Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Go Max Go Buccaneer Bar

BuccaneerBuccaneer is a vegan, all natural candy bar from Go Max Go foods.

the rich brown wrapper features a little black pirate flag and a trail to an X marking the spot. At exactly 2 ounces it’s a hefty bar, though pretty spare in calories because of the low fat content - it only clocks in at 230 calories (115 per ounce, very low for a candy bar). But it’s also expensive, $2.39 which figures out to a little more than $19 per pound.

How does a rich, fluffy, chocolately nougat covered in a creamy chocolately coating sound right about now? If you can’t answer because desire is consuming you… aye matey, ‘tis a Buccaneer(tm) bar for you!

I don’t know that much about Buccaneers except that they were the specific pirates of the Caribbean of the 17th century. They were nothing like Musketeers, which were soldiers under employ of the crown.

Buccaneer Bar

From the description I was expecting something similar to the 3 Musketeers Bar. Though it’s not quite as square in shape, it does resemble it from the outside. But that’s about as far as it goes. Instead of a rounded-right-angled shape it’s more of a slumped dome.

Buccaneer Bar

The filling is not nougaty, it’s more like a cross between a fudge and a caramel. The texture is fluffier than a fudge, but chewy as well. There’s no satisfying caramel pull or even any smoked sugar notes. The malt flavors are good, a little on the cereal side without the milk notes but also a good enough salt hit to make it interesting.

It’s not as sweet as the Twilight bar, but the texture and mouthplay isn’t as interesting. The chocolate component is wholly lacking and not worth the extra palm oil calories, spare as they might be.

Part of the problem may be that I’ve never found the 3 Musketeers bar to to my liking, so a vegan version probably start with marks against it.

Though it’s all natural and vegan, it’s made on shared equipment with dairy, eggs, wheat, tree nuts and peanuts. They do market themselves as dairy free and gluten free, but there can be traces because of their manufacturing practices.

(For anyone interested in the candy maker’s reaction to this post, check this out.)

Related Candies

  1. Go Max Go Twilight Candy Bar
  2. Go Max Go Mahalo Candy Bar
  3. Gourmet Gumdrops
  4. Goldie’s Premium Carob Bar
  5. 3 Musketeers Mini Mix
  6. Rice Milk Chocolate Bars
Name: Buccaneer Candy Bar
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Go Max Go Foods
Place Purchased: Whole Foods (Park LaBrea)
Price: $2.39
Size: 2 ounces
Calories per ounce: 115
Categories: Mockolate, Nougat, United States, Go Max Go, All Natural

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:27 pm Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. Wow the outlook sure is grim if you’re vegan.

    Comment by Leigh on 2/17/10 at 8:19 pm #
  2. What is the problem these makers have with dark chocolate? Nothing could more vegan. And why the infatuation with palm oil?

    Comment by Bill on 2/17/10 at 10:14 pm #
  3. Silly, a Buccaneer is the price of corn!!! smile  Love your blog!

    Comment by Dayna on 2/18/10 at 4:30 am #
  4. I wasn’t impressed with any of the Go Max Go bars. But out of all of them, I liked the Bucaneer Bar the best.

    Comment by Fat Fudge on 2/18/10 at 8:45 am #
  5. how cool! a carnivore who hates everything vegan reviewing our bars. so glad you find them distasteful…we’ll chalk that up to a win. by the by, dark chocolate makes us yawn which is why we
    went with rice (not mucus milk) chocolate.

    Comment by susan on 2/26/10 at 12:55 pm #
  6. Cybele's avatar

    For the record, sweet readers, Susan’s comment was from an email domain registered to the manufacturer of the candy bar. (I was unsure at first, but this tweet confirmed that it was an actual member of the company) Similar comments by Susan were left on all the GoMaxGo products I reviewed.

    Susan - you need some improvement on your reading skills - I love plenty of vegan products. True dark chocolate is a vegan product and there could not be anything more perfect about it.

    While I have no category for vegan products tagged here on Candy Blog, I have reviewed at least 100 vegan products. You’ve done nothing more than a vanity pass on my blog - read only those posts that mention you and made not attempt to understand anything beyond that.

    Comment by Cybele on 2/26/10 at 1:56 pm #
  7. I tried a Buccaneer bar recently - it’s definitely good, but too sweet and densely chocolately for me (of course, I didn’t really have to pig out on the whole bar at once… a little would have gone a long way). I’m allergic to dairy, but have cheated often enough to know what 3 Musketeers tastes and looks like and always loved 3 Musketeers as a kid. 3M was always light colored on the inside, unless that’s changed recently, and had a lighter malty taste. So I would say that Buccaneer is just very vaguely reminiscent of 3 Musketeers, but good in its own right. Well worth trying, at least.

    Someone asked why vegans don’t just eat dark chocolate - well, duh, some of us don’t particularly like the taste of dark chocolate…. I like the taste of milk chocolate, just need to avoid the cow’s milk. The rice milk etc. that they use in these bars (I’ve also tried the Jokerz, love it) gives it that milk chocolate taste to me. The only other vegan chocolate I’ve tried that has a milk chocolately taste to me was Tropical Source, but the Go Max bars are much better (tastewise, not healthwise…). I have had vegan fudge (chocolate and vanilla) that was terrific, though, milky rather than dark chocolately. And Purely Decadent lives up to its name as a wonderfully junkfoody vegan ice cream in a variety of junkfoody flavors. So we aren’t all interested in eating healthy all the time! We want our junk food!!! No more health food bars pretending to be tasty!!! We’re not all dieters…

    Comment by jwoolman on 5/16/10 at 10:11 pm #
  8. Cybele that response to susan was so incredibly tasteful and classy! Well done. =) Haven’t tried this bar but have tried being vegan off and on. Any good vegan candy in existence is usually very expensive (Sinless I think is a brand, 7-10$ a bar). Love your blog!

    Comment by Kat on 6/28/12 at 10:08 am #
  9. Wow, I know this is a Candy Blog and all but I feel bad for all the Vegans who aren’t bitter and full of hatred for having people think Susan represents them.

    Comment by Leigh on 6/29/12 at 3:06 am #
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