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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Lay’s Wavy Milk Chocolate Potato Chips

Lay's Wavy Milk ChocolateA few weeks ago the internet excitement for new limited edition products spilled over into big media with the news that Frito Lay was introducing chocolate covered potato chips: Lay’s Wavy Potato Chips Dipped in Milk Chocolate. This news was apparently mind-blowing, as if USA Today and ABC News have never seen chocolate covered potato chips before.

The new limited edition packages are sold only at Target until the end of the year. The bag is small, something I’d call a “king sized” bag that you’d see at a convenience store that would hold two servings. This bag, however, holds five ounces and says it’s five servings. Chocolate is heavier than Potato Chips by volume.

The bag is pretty and it was easy to spot on the shelves (partly because Target devoted so much shelf space to them, I think it was three shelves about four feet wide in the holiday section).

Lay's Wavy Milk Chocolate

The chips look an awful lot like the images on the bag. Most were whole or at least large with a consistent coating of chocolate ... on one side. Virtually all of the chips were coated with thick milk chocolate on one side. I don’t have an issue with this, as it was plenty of chocolate, but when saying that they’re dipped in milk chocolate, I have to wonder how that was accomplished without getting chocolate on one side.

They are the thick ridged chips, which hold up well to the chocolate coating. The potato notes come through quite clearly. The salty hint and the earthy tubers combine well with the creamy and sweet chocolate. But the ratios are a bit off, there’s still a lot of chocolate and the chocolate is really, really sweet. Like most chocolate covered potato chips, they’re on the greasy side. I enjoyed them, but found two or three were more than enough (4 chips were listed as a serving). There’s a filmy, greasy feeling on my tongue that followed that left me regretting eating them at all.

Lay's Wavy Milk Chocolate

I might buy these again, but I think I’m more likely to enjoy potato chips as an addition to a bar or bark than as a chocolate coated item on their own.

As a comparison, I happened to have the Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Covered Potato Chips sitting around as well (similar expiration date). The Lay’s are far more consistent - the chips are more often flat, less often stuck together and since they’re coated on one side, more potato flavor. There’s also far less salt in the Lay’s. The Trader Joe’s variety has 140 mg in a 1.5 ounce serving and the Lay’s has 45 mg in a 1 ounce serving. The price difference is also noticeable. The Trader Joe’s is $3.99 for 6.5 ounces versus the Lay’s $3.49 for 5 ounces. The ingredients are nearly identical as are the calories per ounce.

There’s no statement about the sourcing of the chocolate. These contain milk and soy and are also processed on equipment with peanuts and tree nuts. There’s not statement about gluten on the package at all, but the Wavy Lay’s do not contain any gluten ingredients either.

Related Candies

  1. Chuao Honeycomb & Potato Chip Chocolate Bars
  2. Morinaga Sweet Potato Caramels
  3. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Covered Potato Chips
  4. Kimmie Sweet & Salty Corn Bits
  5. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Crisps
  6. Daffin’s Candies Factory & World’s Largest Candy Store
  7. Maud Borup Potato Chips


Name: Lay’s Wavy Potato Chips Dipped in Milk Chocolate
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Frito Lay
Place Purchased: Target (West Hollywood)
Price: $3.49
Size: 5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 160
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Chocolate, Cookie, Limited Edition, 7-Worth It, United States, Target

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:39 am     All NaturalCandyChocolateCookieLimited Edition7-Worth ItUnited StatesTarget

Friday, November 15, 2013

Twix Gingerbread

Twix GingerbreadLast year Mars announced a new season flavor for their Twix candy: Twix Sugar Cookie. Sadly, they never showed up in stores in this dimension. Then this year they made their announcements for the holidays with nothing noted for the Twix line, so I was blindsided to find out that there is in fact a holiday version of Twix this year: Twix Gingerbread. (There’s also seasonal Gingerbread M&Ms out, but they are a Walmart exclusive.)

The description is a short listing of the elements: cookie bars - gingerbread caramel - milk chocolate. So it’s not a gingerbread cookie; it’s the caramel that’s flavored like gingerbread.

What I’ve always loved about gingerbread, whether in cake form or crunchy cookie, is the wonderful base of molasses that gives a touch of sweetness but mostly an earthy base for the spices. Recipes obviously call for ginger but also include clove, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice and/or coriander. The ingredients for Twix Gingerbread doesn’t specify the spice array and does not list molasses at all.

