Chocolate Chex Mix Cookies & Cream

There are certain flavor profiles that I automatically reach for when I'm looking for a snack. If I'm in the mood for chips, the spicy flavor is usually my first draft pick. With sweet snacks, it's a little different, because there's usually a much wider range, but I do know that if I ever see a cookies & cream flavored confection, that's the one I end up taking home. Such is the case with this new Chex Mix flavor. I've never seen a C&C flavored snack outside of chocolate bars and ice cream, and wondered how this would shape up.
According to the prestigious publication, Convenience Store Decisions, this debuted in July after a positive response to the homestyle Muddy Buddies flavor and is the first salty snack mix to incorporate a cookies and cream flavor. So stop dreaming, Funyuns. As excited as I was to try this, actually eating it was just disappointing. Let me put it to you this way. I originally bought this as a small treat for Keepitcoming Love on our drive to Mohegan Sun, but had the foresight (hunger) to try it ahead of time. Miss Love is our resident cookies and cream aficionado, and this was so weak that giving it to her would have seemed like an insult.
It was awful. For a product that has the potential to incorporate a variety of textural and flavor nuances throughout a bite or two, this was upsettingly one-noted. Each piece was coated in a filmy substance, a finely ground dust in greyscale that I'm assuming is the cookies and cream condensed to a powder with the texture, but not the expertise, of a dessert at wd-50. Even on the pieces that seemed to be more grey, as though they contained more cookie, the flavor was overly sweet and lacking in any chocolate flavor. The package screams that there are "real cookies" in it, as opposed to the plastic "my first kitchen" ones I use when I make Chex Mix. I've already called witness protection and the FBI, as it appears as these have been processed through a woodchipper and slid into my plastic bag. Real cookies, my ass.
Perhaps the most aggravating element in this was the "sweet creamy coating" on the Chex. I'm not stupid. I know that any substitute or clever wording for chocolate (in this case, white chocolate) is a way to imply chocolate without having it in the ingredients. At the very least, I expected white mockolate. This didn't even rise to the level of Palmer-esque confections. The coating caused it to fail as a portable snack, as it left a cocaine-like residue all over my desk. That wasn't so bad, because at least the cocaine-esque stuff made me look like a cool, edgy person, but the flavor was downright unpalatable. As a cereal, the powder sank to the bottom and left an oily sheen on top. It was creepy stuff and made my teeth hurt.
I'm annoyed that the essence of the Chex Mix in itself is an endearingly haphazard, thrown together sort of affair and with that philosophy, neglected to include its flagship ingredient. Would it have been so hard to throw some pieces of Hydrox or co-brand with Kraft and use "real Oreo pieces" in there? I'm disappointed that a snack like this had so much potential and then dropped the ball. With a slim market for cookies and cream snacks, this isn't helping other brands branch out into similar versions.