I eat cereal all the time, but I’m not the biggest fan of raisins. Yet, for reasons unknown, I still get cravings for raisin cereal every once in a while. Usually, I get the typical “raisins with bran flakes” version by default, because I don’t really pay much attention to them. But my interest was piqued when I saw Aldi offered a “Raisin Granola Crunch” cereal under their Millville banner, and so I opted to give it a try.

As the “crunch” in the title suggests, the flakes in this cereal aren’t your average, run-of-the-mill bran flakes: They seem to be coated in some extra sugar, making them much sweeter, and also more milk-resistant. This is actually a key for me; in the bran version, the cereal gets mushy almost the instant the milk hits it, so I like that this stays crunchy a lot longer. I also liked the touch of extra sweetness–I could have just as easily eaten this cereal without any raisins at all, something that tends to happen anyway…

I’m no scientist, but for whatever reason, all the raisin bits drop to the bottom of the bowl. This might also be an issue for raisin bran, though I do not recall that being the case. Do most people eat cereal by scooping along the bottom of the bowl after every bite? I just skim the surface of the milk, getting the flakes that are closest to the top; I’ve had two full bowls of this stuff and while I like it, I always end up with ten or so raisins hiding out at the bottom, while getting virtually NONE with the actual cereal flakes. I hate being wasteful, so I always manage to force them down, but the raisins are my least favorite part, and I was hoping to kind of mask the taste of the fruit with the sweetness of the cereal…needless to say, that doesn’t really happen. Which kind of defeats the whole point of the cereal.

Overall: 5.5/10. In theory, this cereal is a great idea, giving the cereal flakes a sugary coating that’s more resistant to milk than the typical “bran and raisin” cereal, while also adding a little bit of sweetness. But in execution, it leaves something to be desired. While the sweetened slivers of cereal are absolutely delicious, all the raisin bits fall directly to the bottom. Maybe I eat cereal differently from most people, but I don’t scoop the bottom of the bowl for every bite, instead opting to skim the top of the milk to just get the cereal bits on the surface, then slowly working my way down. This leaves me with about a dozen raisins at the bottom of the bowl when I would otherwise be done, which is no good since I do not like raisins. I will probably stick to the regular “bran and raisin” cereal the next time I have a craving for this kind of thing.