Twix Gingerbread

The Twix minis are a little over a half an ounce each. They’re not quite as big as the regular bar you buy in pairs. The calorie count, though, is pretty low at 80 per piece and they’re about 2.3 inches long ... it’s a nice little snack.

They smell quite sweet and cinnamony, with a hint of woodsy but undefined spices.

Twix Gingerbread

The overwhelming flavor profile of the caramel is cinnamon and nutmeg with hints of black pepper and ginger. There is no molasses, it’s completely missing that earthy sort of beet flavor. The chew is great, the milk chocolate was creamy and fresh and the cookie has an excellent crunch and texture to offset the caramel. It’s a good iteration of the classic candy. It doesn’t really ring as a gingerbread item. I wish the cookie was different, was an actual gingerbread cookie, but I’ll forgive them for their manufacturing limitations.

My overall feeling about these seasonal flavors like Snickerdoodle, Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread is they’re pretty much the same thing (we may as well throw Spiced Chai in there). It’s just a mix of those cinnamon spice flavors ... all pretty generic when the end up in a mass produced candy. The Pumpkin Spice M&Ms didn’t end up that different from the Cinnamon M&Ms and probably aren’t that different from the Gingerbread M&Ms. I like the infusion of new flavors into classic candies, but when they start thinking outside the box, I’d like them to be a little more faithful to the inspiration and allow for more differentiation.

Related Candies

  1. Twix Egg
  2. Peeps Gingerbread Men
  3. Twix Coconut (Limited Edition)
  4. Triple Chocolate Twixels
  5. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps
  6. Java Twix


Name: Twix Gingerbread
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Mars
Place Purchased: KMart (Park LaBrea)
Price: $3.99
Size: 10 ounces
Calories per ounce: 145
Categories: Candy, Christmas, Mars, Caramel, Chocolate, Cookie, Kosher, 7-Worth It, United States, Kmart

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:36 am     CandyReviewChristmasMarsCaramelChocolateCookieKosher7-Worth ItUnited StatesKmart

Monday, October 28, 2013

Walgreen’s Good and Delish Milk Chocolate Cornflake Clusters

DSC_3626rbWalgreen’s has expanded their house brand line of candy called Good & Delish with some strong packaging designs and diverse product offerings.

Their products come from numerous suppliers and in a way remind me of the now discontinued Choxie line from Target. The line includes cookies and trail mixes, but has an exceptionally strong presence in the candy aisle, especially in the larger Walgreen’s stores. They have large chocolate bars featuring Belgian chocolate (like Dark Chocolate, Pear & Almond), individually wrapped and bagged chocolate pieces (like Red Velvet Caramels) and gable boxes of caramels and of course this offering: Good & Delish Milk Chocolate Cornflake Clusters.

The package was on sale for $2.99 for 5 ounces, which seemed pretty fair to me since it was real chocolate. Some of the other products are made in Belgium, but this one is made in the United States.

Walgreen's Delish Milk Chocolate & Corn Flake Crunch

Each piece is about a third of an ounce and 1.25 to 1.5 inches in diameter. They’re just plops of milk chocolate mixed with corn flakes. They reminded me of the Harry London Mint Cookie Joys that were minted milk chocolate mixed with chocolate cookie bits. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if these were made by Harry London under the Walgreen’s house brand.

The milk chocolate is sweet but quite creamy and sets off the crunchy, malty and slightly salty corn flakes very well. I found them a little on the sweet side at first, but I enjoyed the density of the corn flakes. The crunch made them feel more like a snack, but the sweetness made me set a limit of three in a sitting, otherwise it was just too overwhelming.

My go to treat for corn flakes and chocolate has always been the Ritter Sport Knusperflakes, which is about $2 to $2.50 per 3.5 ounce bar, which is still a better deal. I bought one just for comparison, and found the corn flakes a bit lighter but less malty. But I did like the portioning of the Good & Delish and the fact that a house brand is doing something that the big brands aren’t. I want to explore more of their unique offerings in the future.

