Breakfast may widely be considered the most important meal of the day, but I’ve always found it difficult to muster an appetite for much before noon. As a kid, this bothered my mother to no end, and she was always trying to find something, anything, that I would be willing to eat before sending me off on the school bus.

After offering me granola bars, yogurt, and every other remotely wholesome breakfast food known to mom-kind, she found I was always happy to eat a couple of warm Pop-Tarts, no matter how early it was.

Although Kellogg’s new Pop-Tart cereals may have arrived too late to expand my morning meal repertoire, they offer two bowl-bound alternatives to the popular foil-wrapped toaster pastries, and promise, according to the boxes, to pack delicious filling into every bite.

Strawberry

With a strong strawberry aroma and thin glaze of icing encasing each piece, I had my hopes set pretty high on this flavor. Unfortunately, just like the kids who opened presents on Christmas Day to find packages of socks and underwear, my expectations were quickly dashed.

Although the cereal smells like the toaster tart it was modeled after, it tastes much blander. Most of what I noticed at first was the “crust” of each square, which seemed very similar to the pastry dough of a strawberry Pop-Tart. While I’ll give Kellogg’s props for consistency, it makes for a very bland and unexciting cereal.

The much-touted “delicious filling” also turned out to be a much ado about nothing. The cereal pieces have so little of it in them that they appear visibly hollow when you bite one in half. Worse yet, the little amount of filling is hardly delicious, and gives the cereal a strange sort of off-putting chewiness, especially after it’s been soaking in milk for a few minutes.

Purchased Price: $3.64
Size: 17 oz. box
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 cup) 150 calories, 1 gram of total fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of total carbohydrates, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 16 grams of total sugars, 16 grams of added sugars, and 2 grams of protein.

Brown Sugar Cinnamon

In comparison to the strawberry version’s strong first impression, I could tell there was something off about this flavor as soon as I opened the bag. Rather than reminding me of the toaster pastry of my youth, this cereal instead had an unusually strong artificial maple scent, and the squares themselves appeared plain and unappetizing.

My dismay regarding this cereal’s look and smell was entirely justified, too, since it tastes nothing like the Pop-Tart it was named for. Like with the strawberry version, all of the cereal squares were in desperate need of both more filling and more flavor, and the dusting of frosting on each piece was quickly lost in my bowl of milk.

Purchased Price: $3.64
Size: 17 oz. box
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 3 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 cup) 150 calories, 1 gram of total fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of total carbohydrates, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 15 grams of total sugars, 15 grams of added sugars, and 2 grams of protein..

Other Things:

• Three cups of Pop-Tarts cereal have roughly as many calories as a foil package of standard Pop-Tarts, so both of these are good examples of the common trade-off between quantity and quality.
• Both boxes make a big deal about how having sprinkles supposedly makes eating a bowl of cereal more fun, but the sprinkles here so small you almost need a magnifying glass to see them.