Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a cereal with a serious engineering defect that General Mills has apparently decided is our problem. It gets soggy almost immediately. Not eventually. Not if you linger. Immediately. Milk hits the bowl and the structural decline begins. For a brief period, the squares are crisp, cinnamony, slightly softened around the edges, and genuinely excellent. Then you look away long enough to scratch your face and return to a bowl of cinnamon insulation. We have had decades to solve this. Instead, they put cartoon faces on the squares.

Danielle gives it an 8 out of 10 because it is crunchy, cinnamony, nostalgic, and hard not to love. Unfortunately, enjoying those qualities requires her to eat breakfast like she has somewhere to be in four minutes. Once the bowl is poured, Danielle is no longer available to participate in the household. Do not ask her a question. Do not show her something on your phone. If you are bleeding, apply pressure. She is trying to finish Cinnamon Toast Crunch before it becomes drywall compound, and frankly you should have planned your emergency better.

Ang gives it a 14 out of 20 and was surprised that something visibly coated in cinnamon sugar does not taste like a Yankee Candle with diabetes. It is actually less sweet than expected and very good, assuming you catch the approximately eleven-second period when it has softened enough to improve but not enough to become garbage. The real achievement, however, is what remains in the bowl, which gets a 10 out of 10. This raises an uncomfortable question about whether the cereal is even the product. Perhaps each piece is merely a disposable cinnamon cartridge that we run milk through and then throw into our mouths because the filtration system also happens to be edible.

Emily gives it a 5 out of 10 because it is too sweet, a position we would take more seriously if she did not have an extensive and frankly troubling Cinnamon Toast Crunch history. She recommends mixing it with Cheerios, which is essentially like putting 40 crossing guards into a nightclub and hoping everyone settles down. Her coworker also made Cinnamon Toast Crunch Krispie treats with fancy crystal salt, which Emily remembers as "Malden salt," and reportedly they were delicious. Then she casually disclosed that in college there were days when she ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch for every meal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The dinner bowl, however, came with one PBR "as a treat."

Emily eating the same thing for the third time that day was basic sustenance, but adding a Pabst Blue Ribbon elevated the evening to an occasion. A 5 out of 10 is not a review. That is an ex insisting the relationship was "never that serious" despite living together for years, then seeing them thriving with someone else and suddenly bringing up all the great times they had. You ate this three meals a day, paired it with beer, and are still keeping tabs on what it's doing with dessert. You did not move on. You just started buying Cheerios.

So Danielle is inhaling breakfast before basic physics ruins it, Ang has discovered that the entire operation may actually be an elaborate delivery system for outstanding cinnamon milk, and Emily is attempting to distance herself from something that once accounted for essentially her entire daily food intake. All three agree, intentionally or otherwise, that Cinnamon Toast Crunch requires an unreasonable amount of management.

Final verdict: Cinnamon Toast Crunch is excellent for an extremely specific period of time, after which it gives up completely and leaves you to deal with the consequences.