Candy Bar Lab

I previously reviewed the Pop Rocks Mega Bar and concluded that it was the worst candy bar I had ever had, partly because the chocolate was crap. Well, some anonymous person contacted me with a profanity laced tirade about that review. They must have been a huge fan of the Pop Rocks Mega Bar because they said my review was crap and my blog sucked. Who knew people would get so upset about a candy blog? Anyway, I figured I’d give the bar a second chance because the first one I tried was admittedly not very fresh and maybe with better, fresher chocolate, the product would be decent. I had serious doubts, but I tried to keep an open mind.

Structure
A 6-segment, molded bar of milk chocolate with Pop Rocks mixed throughout.

Texture
The consistency of the chocolate is okay, but I don’t really like how thick the bar is though. It makes it rather hard to bite through. It would be better if this bar were about half as thick as it currently is. But the chocolate is of course, not the interesting part of this candy bar. The Pop Rocks are. At first, they feel just like regular crisp rice pieces. After a couple of seconds though, their carbonated properties become noticeable. Maybe others enjoy the fizzy, popping sensation, but it’s too much for me. If it only lasted a few seconds, I’d be okay with it. Instead, the popping lasts for a while though and moves down your throat as you swallow. It’s just a really odd sensation.

Taste
The Pop Rocks are completely flavorless, so the Mega Bar tastes like a plain milk chocolate bar.

Verdict
The second time tasting the Pop Rocks Mega Bar was a little better than the first, but only because I knew what to expect this time. That didn’t really help me like it any better though. I think the biggest problem is that the Pop Rocks themselves don’t have any flavor. I actually like strawberry flavored Pop Rocks and think those might work well with chocolate. I came across a review of the Chuao Firecracker Chocolate Bar, which also uses popping candy, but has better chocolate and some other flavors. I’m interested to try Chuao’s version out and see if popping candy belongs with chocolate after all.

In the US, the only Cadbury candy bars I ever see are the solid, molded variety with nuts and dried fruits mixed in. These bars are actually produced by Hershey’s under a license agreement. In the rest of the world though, there’s a big variety of Cadbury enrobed products like the Cadbury Boost. I suppose the Hershey’s licensing agreement might prohibit Cadbury from exporting these candy bars to the US.

Structure
The inner core is a chocolate ganache-like filling, where the bottom half has small, round bits of biscuits (cookies) mixed in. This is surrounded by a thin layer of caramel. The whole bar is enrobed in milk chocolate.

Texture
The chocolate filling isn’t as soft as I was expecting or would have liked. It’s slightly softer than the pure chocolate coating, but not much. The biscuit pieces are perfectly crunchy, but there aren’t enough of them. I would have liked the whole center, not just the bottom half, to include biscuits pieces. The way the caramel is layered so thin, it’s not noticeable at first. But since it’s so chewy, it lasts longer than the other components, so you end up with some caramel in your mouth after everything else is gone.

Taste
The milk chocolate, both the coating and the filling, taste good. The caramel is slightly salty, which complements the overall sweetness of the product.

Verdict
The Cadbury Boost is a reconstructed Twix bar, though it’s not quite as good. Twix has a higher proportion of caramel and it’s solid cookie bar provides more crunch than Boost’s small, round bits of cookie. That said, it’s still pretty darn good and Cadbury chocolate is tasty.

A few months ago, while preparing for a big Oktoberfest party, my mom picked this candy bar up at a local German grocery store along with some beer and brats. Immediately, I remembered the last German candy bar I tried - the Storz Nougat Praliné. Both have gold packaging, are made of a chocolate and hazelnut nougat, and hail from Deutschland. Two things jumped out at me about this Wendler product though. First, the packaging design is superior to the Storz version. It’s crisply folded and has a cool metallic, textured feel to it. Second, I could see from the picture on the front that this product has two distinct layers, one darker (and presumably more chocolately) than the other.

Structure
Two layers of German nougat. The bottom layer is a darker shade of brown than the top.

Texture
The Wendler Nougat bar is soft and dense. It coats your whole mouth as you try to chew it. There isn’t a huge difference in consistency between the two layers, but the top layer is slightly smoother, while the bottom layer is a bit drier.

Flavor
Very surprisingly, there is almost no chocolate flavor. It didn’t taste at all like I was expecting, which was something similar to Nutella. Instead, there’s a distinct roasted hazelnut flavor. Overall, this product is very sweet and unfortunately, without the chocolate present, there’s not much going on to cut into that sweetness. There’s really no discernible difference between the two layers, except the top was maybe a little sweeter.

Verdict
Maybe I’m being overly critical because I was so sure that this bar was going to taste like chocolate and I was horribly let down. It’s very one-dimensional and way too sweet.