Why does entering { foo: 'value' }.foo in the console throw a SyntaxError?

Question

When creating an object containing a key value pair, binding that to a variable and then accessing that property, it works fine:

var b = { foo: 'value' };
b.foo;
// "value"

If I create a similar object, directly access its property and bind that to a variable, it works as well:

var b = { foo: 'value' }.foo;
b;
// "value"

However, when submitting the following code to the console, this results in an error:

{ foo: 'value' }.foo;
// Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'

Why?