Two of my favorite foods in the world are cereal and fruit snacks.  For some reason, combining the two has never been, as far as I can recall, tried.

Well, tried by a major cereal company.  I'm sure some stoner has sat in his dorm and tried to stuff Fruity Pebbles inside a Gusher.  Actually, now I'm wondering how that might taste.

Aside from possible homemade attempts, we've never seen anything akin to "Frosted Krispies - Now With Fruit Wrinkles!"  Kellogg's saw this void in the market, and, pioneers that they are, tried to see just how well this marriage might work.

I never think to buy Fruit Loops, despite enjoying them every time I do.  I have some weird prejudice against ring cereals, it seems.  Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, Honey Nut Cheerios - all part of a persecuted group of cereals that I pass over as mediocre, then on the random times I do get them, they make the most of their opportunity and make me happy.

But, there it is - the big "NEW!" at the top of the box.  No way I can resist.

Based on the picture of the "treasure" piece (enlarged to show detail), I thought the pieces would almost be like a a fruit version of Krave cereal.  Then I realized why this looked so familiar - Hidden Treasures cereal.

Hidden Treasures were a short-lived cereal, they were corn puffs that were either filled with grape, orange, cherry, or nothing.  Apparently, this era was big on the concept of "kids love surprise flavors and colors!"  This would explain the existence of Pop Qwiz microwave popcorn, where the whole novelty of it was you didn't know what neon color the popcorn would be until you poured it out of the bag.

The treasure pieces are significantly bigger than the loops, so given the different shape and size, I thought I was in for one of those uneven cereal-eating experiences.

I tried one of the treasure pieces by itself, and it was... weird.  It really does taste like a fruit snack shoved into a piece of cereal.  Which isn't bad, per se, it's just unusual.  The chewiness was certainly unexpected - I thought it would be more of a jelly-like consistency.

However, when eating the cereal altogether, it works very well.  The crunch of the cereal blends with the chewiness of the filling.  What really helps is all of the loop pieces diluting the treasure pieces' chewiness, so overall the crunch of the cereal kind of drowns out most of the strange chewiness.

Taste-wise, it's not too different than normal Froot Loops.  Since the treasure pieces make up maybe 10% of the bowl, the strawberry fruit snack flavor doesn't take over.  After finishing the cereal, I was reminded of possibly Froot Loops's biggest flaw - not coloring the milk.

For such a brightly colored cereal, it does nothing to the milk.  The milk taste nice and sugary, but it would also be nice to have some artificial colors seep in there, as well.

[insert seal of approval here]