Related Candies

  1. Swiss Army Energy Bar Chocolate
  2. Walgreen’s Australian Licorice (Chocolate Covered)
  3. House Brand Creme Eggs
  4. Theobroma Chocolate y Maiz
  5. Ghirardelli Luxe Milk Crisp
  6. Hershey’s with Crisp Corn Bits
  7. Ritter Sport Assortment


Name: Milk Chocolate Cornflake Clusters
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Good and Delish
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Hollywood)
Price: $2.99
Size: 5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 134
Categories: Candy, Chocolate, Cookie, 8-Tasty, United States, Walgreen's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:25 pm     CandyReviewChocolateCookie8-TastyUnited StatesWalgreen's

Friday, October 11, 2013

Lindt Bars: Wafer, Cresta and Dark Hazelnut

Lindt WaferLindt has a new line called Hello, but I also noticed this array of single serving bars at several drug stores and Target over the past few months. I picked up a full set (or at least I think it’s all of them - at the time I wrote this, I couldn’t find them on their website).

The packaging is very simple with a color coding that made it easy to check that I had all of them. (I had to go to two stores.) They’re small portions, at 190-230 calories per bar, they’re not too filling.

The Lindt Wafer Bar is described on the package as Milk chocolate with wafer and creamy hazelnut filling.. The little picture shows that the wafer part is like a flattened tube inside the hazelnutty center.

Lindt Wafer

The actual bar I got wasn’t as much like the picture as the others, which were exactly as depicted. In this case, the first section contained only hazelnut paste (so the photo is of the second section). The wafers do not take up nearly as much volume as I’d hoped, so the effect is milk chocolate bar with a lot of hazelnut (nothing wrong with that) and a little bit of wafer.

The wafers are malty and less sweet than the rest of the bar. The milk chocolate is very sweet as is the filling, so it’s kind of throat searing at first. The mix of textures and flavors is quite good though, I like the Lindt milk chocolate in small bites, it’s very creamy and though it has a dairy note to it, it tastes fresh, not like dried milk. Perhaps I’m looking at the wrong brand, but I wanted more hazelnut in there, it seemed more cream than hazelnut. (But maybe I’m just used to the Ferraro style.)

Lindt CrestaThe Lindt Cresta Bar is the only one of the assortment that has anything that resembles an invented name instead of just a description.

The bar is: Milk chocolate with hazelnut cream filling and pieces of almond brittle.

This bar is bigger than the first one, at 1.3 ounces. It feels hefty as well.

Lindt Cresta

The milk chocolate bar looks the same as the Wafer bar, glossy and light milk chocolate. There’s a whiff of cereal about it and a hint of hazelnut but mostly it smells sweet.

The chocolate is smooth and has a milky melt to it, kind of like pudding. The center is very crunchy, with little bits of almond in the hazelnut cream. It’s not terribly nutty, but very sweet with just a hint of salt to it. Overall, the filling was good, the textures nice and the proportions very well done ... but I wanted it to be less sweet.

Lindt Dark Chocolate HazelnutThe final bar simply called Lindt Dark Chocolate Hazelnut. Unlike the other bars, which were made in Austria, this one was made in Italy. Perhaps to be closer to hazelnuts.

The package says that the bar is Dark chocolate with hazelnut filling and whole hazelnuts. And so it is.

It’s the biggest bar of the assortment I picked up, as well, at 1.4 ounces. It’s also the fattiest, at 164 calories per ounce. If I’m going to spend twice as much on the bar, I’d better be getting something high quality in there.

Lindt Dark Hazelnut

The bar is stunning. Three molded hazelnut sections in glossy dark chocolate. The dark chocolate looks great and smell a lot like roasted hazelnuts and coffee.

The chocolate is buttery and has a good melt, although like many Lindt chocolate, it might be a little too slick on the tongue and not enough chocolate flavor in there.

Lindt Dark Hazelnut

The hazelnut center is fantastic. The hazelnut paste is soft and has a great fresh flavor and though it’s sweet, it’s not too sticky. The whole hazelnut is crisp and crunchy and I believe blanched to remove the skin, which keeps away some of those bitter notes.

Of the three bars, this was my favorite, though it could benefit from darker chocolate.

I don’t see myself picking them up again, as interesting as I thought they were. They’re overpriced, though my guess is that perhaps in Europe they’re more economical. It’s odd, because the Hello Crunchy Nougat was a very similar bar to the Wafer, but twice the size for the same price. They also don’t use natural vanilla, it’s artificially flavored, which makes me wonder if there may be cut corners elsewhere. I think I’ll stick with Ritter-Sport’s Knusperflakes and Dark Chocolate Whole Hazelnut but if I feel like spending a little more, I’d step up to the Gardini Bitter Chocolate and Gianduia with Sea Salt.

