original stuff. It may be crusty and inedible, but at least you could pretend it’s a Gengar.