Candy Review: Chunky

Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavors, PGPR - an emulsifier), peanuts, raisins, TBHQ and citric acid (added to preserve freshness)


After the Whatchamacallit, I was heartened to see that "chocolate" was the first ingredient here (although actual chocolate was a minority ingredient in that "chocolate"). Nestle bills this as "milk chocolate with peanuts and raisins". Pretty standard, just fruit and nut in a little 40g square. Shara opened this, and was overwhelmed by the smell. Indeed, having consumed this some time ago, the smell coming from the wrapper is still quite powerful. It smells like chemicals. A lot like chemicals. The taste was a bit better, but still not great. The raisins and nuts were fine, but the chocolate itself didn't really taste of anything. The closest it got to chocolate flavour was a very mild taste of instant coffee. Shara said it tasted like charcoal but I thought it just tasted like a bunch of sugar with some peanuts in it. Again, I feel much worse after having consumed it, but I don't want to put all of the blame for this on the candy bar.

My rating: 2.5 stars
Shara rating: 0.5 stars

Candy Review: Whatchamacallit

An associate has provided me with a number of candy bars from America. As I make my way through them I will document my progress and give you the definitive outsider's view of amusingly named high fructose corn snacks. Today's is the Whatchamacallit.

Ingredients: Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, crisp rice, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel and soybean oil), vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), partially defatted peanuts, non-fat milk, chocolate, partially hydrogenated coconut oil, corn syrup solids, whey (milk)


This is the candy bar I was most excited to eat. The wrapper claims it is made with chocolate, peanut flavoured crisps and caramel. That made it sound like a cross between a Snickers and a Kit Kat, which is a great concept for a candy bar. That's more or less what it turned out to be too, but to be honest I found it a little underwhelming. It felt like the rice, peanut and caramel were all competing for attention rather than working together, and this made the experience a little forgettable, at least compared to, say, a Snickers. The chocolate was pretty thin and bad too. I feel it could be improved by replacing the rice with wafer a la the Kit Kat, or perhaps swapping to dark chocolate. I should note that this candy bar contains 9 grams of saturated fat, which represents 45% of your recommended daily intake (this is slightly less than one Big Mac). I do feel incredibly sick afterwards, but to be fair to the candy bar, this could be just as easily due to the popcorn I ate for dinner.

My rating: 3 stars
Shara rating: 3.5 stars