Related Candies

  1. Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat
  2. Gardini Bitter Chocolate and Gianduia with Sea Salt
  3. Nestle Crunch Noisettes
  4. Poco Dolce Hazelnut Bar
  5. Ghirardelli Squares Milk & Hazelnut Crisp
  6. Ferrero Eggs: Hazelnut & Cocoa
  7. M&Ms White Chocolate (Easter)


Name: Wafer Bar
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.2 ounces
Calories per ounce: 158
Categories: Candy, Lindt, Chocolate, Cookie, 7-Worth It, Austria, Walgreen's


Name: Cresta Bar
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: Target (Eagle Rock)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 146
Categories: Candy, Lindt, Chocolate, Nuts, Toffee, 7-Worth It, Austria, Target


Name: Dark Hazelnut Bar
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: Walgreen's (Echo Park)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.4 ounces
Calories per ounce: 164
Categories: Candy, Lindt, Chocolate, Nuts, 8-Tasty, Italy, Walgreen's

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:49 pm     CandyReviewLindtChocolateCookieNutsToffee7-Worth It8-TastyAustriaItalyTargetWalgreen's

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars

In the pantheon of candy bars, the simple combination of chocolate and peanuts dominates the most popular candies in the United States. Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are usually jockeying for the top positions with M&Ms. I’m always eager to see what other candy companies are doing with this duo, especially with premium ingredients. Jer’s Chocolates, here in Southern California, makes a line of peanut butter bars from all natural ingredients.

Jer's Peanut Butter Bars - Pretzo Change-0 and Original IncrediBar

Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars Original IncrediBar is all natural peanut butter mixed with crunch rice crisps covered in milk chocolate while Jer’s Peanut Butter Bars Pretzo Change-O is all natural, peanut butter with salty pretzel bits covered in milk chocolate.

Jer's Peanut Butter Bar - Original IncrediBar

The Original IncrediBar is rather irregular looking, but for the most part about 4.5 inches long and 1.25 inches wide.

The milk chocolate coating is sweet and milky but with a good cocoa note to it. The filling is soft and crumbly, though not quite fudgy. It’s peanutty, like a peanut butter dough, almost. There are bits of crisped rice in it, which gives it a mild crunch and hint of malt, while there are also bits of crushed peanuts that give a heartier crunch. The salt is a nice touch to keep the whole thing from getting too sweet.

The bar is hearty, at only 1.5 ounces, I found it very substantial, as the 5 grams of protein would indicate. It’s not shy on calories either, at 230. The bars are very soft, and in warm temperatures, they turn to goo, as many peanut butter chocolates tend to. I made sure to keep mine stored properly and was pleased with the fresh taste of the peanut center.

Jer's Peanut Butter Bar - Pretzo Change-O

The Pretzo Change-O sounds right up my alley, instead of the crispy rice bits of the IncrediBar, this one has pretzel pieces. This was also a milk chocolate bar (Jer’s makes two varieties with dark chocolate, I’ll review those soon) with the same flavorful and smooth coating. I didn’t really notice much of a difference between the two bars, the crunchy bits were a little larger and perhaps the overall effect was less sweet. Both are fine bars. I preferred them over the the Cadbury Wunderbar or Snickers Peanut Butter Squared (which has caramel) which were the closest thing I could think of to these.

One of the thing that vexes me about these is the packaging. The boxes are great at protecting the bars within, but I have a devil of a time opening them. They’re securely glued at both ends, but snug enough that I worry about smashing or poking the bars if I use scissors to open it.

Jer's Squares Jer’s Chocolates also makes a mini version called Jer’s Squares of their popular bars. I like these quite a bit, partly because there’s a greater ratio of chocolate and partly because I like smaller pieces of things so I can moderate better. The big issue I have with them is that their list price is twice that of the bars but you don’t get twice the product. The pair of bars is about $4 (3 ounces, so it’s $21.33 a pound) and the gable box of about 10 pieces retails for $8 (4 ounces, so it’s $32 a pound).

Though all the ingredients are natural, there is no statement on the Jer’s Chocolate website about the ethical or sustainability sourcing for the ingredients.

