Think, Dan. Think.

Think about armed guards. Think about snowy fortresses. Think about architectural impossibilities that couldn’t be understood even by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page. Okay, it’s no use: I give up.

That was my honest attempt at trying to protect my thoughts from being tampered with again. Like what’s-his-face-who-isn’t-Leo in Inception, I have reason to believe that someone can read my subconscious. And that someone works at General Mills.

See, this review is for the Big G’s intriguing Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch. As I poured my bowl for review purposes and took the inaugural spoonful, I quickly realized that I had eaten a cereal like this before. But this was no cereal you would find on store shelves. No, this cereal—whose doppelgänger I held before me—was a product of my own ideation.

Like any cereal fan, from time to time I get a Frankenstein-esque impulse to experiment: to mix multiple cereals into new ones. They say man should not play god, but I think corn and milk is less ethically questionable to work with than flesh and blood.

My first production was a logical one, and one that many others have probably tried: Honey Nut Cheerios + Honey Bunches of Oats = Honey Nut Bunches of CheeriOats.

And that’s why I feel the psychic presence of General Mills whispering sweet nothings (nothings so sweet they have 9 grams of sugar per serving) in the back of mind. Because Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch is like a commercialized Honey Nut Bunches of CheeriOats (I knew I should have patented it). But the review doesn’t stop there. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty (nutty-grutty?).

Peering into the box and inhaling the grainy, waxy-sweet aroma, I can see that HNCMC (how’s that for an acronym?) contains 3 distinct pieces: our beloved hero, the Honey Nut Cheerio; an out of place classic, the crispy flake; and the experimental oddball, the oat cluster. Though they are meant to work together, it’s worth giving a quick breakdown.

The Honey Nut Cheerios are no different than those you’d find in a normal Honey Nut Cheerios box, though I guess since there are fewer of them here they have added hipster cred (if I’m even using that phrase correctly).

As you probably know (since Honey Nut Cheerios are America’s bestselling cereal), they have a light, airy crunch and a shiny glaze that imparts a fleeting kiss of honey richness upon your tongue. Lurking beneath are subtle, earthy notes of almond and oat that pair well with the honey.

The flakes have a palpable crunch that isn’t overbearing; in the Pokémon-esque evolution of crunchy cereals, Honey Bunches of Oats are the light, fragile Squirtle, and Raisin Bran Crunch are the hearty Blastoise. That makes these the reliable, average Wartortle (I’ll hide my geek power levels now, even though I now have a sudden urge to write about Pokémon cereal).

They don’t carry much flavor and have a bran-like grittiness that it disguised with a light sugar dusting and a hint of oily nuttiness. The flakes mostly take on the flavor of the milk and other pieces, much like the Pokémon Ditto (okay, now I’m really done).

The clusters are the unique stars, here. They are modestly sized (imagine the tip of your pinky) and crumble easily, but their flavor is different from all other clusters I’ve experienced. The clusters have a genuine graham taste, with a bit of dark brown sugar and an almond aftertaste, too. It’s memorable and makes these clusterrific, rather than clusterrible (I couldn’t resist).

But it’s when you eat everything together that the symphonic song of Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch really resonates. The multi-leveled crunch factors of the pieces bring a fun hodge-podge of textures (much like Raisin Bran Crunch).

With milk, the complex final taste sensation makes me think this could be Barnum’s Animal Crackers: The Cereal. The graham taste is potent, and the supportive sweetness of honey and sugar makes for a very “cracker cookie”-esque treat (though there is a bizarre, cardboard-y taste in some bites which lack clusters).

It’s like someone was reading the mind of my elementary school self as he noshed on little elephants dipped in milk at lunchtime.

Wait a minute…

The Bowl: Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch

The Breakdown: Inconsistent flavor profile between spoonfuls, but when it’s good, it’s a carnival of animal cracker-y delight.

The Bottom Line: 7 bowls of Leonardo DiCapriO’s out of 10