Snickers: Peanut Butter Squared

This is one of those cases where I have been woefully slow on the uptake getting to my review. I've been dying to try these since Cybele got the first scoop on them on Candy Blog back in July, and once I heard they could be found "in the wild" I proceeded to drive my mother insane scouring every store we went to for weeks until they showed up at CVS.

And I don't normally do this, but I love the commercial for them so much I have to share it:



I will grant you it is completely possible that some of my glee with that ad comes from the fact that I have a close family member named Steve, and it is safe to say there have been occasions when feeding each other to sharks sounded like a good idea.



Snickers Peanut Butter Squared comes in both the "fun size" bags and the bar version. I got my hand on a bar. In a departure from the normal single bar, the Peanut Butter Squared is broken up into two generously sized squares. I like it; it's cute, and if I feel like sharing or saving the second piece, this makes it super easy. I realize I could achieve the same thing by just getting the "fun size" bag to start with -- but admittedly if it is something that I end up really liking, I find it harder to control my personal portion because it makes it so easy to tell yourself "just one more..."

The bar is enrobed in the classic Snickers milk chocolate. Let's face it -- if you have ever had a single American Mars candy bar, you have had the smooth, slightly sweet milk chocolate that's on this bar. There's nothing even remotely noteworthy about it.



What makes this bar different is everything else. It has a much thinner layer of nougat. That's my favorite part of the classic bar, but then again, they had to make room for the peanut butter somewhere.

The peanut butter takes up the bulk of the filling. It's a smooth, creamy style peanut butter. There's not much to say about it except that it's on the salty side. I couldn't tell if that was from the peanut butter itself or the actual peanuts in the bar.

Speaking of the peanuts, while they were crunchy and fresh, there didn't seem to be as many of them as there are in a comparable portion of a normal Snickers. The caramel is also nothing to write home about. It's not bad; it's just the same stuff that's found on all the other Snickers.



In the end it's tasty, and I like it enough to scarf it down, but I really missed the nougat layer. It's certainly not my favorite variation of the Snickers bar. (I think that would be the Almond Snickers, although Snickers Dark is up there too).

Rod also reviewed it, so check out his opinion here.



PURCHASED FROM:
CVS

PRICE:
$1.69

CALORIES:
250 Calories per pack (2 squares)

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains peanuts and soy. May contain almonds.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
snickers.com

Snickers Pods

Once again I have to give a shout out of thanks to the amazing Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds for sending me gobs of goodies from the U.K.

Today's reviewed item has been quite the world traveler. Snickers Pods are not a U.K. item, but are actually a product of Mars Australia. So, before it was even opened, this package made the trip from Australia -- well, to be picky, they are actually made in New Zealand -- to an import shop in Cinabar's corner of the U.K. Then from the U.K. it flew all the way to Southern California. All of which means that these Pods went (using nearest major cities to give you a better geographic picture) from Auckland, New Zealand, to London, England, to Los Angeles, California. That's a grand total of 16,846 air miles -- or 27,111 air kilometers -- just so I can get my chance to get my nom-noms on. (Wait...did that sound unprofessional? I meant to phrase that as: So I can have my chance to try yet another hopefully amazing foreign delicacy. That sounded better, right?)



I could not resist, though. As soon as I read Cinabar's review of the Pods (here), I had to try them. First, because I am just an all-around a fan of Snickers. Secondly (and to be honest, this was my main reason), there is just something about them that screams Scooby Snack! I can't explain why that is, but something in my mind just thinks if there was ever a human version of a Scooby Snack, these Pods would be it.



The Pods consist of a crunchy hemispheric shell that is full of a caramelly Snickers-type filling, and topped with chocolate.

So what do they taste like?

The wafer reminded me slightly sweeter, sugar cone style ice cream cone.



The center has a very thin layer of yellowish creme. It looks like caramel shown on the package (though not nearly as thick as the picture would indicate). That layer is where the peanut flavor and the caramel flavor reside. It's interesting because there is no mistaking the nuttiness -- it's just as present as it is in an actual Snickers bar -- but the creme is perfectly smooth, and there are no actual nut pieces to be found.

The chocolate layer is thicker than I was expecting. It's as perfectly smooth and creamy as any Mars chocolate ever is. The only thing I can say is that it does have that sweeter taste that many mass-market chocolates made outside of the U.S. tend to have.

I actually really liked these Pods. The added crunchy texture to the classic Snickers taste was a good combination. I would definitely buy these if I could get them on a regular basis.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gift from Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds.

CALORIES:
545 kilojoules per 25 grams. (I have no idea how many calories that equals.)

ADDITIONAL INFO:
May contain tree nuts and barley.