Related Candies

  1. UNREAL #77 Peanut Butter Cups
  2. Justin’s Peanut and Almond Candy Bars
  3. Cadbury Wunderbar
  4. Snyder’s Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwich Dips
  5. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
  6. Green & Black’s Peanut Milk Chocolate
  7. Koeze Cream-Nut Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cluster


Name: Original IncrediBar
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Jer’s Chocolate
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market (Farmers Market)
Price: $3.49
Size: 3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Chocolate, Cookie, Kosher, Peanuts, 8-Tasty, United States, Cost Plus


Name: Pretzo Change-o Bar
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Jer’s Chocolate
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market (Farmers Market)
Price: $3.49
Size: 3 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Categories: All Natural, Candy, Chocolate, Cookie, Kosher, Peanuts, 8-Tasty, United States, Cost Plus

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:08 pm     All NaturalCandyReviewChocolateCookieKosherPeanuts8-TastyUnited StatesCost Plus

Friday, August 30, 2013

Droste Cookie Milkchocolate XXL Pastille

Droste Cookie Milkchocolate XXL PastilleI’ve only been to Amsterdam once, so I’m not certain whether the name of this chocolate bar is compelling in its native culture, but I found it a little odd: Droste Cookie Milkchocolate XXL Pastille. It’s also possible that in the year 2013, all the good candy bar names have been taken and now confectioners are just using random word sequence generators based on the elements within the bar.

Luckily the picture on the package does most of the communication. It’s a chocolate bar, made with milk chocolate, in the form of a sectioned circular disk, filled with cookie bits.

The bar is only 50 grams (1.75 ounces) so it’s a generous single serving or two petite portions.

Droste Cookie Milkchocolate XXL Pastille

The disk is three inches across, and if my math is sufficient, each section is about 7/16th of an ounce.

The chocolate smells very milky, quite sweet and has a hint of malt to it (my guess is from the cookie). The snap is good and the distribution of the cookie bits looks generous but well balanced with the chocolate.

Droste Cookie Milkchocolate XXL Pastille

The melt is nice, silky even. It’s a little sticky but the cookie dust cuts through that. The chocolate tastes a bit salty, which is odd because the sodium content isn’t alarming (55 mg). The cookie bits are like digestives, quite dry and crumbly with a little hint of salt and malt and barely sweet at all. On the whole, it was very munchable and it reminded me how much I loved Droste as a kid. It was the premium chocolate I remember getting the most (the pastilles in the hexagonal box) and helped me to appreciate dark chocolate.

The price as a little steep, $2 for a single serving. The Ritter Sport Biscuit bar, with 100 grams (twice as much) for only 50 cents more at Cost Plus is probably what I’d put in my basket next time.

The bar contains gluten and may have traces of peanuts and tree nuts. There’s no statement about sustainability or ethical sourcing, but the Droste website is mostly in Dutch and the English part isn’t very well written. There are other versions of this bar at Cost Plus World Market, so I might try some as the weather cools off. (The “feels like” temp here in the neighborhood is 119 today.)

Related Candies

  1. Russell Stover Big Bite Dark Chocolate S’Mores
  2. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
  3. Glico Pocky Cookie Crush
  4. Ritter Sport Neapolitan Wafers
  5. Ferrara Dark Chocolate Covered Biscotti
  6. Twix Triple Chocolate
  7. Ritter Sport Assortment
  8. Droste Pastilles: Extra Dark


Name: Cookie Milkchocolate XXL Pastille
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Droste
Place Purchased: Cost Plus World Market (Farmers Market)
Price: $1.99
Size: 1.75 ounces
Calories per ounce: 154
Categories: Candy, Droste, Chocolate, Cookie, 7-Worth It, Netherlands, Cost Plus

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:54 pm     CandyReviewDrosteChocolateCookie7-Worth ItNetherlandsCost Plus

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat

Lindt Hello Crunchy NougatHello is a new sub-brand from Lindt Chocolate with a wide variety available exclusively at Target in the United States. (You can get some bars & products at the Lindt website and from Amazon.) Lindt calls it “a brand new collection of contemporary and sinfully delicious premium chocolate bars, sticks and boxes, inspired by classic desserts and treats.”

I’m not sure how it differs from some of their other bars before, but the packaging is certainly different. Instead of the stuffy but easily recognized Lindt package which featured a continental flair, these are certainly modern looking with a lot of flirty typography and forced casualness.

I picked out two bars for my first try (they were on sale, 2 bars for $4.00). Today I’ll review the Hello Crunchy Nougat.

The German style of nougat is a hazelnut paste, not the fluffy egg and honey confection. It’s a milk chocolate shell with a nougat filling and some little shards wafer bits (wheat flour is listed on the ingredients).

