Thursday, January 14, 2016
Take 5 (2016 Formula)Hershey’s contacted me last month to introduce the new look of the Take 5 candy bar and offered me some samples. I’ve been following the Take 5, which is a rare candy bar, since it was introduced. It came out in December 2004, and since it’s survived over 10 years, it’s one of a handful of combination candy bar launches to go the distance since the Twix introduction. (I’m talking about a completely new bar brand, not one that falls under an existing product line, like a dark chocolate KitKat.) If you’re interested in taking a trip with me through this decade or so, then follow along. If you’re more interested in the review of the current formulation hitting shelves, skip to the bottom. In my first review in July 2005 I gave it the following review:
Sometime around 2008 Hershey’s made a change, replacing the milk chocolate coating with a milk chocolate compound, which contained cocoa butter, but also some other vegetable fats (to save money).
In the intervening years I didn’t actually buy them, but I did read the wrappers and found around 2008 or so, they substituted in high fructose corn sweetener and the list of possible oils used in the different components grew quite long (see lists of ingredients below) 2010 Take 5 (source)
2015 Take 5 (source: wrapper pictured in review)
2016 Take 5 (source: wrapper pictured in review)
The new ingredients look different, but that’s partly because of the formatting, they regrouped the ingredients based on the elements, so the coating is listed separately from the caramel and pretzels. It makes more sense from the standpoint of knowing what the ingredients are being used for, but muddies things when you want to know how much of the overall product is sugar. (But that’s what the nutrition panel is for.) About a year ago Hershey’s announced a return to simple ingredients. Slowly their classic products, like Hershey’s Milk Chocolate have seen a tweak. PGPR is going away as an additional emulsifier. I was hoping that meant that the Take 5 would be a cleaner bar, made with more wholesome ingredients, not so much hydrogenated oil and not so many fillers. But the key here with the head to head is that Hershey’s has replaced the not-quite-chocolate coating with a real chocolate coating. Does it make a difference? Yes, yes it does. The expiry on the two bars is very similar. The red package says May 2016 and new black package says September 2016. Obviously they both look great, they’ve been stored and transported responsibly. The packaging includes a little tray with sides that protects the pair of bars well. The old red package in its most recent design barely mentions Hershey, there’s no brand on the front of the package, the only claim to who manufacturers it is in the small print sandwiched between the nutrition panel and the UPC code. The new bar in the black wrapper similarly disavows its maker. The black wrapper is more like a nutrition bar than candy. The package clearly shows the elements for the bar, the peanut butter, the pretzel, peanuts and chunks of chocolate (but no caramel, or maybe the peanut butter is caramel). I think it’s pleasant, but not compelling. The Red bar (pictured left) is sweet, crunchy and salty. The combination is wholly enjoyable, but the chocolate flavor is lost. There’s a decent chocolate texture, but not much of a cocoa note to it. The Black bar is actually less sweet, seems more peanutty and the chocolate, well, is, still only okay. I don’t know if anything is perceptibly different, since I was only testing one bar against another single package, and there are probably variations. The new packaging is fine, but confusing. It looks like a snack bar, not a candy bar. It truly is a candy bar, adding a single savory element doesn’t change that. The design is clear and certainly more distinctive than the much-used red tones on the previous. In a perfect world, the bar would have lived in the Reese’s branding universe. As for the current iteration of the bar: I’d prefer a better chew experience with the caramel element, I don’t know why there’s actually any “caramel color” in the ingredients. But aside from the expectations of the bar based on the elements on the list, I enjoy it. I will probably buy it again sometime, mostly because it’s the only sweet and salty bar that’s easy to find. The portion size is good and I’m hoping that Hershey’s will continue to work on making the ingredients list shorter. Related Candies
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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