A few years ago I bought some little Smarties-dotted chocolate bars that included pop rocks; it was the only time I ever saw them, and I wish I’d bought every one in the store. Call me a semi-minimalist, but I think the gummies in this bar are overkill, interfering as they do with the exuberant clarity of the basic snap/crunch/pop sequence of the aforementioned Smarties bar.
Look:
Old-time circus/carnival flair on the wrapper.
Deliberately cryptic yet bold, like a barker enticing you to enter a sideshow tent. There are indeed chunks of candy embedded in the chocolate bar. It’s like someone dumped a corner of a candy store into a vat of chocolate, then made bars with it.
The Taste:
Gummies, pop rocks, tiny candy-covered chocolate ovals and, of course, the milk chocolate that binds it all together. The mix of flavours in the first chunk tasted like a particularly chocolatey Big Turk bar that popped as it dissolved. Utterly strange, yet very entrancing.
The verdict:
The best part of this chocolate bar isn’t the taste; it’s the fun factor. Several decades ago, a chocolate bar was a special treat. These days, chocolate bars are a relatively mundane, ordinary snack. This bar brings some of that child-like magic back.