Sometimes Foodie: I guess the accidental theme this week is...breakfast?

It's official, I've finally been doing this long enough that I've started to forget products.
Take a look at this, vs, 2019's Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Similar, yet, different. And 2019 wasn't even that long ago! (I guess that means that the flavor combination was rather forgettable.)

Welp, at the very least, the cereal shape is different. So let's see how this compares to my old post. As always, I'll do a dry taste test and then a bowl with milk.

I want to take a second to talk about this box art. We have a bright colorful front, with the little cereal-characters scattered about. (Last time they were only on the back of the box, so it seems like they're here to stay. Great, good, love that for them.) Compared to the old box, this is a lot more dynamic and interesting to look at, which is good because that's all there is.

The back of this box sucks. Apparently I didn't even photograph it, but it's just a giant image of the cartoonish Cinnamon Toast Crunch character's face and that's it. Nothing else. No mazes. No reading. No puzzles. Do kids not mindlessly stare at the backs of the boxes anymore? Compared to the 2019 box, which had activities, this is boring and it makes me sad.

Dry, the cereal has a bright apple flavoring, coated with the sweet cinnamon sugar we know and love. Does it taste like apple pie? No. Not at all. But it IS distinctly apple-y, in a very "breakfast" sort of way. A bright, red-apple, kind of flavoring that makes me think of how Apple Jacks tasted when I was a kid. (I swear they taste like cardboard now.)
But what about adding milk? After all, my preference for eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch dry is well documented. (I posted a meme last time and everything.)

When milk enters the equation, the cereal gets soggy quickly and the flavoring is all but washed away. The apple flavoring in particular gets especially weak when eaten this way. Most people go crazy for the post-cereal milk but, in my opinion, the cereal milk leftover from this is not worth sacrificing the far superior snacking experience you get with the dry cereal. But I feel that way about all the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereals.

If you've been missing the older version, it's been several years since I reviewed it, so I can't say with absolute confidence that they taste the same, but it's probably pretty close. Texturally, I like the classic square-shaped cereal more than the toast-shaped one for dry snacking, BUT the toast-shaped version held up a lot better in milk. So if I were given a choice between the two, this is my pick, due to my dry cereal snacking habits, but if I were only allowed to eat it with milk, as intended, the 2019 toast-shape wins by a landslide.

As long as it's in shingle-form, I'll be snacking on it trail-mix style. (I bet it would be awesome with apple chips in cereal-bar-form!) What about you? Are you a dry cereal snacker? Or am I all alone out here?