Cereal, in all its meditative morning zen oneness, feels like a static concept. When eaten in the morning, just past noon, or at midnight, it centers, grounds, and rebalances our day to an even keel.

For this reason—and the whole milk thing—eating cereal on the go typically requires either a crumb-ersome cereal bar or two separate thermoses for Cap’n Crunch and 2%. The problematic conundrum of mobile cereal munching is so pandemic, it’s even been pop-culturally immortalized on TV.

But the folks behind the successfully crowdfunded Crunch Cup, which raised over $100,000 from online backers, want to change that. Using a cleverly designed two-chamber system, this mobile cereal solution bills is striving for a sweeter, more convenient breakfastian world. They were also kind enough to send me a Crunch Cup for this review, so while I’ll probably still instinctively avoid eating cereal on the go (ever since that time I spilled a whole milky cup of Cocoa Puffs on my pants in high school and yelped so loud I derailed the calculus lesson), I’m here to playtest it for the good of your soon-to-be-creamier morning commute.

Because hey: if you’ve got a family-sized box of cereal in your passenger seat, you’re totally allowed to use the carpool lane.

Though it took me a few minutes to decipher the printed instructions, I was in a perfectly yin-yang’d flavortown. Put simply, you pour your preferred amount of milk into the big cup (they recommend less over more), cereal into the little cup, align the top, adjust the lid to your preferred slurping angle, and hit the road. It’s the kind of process that gets simpler and faster when you get the hang of it, but could ultimately get a little tiring based on the Crunch Cup’s frequent need of refills.

Yes, my main gripe with the Crunch Cup is its small cereal capacity: the inner cup only holds about 3/4 cup of cereal, and even though that’s both the recommended serving size of most cereals, as well as a reasonable amount to give kids bringing the Crunch Cup to school, adult stomachs will likely* need more than that to endure expressway traffic—Cinnamon Toast Crunch moves faster as traffic moves slower. That’s called Chewton’s Law.

*Unless you, like me, choose to fill your Crunch Cup with Fillows, which are so dense even 3/4 cup could sate most fully grown humans for the length of a Disneyland roadtrip.

But now that my hangry hang-ups are out of the way, let’s talk the good: functionally speaking, the Crunch Cup 100$ succeeds at its mission. When drinking from it, the cereal pieces and milk do not unite until right before they hit your mouth, preserving the sweet stuff’s crunchy structural integrity while still providing a delightful synthesis of decadence and dairy. Heck, there’s even a milk-flow hole (not to be confused, under any circumstance, with a biologically hazardous milk blowhole [save the whales, people!]), so you can easily determine whether you get just a sip of skim or a whole pie-hole-full of whole milk.

Of course, this praise comes with a couple caveats. Most importantly, your crunchily cupped enjoyment will entirely hinge on how you like your milked cereal. It seems the number of people for whom this will be perfect—soggy cereal haters, in other words—is equally matched by a tribe who loves the entire journey of a bowl of cereal: the initial crunch, the first quartile of modest moistening, the slightly soggy apex, and the nectarous cereal milk left behind. The Crunch Cup cuts out the last three steps, so while it ensures a consistent mouthfeel and flavor, it loses a little bit of charm for those seeking to fully immerse themselves (literally) in the cereal experience—a journey that is, admittedly, not conducive to busy schedules.

Unless it’s how you spend all your busy time, but I know I’m an outlier. 🙂

Different cereals are also more or less complementary to the Crunch Cup’s eating style. By requiring you to pour cereal out of a small orifice, cereals with more rigid geometry like, like a Toast Crunch or Mini-Wheat, require you to shake the cup, or even lightly tap it against your teeth, to break all the pieces free from their shapely inertia.

But in the end, my complaints about the Crunch Cup are minor compared to its impressive engineering. By this point in the review, you likely already know whether this would suit your cereal and milk preferences, so if you’re a steadfast anti-sogger, the Crunch Cup deserves your attention. I happen to be in the “pro-sog to a reasonable limit” camp, so while I’m more apt to drink out of the Crunch Cup with a funnel in my mouth, your mileage may vary.

Regardless, I thank the Crunch Cup creators for not only the sample, but also for creating a successful cereal startup. I’m always down to appraise and upraise DIY cereal crusaders, so I give you my full support.

Just call me when you make an XXL Crunch Keg.

The Bowl: The Crunch Cup

The Breakdown: A clever and well-constructed solution for high velocity deliciousness, the Crunch Cup is held back only by its small cereal vesicle and the world’s considerable population of sog sanctifiers.

The Bottom Line: 8 cups of blubber-flavored endmilk out of 10