[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

We've talked about having a breakfast cereal column here for a while, and one of these days we will, but in the meantime we'll just report on new ones as they come in. These two are from Bear Naked, the granola company that has a line of whole-grain, preservative-free, HFCS-free 'nolas. They recently came out with two "Cluster Crunch" cereals in Honey Almond and Maple Nut flavors, which, we've decided, are somewhere between Smart Start and Honey Bunches of Oats.

The ratio of flakes-to-clusters for both flavors is heavily in flakes' favor. In a random handful sample, we got all flakes. No clusters. Not a one! Disappointing.

Maple Nut and Honey Almond.

As with any cereal containing clusters, it became all about finding the clusters. The Cluster Hunt Game. You want more clusters but have to eat your flakes first. (Flakes are to veggies as clusters are to dessert?) It took a few maraca shakes of the box to finally pop up those jackpot cluster nuggets (comprised of oat flakes, walnuts, almonds, and puffed wheat).

Both flavors are sweet in that whole-grainy-good-for-you kind of way. Also in that, cereal-for-dessert-please kind of way. We started snacking on them by the handful, milk not required.

The Maple Nut is the sweeter of the two, and gave us flashbacks to the Maple Brown Sugar instant oatmeal taste test. (Eek, hadn't thought about that in a while.) It had a bit of that processed maple, Aunt Jemima aroma happening.

What we learned from the box: the Maple Nut has 2 grams of fat, 220 calories, and 5 grams of protein per one-cup serving. The Honey Almond has 1.5 grams of fat, 180 calories, and 4 grams of protein.

They're available at Target stores for $3.99 a box.

Anyone else all about the clusters? Favorite cluster-laden cereals?