3 Musketeers: Truffle Crisp Bars

It may or may not surprise you to know that I actually am a really big fan of 3 Musketeers bars. I like the regular bars and I like the mint bars. I like the filling, the texture. I even like the chocolate.

I know that these new 3 musketeers Truffle Crisps have been around since at least the start of the year, but I've only found them in my local stores in the last month. The two-finger bars are milk chocolate covered with a truffle filling (which is supposed to be like the nougat center of a traditional 3 Musketeers), and sit on a crispy plank. Hmmmm...gee, they look a lot like the Fling bars, also made by Mars, don't they?

Unlike their Fling cousins, these bars don't have an iridescent sheen -- but they do have a smooth, creamy looking exterior. The outer chocolate is the sweet, milky Mars milk chocolate that you find on all of their products.



The truffle center has a very smooth, mousse-like texture. It's cool on the tongue. It does -- sort of -- taste like the classic bar's nougat center, but in the loosest possible sense. To me it tasted more like a smooth combination of marshmallows and caramel. It's not a bad taste. In fact, I liked it. And as long as you don't go in expecting the filling to taste exactly like the classic bar's center, you probably won't be disappointed either.

My favorite part of the bar is that the crispy plank beneath the truffle is indeed the meringue base that is used in the Fling bars. I loved it there, and I love it here. It's crispy and airy. There's a slight vanilla hint. There is nothing I don't like about it...except that I want more.



I really enjoyed this addition to the 3 Musketeers line. It's not a clone of its larger, parent version, but that's perfectly OK. It's more than good enough to stand on its own.

The bar is being advertised as a lighter option for fans of the classic. It does indeed have 90 less calories, and it is also lower in sugar and sodium (although it does have a single gram more fat). Honestly, I think that since candy should be a sometimes food (I don't always practice what I preach, clearly), you should choose a candy because you like it -- not because it saves you a few calories. What's the point of pinching a few calories if you don't like or aren't satisfied by what you did eat? I think that this bar is probably the best of both possible worlds.

Check out Foodette Reviews' take on this bar here.



PURCHASED FROM:
7-11

PRICE:
$1.20

CALORIES:
170 Per 2 finger serving. Or 85 calories per finger.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
May contain peanuts, tree nuts and wheat. Dairy. Kosher.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
3musketeers.com

Pretzel M&M's

We all know I tend to suffer from Blogger Envy...and Cybele is almost always the one to give it to me (Jim being the other). Waaaayyyy back last year, she mentioned that there would be a new pretzel M&M coming out this year. And last week she posted her review (read it here). Finally, the new M&M's are out in the wild!

These M&M's have the classic candy shell, followed by a layer of milk chocolate that surrounds a pretzel center. These M&M's also mark the return of the orange M&M as the "Spokescandy." The orange color had been pretty much unemployed since the best flavor of M&M's ever -- the Crispy flavor -- was discontinued back in 2005 for reasons that I don't know. (It surely escapes any possible logic as, once again, they were the best M&M ever.)



Crispy M&M's aside, I love the idea of this flavor. I have a highly documented love of chocolate and pretzels together. In fact, I have only forgiven Trader Joe's for discontinuing the Dark Chocolate Pretzel Bites because they at least replaced it with the somehow even more amazing Dark Chocolate Pretzel Bark.

So, how do these M&M's stack up?

Each M&M is roughly the size of a Peanut M&M...or maybe a little bigger, about the size of a classic gumball.

Biting into the M&M, I was expecting a really crispy, hard pretzel type of crunch. Instead, the texture was sort of like the bizarre love child of a malted milk ball and a stale pretzel. The bite is weirdly airy, and yet they have that almost too-hard texture of thick pretzels that have gone stale.

The flavor of the pretzel is OK. It's not as assertive as I would have liked it to be. It's lightly salty and kind of yeasty. But it also has sort of a generic cracker flavor.

The chocolate is classic M&M's milk chocolate. A little sweet, but otherwise smooth and unremarkable. The candy shell added some welcome crunch.



Overall, while these aren't bad, they are nowhere near as fantastic as the Trader Joe's Pretzel Bites had been. Actually, the only thing that these M&M's really brought to the table that TJ's didn't is that the candy coating really did add a nice bit of extra zip.

Are these the worst M&M's ever? No. They are just disappointing. There was so much potential here, yet they manage to rise only to "meh." Oh well -- at least in the case of the orange M&M, one job was created.



PURCHASED FROM:
WalMart

PRICE:
$0.68

CALORIES:
150 calories per bag.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
May contain peanuts.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
mms.com

Milky Way: Simply Caramel

This is one of those reviews born out of review envy. When I saw Cybele's review here, I knew it was one of those things I was going to have to track down for myself. And it took me a few days, but I did indeed score one.

