It's a well known fact that Grape Nuts is the black sheep of all cereal. It's brittle, boring, and is about the blandest thing you could ever eat, blander than water even.

Does it deserve the hatred we all give it? Of course it does. But it also deserves our love, and what's more, our respect. So now, I present, the one and only:

The history of Grape Nuts is pretty epic, and I can say without hesitation that it is the most important cereal ever made, ever. Before fat cats like Kellogg's and General Mills were strutting about the cereal isle, there was Grape Nuts, the grand daddy of all cereals, the Magna Carta of the cereal industry.

Back in 1897 some guy named Charles Williams Post baked some wheat and malted barley together, claimed that 'grape sugar' was formed, and commented that it tastes like nuts, which led to the oh so controversial name of Grape Nuts.

What I like about Grape Nuts is that there are no gimmicks. There's no cartoon bird prancing about on the box cover, there's no commercial with Barney and Fred getting in fist fights over a bowl of Grape Nuts, you get a box full of cereal and that's it. It's not even a big box filled with air and prizes, it's just a pound of wheat and barley with a picture on the front.

What I have here is living proof that Grape Nuts is truly life changing. A four pound box of Grape Nuts, in all it's glory. Any other box of cereal this size would weigh half as much, which makes them half as good. There's something to be said about a cereal with the same density as sand.

Just holding the box gives you a sense of power like holding a baseball bat or a meat cleaver. There is some serious loft to this cereal. I could kill a man if I had to with this and I'm not even joking.

Another thing I like about Grape Nuts is that it sinks right to the bottom of the bowl. There's nothing glamorous about it, no lame ass snaps or crackles, no different colors, no marshmallows, just a pile of food sitting at the bottom of a bowl of milk.

Eating the food is an adventure within itself. Bite too soft and you aren't gonna break a one. Bite too hard and you might chip a tooth. It really is a wild man's cereal.

I'm not even going to talk about the taste of Grape Nuts, because there isn't any. If there wasn't milk you would swear that you were eating gravel, the only different being that gravel might soften up a bit.

The very best part of Grape Nuts is after the whole eating experience. If you've ever accidentally swallowed a rock you know what it's like to eat a bowl of Grape Nuts. The feeling of it sitting in the bottom of your stomach is a reminder for the rest of the day that you actually ate the stuff, rewarding you long long after you take the last bite.

And now, true to fashion, I present the legendary box of Raisin Grape Nuts from 1988.

The only date on the box is the expiration date of 1988, which means I was in kindergarten when they deemed this unsafe to eat. If that doesn't get your juices going I don't know what will.

Holding this box of Grape Nuts is much more profound than the four pound slugger. There is a certain amount of self reflection involved, which I imagine is similar to holding a child or a box of money.

I admit I felt a tremendous amount of guilt opening the box since Grape Nuts ages like wine. To make up for this I made sure to inhale as much air as possible while opening the plastic. It smelled like garbage.

Time had done little to the actual Grape Nuts, which were small, brittle, and ugly looking. The raisins however had lost all characteristics of their previous grape-existence. They were even harder than their wheat barley counterpart, and incredibly bad smelling.

No opening of Grape Nuts from 1988 would be complete without a good old fashioned taste testing, to see if those guys in the 80s lived any better than us hipsters in the new millen.

In order to sample all the subtle aspects of the cereal I made sure to include a healthy variety of raisins and Grape Nuts for each person who was able to experience this tasty treat.

Eddie B:

I can confidently say that the taste of it was more than what I was expecting. A little Grape Nuts goes a long way is what I say. In all reality, the taste was exactly how it had smelled, which was like old garbage that had been sitting around for 18 years. Who would've thought.

Ol Andy H:

I'm pretty sure Hoog spent about 3 minutes washing out his mouth, claiming that there was still raisins stuck in his teeth.

The Coot:

To be fair, at least Nate took a bite of the stuff, but barley chewed a once before he had to spit it out into our empty garbage bin. Not a fan.

Big Nasty Justin:

There's a reason Justin calls himself Big Nasty, and this is it. Justin put this cereal down better than any of us and didn't complain once. A terrific performance.

So what was the point you ask? Fame, bitches.