So, I have this tradition. Every March 6th, without fail, just before my temple greets its parish of pillows, I will jolt awake with childlike wonder and adultlike anxiety, having suddenly remembered that National Cereal Day is on March 7th, and I’ve totally forgotten to draft up meaningful content.

Cut to me, scraggled by crummy overhead lighting and disheveled as the pantry shelves I’m whipping through like a lethargic whirlwind. I mean, can you blame me? Sure, I’ve got cereal on my mind a lot, but National Cereal Day has long been an annual anomaly that exists without discernible reason nor rhyme, just an arbitrarily selected and sweetened day from the never-ending passage of time.

I’m sure that’s just my brain complaining though, as it desperately wishes to get back to its dreams of supermodels eating soups or salads or whatever else my nefarious noggin gets into when I’m severed from it by sleep. After all, what better way to celebrate everyone’s favorite morning munchie than by groggily griddling up the stuff by the battered scoopful at 2am?

Though it may not be a proper cereal, Cap’n Crunch and Aunt Jemima’s historic new partnership is practically begging for National Cereal Day’s spotlight. Why? Well, not because it’s good, but because it’s so stupid, it’s great.

I don’t know if it was by design or happy accident, but so much about Aunt Jemima and Cap’n Crunch’s Berrytastic Pancake Mix feels like an uncanny relic from a time where corporate branding standards weren’t quite so repressively strict. That is, of course, a very kind way of saying, “How did any of this get past the quality assurance team?”

First off, the packaging: not only is the mix just kind of in there—no pouch, bag or fresh seal; just raw dust on cardboard—but the seams of this pancake mix box are far from shipshape, as said receptacle appeared to be respirating cloudy vapor each time I applied any iota of grip strength to it. What’s more, the packaging writer behind this stuff clearly had free creative reign, as this gem of a line seems to be appealing more to the “insomniac manchild” demographic than cereal’s traditional, you know, child-child audience.

i'd like to buy a beer for whichever writer managed to squeeze this one past the copyeditors pic.twitter.com/32F2VlEACP

— Cerealously 🥛 (@cerealouslynet) March 6, 2020

Less outwardly remarkable, but still strange, is how the ingredients lists “oops! all berries” entirely in lowercase, and how the mix itself smells like…well…absolutely nothing. Sure, you can see microscopic Crunch Berry detritus in there, but they’re no bigger than one of an ant’s noses, all five of which would be hard-pressed to identify this as a Cap’n Crunch Pancake Mix by sheer aroma alone. Heck, even my wants-to-be-in-bedhead couldn’t detect any distinct cereal flavor after sampling the dry mix like it was Fun Dip.

(I could say I made that sacrifice for journalism, but in reality I had just gone full Danimal Mode.)

Nor does this Crunchian absence change much as you whisk in water to craft pancake batter that looks like a broken phone screen. Even once these unborn cakes meet a sizzling pan, they just smell like regular ol’ pancakes with a hint of “oh ship oh ship, I waited too long to flip them and now the smoke alarm will reveal my witching hour debauchery to the whole neighborhood.”

At least the final product doesn’t look so bad—though the colorful accents of the rainbow Crunch Berry quarks are largely lost beneath Aunt Jemima’s top coat of Classic Pancake Brown (roughly #b0661c). In fact, they look so not so bad that I feel a compulsive need to change that.

(You know, I worried that my late-night lighting would be too poor to use in this review, but I really think it complements these cakes’ ugly beauty!)

Ahh, there we are. With a few squörts of Ocean Blue Syrup—which plates with the same grace as jellied antifreeze—you can turn tastefully speckled Berrytastic pancakes into charming medium-rare toothpaste steaks. It is this very sight that is so ridiculously unappetizing that you have to laugh—where other cereal brands are removing artificial colors and upping fiber content, Cap’n Crunch is proud to leave your excretory system shamelessly blue and barnacled.

When eating Berrytastic Pancakes with Ocean Blue Syrup, one thing becomes clear (while the rest becomes translucently ultramarine): these things were never really gonna taste like Crunch Berries, and Quaker probably knew it. After all, the syrup doesn’t even have Cap’n Crunch flavoring, and it therefore drowns out any hint of tropical sweetness with its unrelenting tidal wave of chemically synthesized mapleishness. Instead, what you’re left with is the same generic, yet irresistible instant pancake flavor you’ve probably tasted at decades’ worth of last-minute school fundraisers.

I tried eating these Aunt Jemima x Cap’n Crunch pancakes dry. I tried eating them buttered. I even tried eating them dipped in almond milk, but I still couldn’t wring any Crunch Berry flavor out of them—except for perhaps the fleeting kiss of foraged faux fruit that comes not from drinking Cap’n Crunch endmilk, but from licking the bowl dry where said swill used to be. Your best bet is to either crumble your own Crunch Berries into the mix, or crudely mash the pancakes into your cereal bowl (remember, between 1:00 and 5:00am, all cereal crimes are legal).

But am I mad? Nope. Just slap happy. For everything they lack in flavor, Cap’n Crunch and Aunt Jemima’s Berrytastic Pancakes make up for it with the kind of inexplicably silly, gimmicky giddiness that Saturday morning cereal has always embodied. Especially once you add rivers of artificial maple barbicide to the equation, it’s kind of hard to not fall in love with these failed kindergarten art projects.

No one is expecting five-star restaurant quality from a cartoon captain whose ingredients likely share more DNA with Michelin tires, and in this no-holds barred approach to indulgence and idiotic grins lies the true genius of Cap’n Crunch’s Cerulean Brunch. The whimsical spirit of cereal transcends mere breakfast bowls, and on this National Cereal Day, that’s the sort of zeitgeist I want to catch up on my Zs with.

(Update: Here’s a slightly more palatable daylit photo from my second batch!)

The Bowl: Cap’n Crunch & Aunt Jemima’s Berrytastic Pancake Mix with Ocean Blue Syrup

The Breakdown: Charmingly ostentatious and playfully excessive, this pancake and syrup combo tastes almost nothing like its namesake cereal brand—just plain and simple box mix pancakes that look like Crayola Crayoncakes with a touch of spectral blueberry—but that shouldn’t stop you from having dumb fun eating unforgettably dumb food ’til it turns your dopamine receptors numb.

The Bottom Line: 9 chillingly primitive episodes of Cerealously After Dark out of 10