Admittedly, it was Cybele's food-porn-worthy pictures that really sealed it for me. Truth be told, my favorite part of a Milky Way bar is actually the nougat (which is why I like 3 Musketeers bars slightly more).



The Milky Way Simply Caramel is -- as the name tells you -- simply caramel and chocolate. And it is a nice thick slab of caramel. The caramel is soft but not runny. If you bite or pull at it (as we did for the sake of Food Porn), it strings nicely without becoming a gooey mess. If you've ever had a standard Milky Way bar, then you know what the caramel tastes like -- it's exactly the same in this one; there's just way more of it. It's not the most complex caramel ever. If I had to pin a flavor to it, I would say buttery. Not real butter, mind you, more like some lactose intolerant chemist's vision of what butter might taste like. If you are looking for deep, burnt sugar flavor, you are in the wrong place.



The milk chocolate shell is classic Mars milk chocolate. It's smooth, it's milky, it's sweet. There is a touch of throat burn from the sugar.



Honestly, this is a pretty lowbrow bar. It's mass market, and it shows. The caramel is just bordering on not being worth the tooth decay, and the chocolate is a little too sweet. But even with all that said, I still liked the bar. Maybe it's just one of those things that are so average and so unspecial that they turn out to be good (like the odd Lady Gaga song).



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Galaxy Ripple

We are going to end Brit Week with the bar I was most looking forward to trying: the Galaxy Ripple.

Galaxy is Mars's U.K. version of Dove chocolate. And I have a soft spot for Dove. This bar also has the major appeal of being a flake-style bar. So to break this down, not only does it have the potential to have a milk chocolate that I really like, but it also has a texture I love in a bar...yeah, this could be awesome.



The long thin finger of a bar has a pale chocolate color to it. It's actually about the color of weak chocolate milk.) And unlike the Cadbury Flake bar I reviewed a few days ago, it has a thin layer of enrobed milk chocolate covering the chocolate dandruff flakes. (I liked that term so much I am plagiarizing myself.) Cadbury also has a version of the Flake bar that's enrobed, and yes, I do have it and I will be reviewing it. I just didn't want to do a third review of such a similar product in so short a span of time.

In terms of taste, the chocolate does indeed taste exactly like its American counterpart. It's very rich. There is strong taste of milk. The melt is thick and fatty. There is just enough of a cocoa note that you don't start to wonder where the actual chocolate is, but it's not the most assertive bar in the world.



While this bar very closely resembles a Cadbury Flake, it doesn't pull off the texture quite as well. Maybe the enrobing just holds everything together better, and that is one reason why things are so different. But the chocolate almost seems too soft. Rather than splintering off the way the Cadbury Flake did, the Galaxy Ripple just starts melting into a lump -- a tasty lump, but a lump nonetheless. I wonder if the Galaxy chocolate is just too moist? I got the sense from the Cadbury bar that part of what makes the texture so flaky is that the chocolate is on the dry side. If I could somehow get the Galaxy chocolate combined with the Cadbury texture...

All in all, I am going to agree with Jim's review that he did "back in the day." It's not the bestest bar ever, but I wouldn't call it bad by a long shot.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gift from my mother

Snickers Fudge Bar (Limited Edition)

Yay! A new Snickers bar!



I ran into these little bad boys on a recent trip to Target. Thanks to Cybele, I knew that the bar was coming out. She reviewed them back in July (read it here). Cybele was able to get a full size bar, while I got my hands on the much smaller mini size.




The Snickers Fudge is a lot like a normal Snickers bar, except that the nougat layer seemed a little thinner than I remember in the normal bar. The largest layer is the fudge layer, in which the peanuts are embedded. And, unlike the regular Snickers bar, there is no caramel in this one.




The texture of the fudge is a little grainy. It's thick but not dense. There's a good cocoa flavor to it. The fudge itself it not too sweet, but it does make the bar sweeter then a normal Snickers would be. It reminded me more of a really thick chocolate frosting than actual fudge. But I liked it in either case.

The nuts are crunchy and salty. The nougat and the outer layer of chocolate are both the usual for Snickers bars.

On the whole the bar is pretty good. It's not too sweet and the fudge is a nice addition. My only complaint is that I miss the caramel. Granted, that would have made for a really rich bar, but I think the fudge would have really set it off.

I highly recommend picking up a bag for the trick-or-treaters...provided, of course, that they can find your pantry. Otherwise, keep them for yourself and give out some Sweetarts to the little buggers.



PURCHASED FROM:
Target

Coconut M&M's Limited Edition

Way back in June (wait...does June count as "way back" yet?), Cybele got to review the new Coconut M&M's . Today, I get to be kinda as cool as her, because I got my own bag.

I knew from Cybele's review that these M&M's were merely flavored with coconut rather than M&M's with actual pieces/shreds of coconut in them. I considered this to be a good thing, because while I like coconut flavor, I don't like actual coconut.