Lindt Hello Coffee Blast

The bar is large and thick. At 3.5 ounces, it’s quite long but not as wide as their other tablets. For filled bars I enjoy this format, though it’s usually hard to get a bar that hasn’t been broken in transit or on display. (Since my bar was, this is a photo of the soon-to-be-reviewed Coffee Blast, which has the same mold.)

Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat

The milk chocolate is creamy and sweet, though a little sticky. The filling inside the little sections is far sweeter but has a warm roasted hazelnut flavor with a bit more of a milky, sticky note. The cookie bits are good, they add a touch of salt or at least a little malty flavor that cuts through all the sugar. I also caught a few shards of hazelnuts, which added a nice chew though not much crunch.

It’s a fatty, fatty bar, in a good way. At 156 calories per ounce it was easy to see that it was more than filled with sugar. Ground hazelnuts plus a lot of milk and some coconut and palm oil bring the saturated fat up to 7 grams per serving. I don’t know if I’d buy it again, as there are other hazelnut bars I like better, but mostly because I’d prefer a very dark shell on this to offset all the sweetness inside. I’ll keep looking through their range to see if there’s something that would suit me better, because it was a good deal for $2.00.

Related Candies

  1. Lindt Wasabi
  2. Limited Edition Ritter Sport Winter Kreation + Factory Store
  3. Eat with your Eyes: The Most Awesome Chocolate Bar Ever
  4. Choceur Nougat Bites & Marzipan Bites
  5. Lindt Excellence Dark with a touch of Sea Salt
  6. Lindt Fioretto
  7. Storck Toffifay
  8. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs


Name: Hello Crunchy Nougat
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Lindt
Place Purchased: Target (Eagle Rock)
Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 156
Categories: Candy, Lindt, Chocolate, Cookie, Nuts, 8-Tasty, Germany, Target

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:05 pm     CandyReviewLindtChocolateCookieNuts8-TastyGermanyTarget

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Bar None Revived by Iconic Candy

Bar None (Revived by Iconic Candy)The Bar None, originally made by Hershey’s, was a well-loved candy bar. It was launched nationally in 1987 (I believe I lived in the test market area in California in 1986 and became addicted to them early on). The bar was also introduced in Canada under the name of Temptation.

The candy bar boasted chocolate wafers with chocolate cream and then a layer of crushed peanuts all covered in real milk chocolate. It sounds like a giant KitKat, but the reality was a bit different. The wafers were more aerated, the cream layers were more chocolatey and the crushed nuts were, of course, never found on a KitKat. Later in 1992, in an attempt to overcome some manufacturing issues, the bar was changed from a single piece to twin sticks with the addition of caramel. The wrapper was also redesigned to predominantly yellow and sales fell until the bar was discontinued in the United States in 1997. (More about the bar here.)

Bar None Ad

The Iconic Candy Company of Carle Place, NY specializes in reviving extinct candies; they picked up the rights to the candy bar and are in the final stages of their planned reintroduction of Bar None. They previewed the Bar None at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago last month.

Indulge me for a moment for a little more history, or don’t and skip ahead to the review down there where the candy bar photos start. In addition to one of the early ad campaigns for the bar (which included commercials and the tagline “Tame the Chocolate Beasty”)  I also found an intact wrapper online which revealed the original (circa 1990) ingredients for the 1.5 ounce bar (240 calories):

Milk chocolate (milk chocolate contains sugar, cocoa butter, milk, chocolate, soya lecithin and vanillin) Peanuts, refined palm kernel oil, sugar, wheat flour, nonfat milk, cocoa processed with alkali, dextrose, cornstarch, soy lecithin, baking soda, salt, TBHQ and citric acid

The new bar is 1.6 ounces and 240 calories:

Milk chocolate, dry roasted peanuts, chocolate cream wafer. Milk chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk, chocolate liquor, soy lecithin, vanilla. Chocolate Creme Wafer: Sugar, enriched flour, dextrose, palm oil, canola oil, cocoa processed with alkali, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, salt, sodium bicarbonate, yellow #5, yellow #6, red #3, red #40, blue #1. May contain cornstarch. Contains milk, wheat, soy and peanuts.

The original bars were made by Hershey’s at their facility in Stuart’s Draft, Virginia (home of Reese’s Pieces). Iconic Candy is also making their bars in the United States.

