The concept of mixing delicious snack food stuffs together and calling it “Trail Mix” is about as old as the concept of trails themselves. Traditionally it’s supposed to be a healthy mix, but this is America and we love our snacks full of fats and sugars, simultaneously going out of our way to make sure we don’t consume too much of them. So it should make a bit of sense that as many companies as possible would brand the trail mix moniker and blend it into a new creation. Chex was obviously the creator of this trend (commercially) and then Cheerios got into the mix, but the newest cereal to the game comes to us via the offices of Snap, Crackle and Pop. Rice Krispies have a time tested cereal for making snacks out of, but this is the first time they’ve made something that wasn’t the one thing they’re known for.

Starting the blend off are tiny orbs of Rice Krispies Treats no bigger than an M&M that they call “Clusters”. Three kinds of pretzels take up a bulk of the bag space, with two types of mini twists, both plain and deliciously yogurt covered, the third being thick sticks coated in caramel. A perfect rip off of Nilla Wafers are included, also in the miniature variety. They also include a few M&M clones that they are calling “Cocoa Buttons” even though they taste entirely like plain milk chocolate. Whatever keeps the lawyers away, right?

Separately these ingredients are quite delicious, but it’s supposed to be eaten mixed together and it suffers entirely from being too much of a good thing. The regular pretzels are the only things that aren’t covered in some sweet substance, and one plain ingredient doesn’t do enough to break up the flavors. Once you eat a few of the pieces together everything gets lost in a giant carmel, marshmallow, vanilla, chocolate, and yogurt ball of flavored nothing. While the numbers don’t seem to indicate a lot of sugar, the overwhelming sweetness can almost make you feel the diabetes setting in. It almost makes me feel sorry of the people who bought the other flavor, the chocolate version of the Crunch Mix. While the snacks are decent eaten individually, it seems so unfortunate how they couldn’t accomplish a blend that went well together. I guess cereal moguls shouldn’t be left to making snack foods, and rather stick to what they know.