Candy Bar Lab

The Double Decker is a British candy bar made by Cadbury. The name is presumably a reference to those red, two-level buses that are an iconic symbol of the country. Sadly, the packaging for the product has nothing to do with the buses. Instead, it’s bright orange and purple with a big, slanted logo across the front. Personally, I’m not a fan at all of the packaging design, but I won’t let that sway my opinion of the candy.

Structure
The name Double Decker fits the structure of the bar. It has two inner layers; the bottom one consisting of rice crispie balls spread amongst milk chocolate and the top one comprised of nougat. The whole bar is enrobed in milk chocolate.

Note: When your friends bring you candy bars back from overseas in their suitcases, don’t expect them to arrive in perfect condition.

Texture
The nougat is somewhere below a Charleston Chew and above a 3 Musketeers on the chewiness scale. The crispies are harder and larger than expected. I was thinking they’d be more like the kind in a Nestle Crunch. Instead, they reminded me of the ones in a Twix ice cream bar if you’ve ever had one of those before. Together, the chewy nougat, crispies and chocolate work well together.

Taste
There’s supposedly a light coffee flavor in the Double Decker. Either my taste buds were asleep or it’s REALLY light because I didn’t notice it at all. I’m sad because I thought this bar was bland. It was of course sweet, but neither the chocolate nor the inner layers had much flavor - just vanilla. I think a stronger coffee flavor would have helped.

Verdict
I’ve heard many times in my life that British candy bars are the best in the world. The Double Decker isn’t helping that cause. While the textures were good and different from anything I’ve had before, the flavor just didn’t cut it and ultimately, that’s what matters.

Mr. Goodbar is a classic. First sold in 1925, it’s in the same iconic league as Snickers and Baby Ruth. It was also one of my favorites growing up. Whenever I came across a bag of Hershey’s miniatures, I quickly combed through and picked out all the little Mr. Goodbars; especially leaving the Special Darks behind. Well it’s been a few years since I’ve had one of these and I was pretty devastated to learn that Mr. Goodbars no longer contain real chocolate. Apparently, in an effort to cut costs, Hershey’s has decided to downgrade one of their greatest brands. But how noticeable is it? I figured it was worth a shot to see if maybe one of my childhood favorites was still as awesomely tasty as I remembered.

Structure
A 12 segment, molded milk chocolate bar with roasted peanuts.

Texture
The bar is thin and really soft - not at all like tempered chocolate should be. Worse, the chocolate is grainy. This is characteristic of real Hershey’s milk chocolate anyway, but this is worse. The peanuts are at least crunchy, but in a molded chocolate product like this, the consistency of the chocolate is the most important part and Mr. Goodbar fails in that department.

Taste
Sugary sweet with a lot of vanilla and little real chocolate flavor. The peanuts are fine enough, but it’s interesting to me that there’s no salt in this bar. Peanuts, salt, and chocolate go so well together. I can understand not wanting to go overboard with the salt, but just a little bit would go a long way. Especially if Hershey’s is going to make such a sweet fake chocolate product, it needs something to balance it.

Verdict
It’s really sad to see a classic like this suffer in the interest of reducing production costs. Some day, I hope Hershey’s regains their senses and refocuses on quality with this product. Until then, I’m going to try to get my hands on a Ritter Sport Voll Erdnuss, which I’m confident will be of a much higher quality than Mr. Goodbar.

The bright, bold packaging really stands out on the Kvikk Lunsj (Norwegian for “Quick Lunch”). With it’s three horizontal stripes, it dawned on me that it looks like a country flag. I wouldn’t have a clue off the top of my head which one, but after some quick research, I figured out that it does in fact look just like the flag of Bolivia.

As for the actual candy bar, it’s apparently quite popular in Norway. The average citizen there consumes nine per year.

Structure
A molded milk chocolate bar with four long segments - each with a wafer center. A Marabou Stork (the Freia mascot) is imprinted four times on each segment.

Texture
The chocolate coating is thick and well tempered. It’s VERY smooth and thoroughly coats your mouth as it melts. Overall, Freia milk chocolate is thick, creamy, and very satisfying. The inner wafer isn’t quite as crispy as its Kit Kat cousin, but it does provide a nice complement to the chocolate coating nonetheless.

Taste
The milk chocolate is again the star. It has a distinct milky flavor that I can now attribute as unique to Freia products in the same way I can pick out Nestle or Hershey’s chocolate. The wafer is mostly tasteless, but I appreciate that it is not overly sweet. This allows the chocolate taste to shine on it’s own.

Verdict
This bar easily gets a thumbs up from me. It’s basically a Kit Kat (a bar I already like), except with better chocolate. The fact that it has cool packaging is a bonus.