Bar None (Revived by Iconic Candy)

The bar looks good, though I have to say that it doesn’t look as angular as I remember it. I thought it was a little flatter back in the olden days, but I could be wrong. I rarely took the bar out of the wrapper, instead when I ate it, I opened the end and just pushed out enough of it to take a bite because it was a very messy bar - both the fact that it would melt on the fingers and the fact that biting into it would sometimes scatter bits of the thin chocolate coating. I remember the chocolate coating as a soft chocolate, prone to melting even though I lived in the never-actually-warm Northern California area at the time. The original bar was also fatty, as the calorie count was about 160 calories per ounce, which is very high for a wafer bar.

It smells good, like chocolate with just a hint of roasted peanuts. Again, I don’t remember the peanut element from the original, which was really all about the taste of the milk chocolate and the cream filling between the wafers. The peanuts were for crunch, not flavor.

Bar None (Revived by Iconic Candy)

The bar has a gentle crunch to it. The chocolate gives way well without becoming a flaky mess. The wafers are crispy and light, quite aerated and different from the KitKat wafers, which are more dense. These are like an ice cream cone. Though I would want the wafers chocolate flavored, I think they’re rather flavorless, coming across a bit like malty foam.

The chocolate is sweet and creamy with a good milky flavor. The peanuts taste fresh and have a good crunch and consistent size. There’s a little note of salt, just on the crushed nuts. The wafer stack is good, though not as chocolatey as I would like.

There’s an alternate universe (if you subscribe to the multiverse theory) where Hershey’s didn’t pervert and destroy the original bar with the twin sticks with caramel. But in that universe, in which Hershey’s behaved otherwise identically, the bar would have fallen to the same pressures to use “safe and suitable vegetable fats” instead of cocoa butter like they did with the classic Mr. Goodbar which is no longer a good chocolate bar, or a chocolate bar at all. So even if there were a Bar None today, I doubt I would still like it. Hershey’s simply doesn’t make their products better over time, they just make the more efficiently. We’re lucky if that doesn’t effect the taste and nutritional profile of the product, but it usually does. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Good & Plenty are really their only remaining products that I still enjoy regularly.

So, in a way, I think it was a blessing that Bar None disappeared before it got bad. Because then people wanted it to come back. The new Iconic Candy version of it isn’t quite the same, but then again, the original had its issues. It often slid apart, because the creme between the layers wasn’t held together well enough by the chocolate coating. The sharper corners would get crushed. The chocolate would flake off. I don’t see those as issues with the revived bar. But it’s still lacking that fatty, slick chocolate texture that I remember. So, it may be an uphill battle with the die hard fans of the original. There’s also a case to be made that original fans may have had other qualities about the bar that they liked that are still served by this version.

Bar None (Revived by Iconic Candy)Tasting this bar today, without the reference point of the original, it’s a very well done effort. It’s airy and light but still very satisfying. The peanuts are a nice crunchy touch that don’t veer off into peanut butter territory as a flavor. But my tastes have changed now, being exposed to fine and dark chocolate from around the world have made me demand more from my candy. Now I think I’d want this in a dark chocolate version over a milk one.

The cross section though did give me pause. It’s purple. Why are the wafers purple? Well, glance back up there at the list of ingredients and you’ll see five artificial colors. I’m not sure why it needed them, but they’re there.

I’ve emailed with Iconic Candy, and the bars aren’t in stores quite yet. I’ll have some more information on that, and of course they’ll have information at their website as they start shipping to wholesalers and stores. If you have a favorite spot for buying candy, you may want to mention to them that you’d like to try the bar so they’ll order it.

Here’s a newsletter from Hershey’s called Chocolate Town USA from back in 1990 that details the launch of the original chocolate bar.

Related Candies

  1. Candy Tease: Bar None, Reed’s and Regal Crown Sours
  2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies
  3. Crispy M&Ms
  4. Tunnock’s Caramel Milk Chocolate Wafer
  5. Ritter Sport Neapolitan Wafers
  6. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
  7. Candy Poll: Back from the Dead
  8. I Miss: Bar None


Name: Bar None
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Iconic Candy
Place Purchased: samples from Iconic Candy
Price: $1.50 retail (guess)
Size: 1.6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 150
Categories: Candy, Chocolate, Cookie, Peanuts, 7-Worth It, United States

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:57 am     CandyReviewChocolateCookiePeanuts7-Worth ItUnited StatesNews

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