The Coconut M&M's are of the larger variety. In terms of size and shape, they resemble the larger Peanut Butter M&M's (though not quite as big). In addition to the usual offset M's that the candy normally features, there are also little tropical themes.



The flavor seemed to vary between some of the M&M's. Some seemed to have a stronger coconut flavor to them. At its best the flavor reminded me of German chocolate cake. The coconut goes hand-in-hand with the milk chocolate. There's almost a caramel flavor that comes out. At its worst, in the few that seemed stronger then the rest, it reminded me of eating M&M's with fingers that had recently applied Hawaiian Tropic sun product. Fortunately, that really was the exception rather than the rule.



Overall, an interesting edition. I don't think I would ever pick this flavor over, say, the Peanut Butter ones (my fave since they took the Crispy variety off the market). But they do make for a fun summer flavor.


PURCHASED FROM:
Target

Dove Peanut Butter Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate

Given the sheer number of chocolate/peanut butter products that I have reviewed, it's pretty safe to say that I am a fan.



I also am a fan of Dove products. For mass-market they do a fantastic job with the products they make, and it is among my favorite milk chocolates. When I read Cybele's review back in June I couldn't wait to try this candy for myself.



The bar is broken up into five "promise size" pieces. The outer chocolate is Dove's classic milk chocolate. It's smooth, sweet and has a strong dairy quality to it.

The peanut butter flavor permeates the entire bar--but in a good way. The peanut butter itself is super smooth. There's not much going in terms of texture. One of the things I love about Hershey's peanut butter cups is the crumbly texture of the peanut butter. That's not present here. The peanut butter is mildly salty, but mostly it is just bland. It's not sweet enough that it reminds you of, say, a peanut sauce. It's not roasted enough to be like an actual peanut. It's like peanut butter for people who like their food as plain as possible. It's not bad; it's just kinda forgettable.



In the end this bar is okay. It's smooth, the melt is thick and rich, the chocolate is good. For the chocolate alone, I would prefer it over a Reese's. But on the other hand, I wouldn't for the peanut butter. It's just not as good as a Trader Joe's peanut butter cup (still the best as far as I am concerned).



PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

Twixels Triple Chocolate

Why is it that girls seem to like mini versions of pretty much anything? Little dogs, little cups, little candies, little...ermmm, wait...I just thought of one thing that girls definitely don't prefer in the mini-size...

(Brains! We don't like people with mini brains! And you probably thought I was going for a cheap dirty laugh here, shame on you. You know very well I would never do that.)



Anyway, Twixels are basically mini-Twix bars in a fancied-up package. They come in three flavors: Triple Chocolate, Creamy Caramel and Fresh Vanilla. I really wanted to try the Creamy Caramel because I wanted to see how different it from the classic Twix bars... but that would have been way too easy...because of course those would be the bars that my local Target is out of. And I just wasn't feeling the Vanilla, so that left the Triple Chocolate.

If regular Twix are the Dirk Digglers of the Mars cookie bars, then Twixels are like the Reed Rothchilds. A little bit smaller, a little bit thinner, but they are both ready to rock your world. (OK, one cheap dirty laugh. Shut up.) The Twixel in size is like a slightly longer jelly bar.

The chocolate is listed on the label as "sweet chocolate." I don't know what that means. Maybe it's a new way for Mars to label their lower-end milk chocolate? Or maybe, since the Twixels are manufactured in Russia, it's just an awkward translation? I have no idea. (Nor, for that matter, do I have any idea why Mars is making them in Russia for sale in America. If they were just trying to save money I would think China more likely.) In either case, the chocolate is sweet and kinda milky, and while the bar is fully enrobed, it is a very thin coating. It's cold on the tongue and a little waxy. It's not that it's bad, but it does taste different to me than the normal Twix coating.



When it comes to the innards, the caramel is pretty sparse. It's also a little stringy, but if you didn't see the tell-tale ribboning, you might not guess it's there.

The biscuit in these bar is also chocolate, and it's unremarkable. Not bad, not good, not overly chocolaty. Kind of like having a Ninja inspired bedroom (no wait, that would be pretty awesome). The inner packaging consists of one large tray with three diagonal compartments. The sticks are not individually wrapped but I can live with that.

These bars aren't bad, all things considered. They just aren't very good either. They are really pretty average, though definitely on the low-end scale. And at just 35 calories per stick, if you just have to have chocolate and aren't very picky about what it tastes like, then this might be a great option for you.

Be sure to check out Cybele's review HERE.

That said, I am off to watch the sunrise (they are better than sunsets), and I leave you with the musical stylings of Dirk and Reed.



PURCHASED FROM:
Target

Snicker's Nougabot Bar

Don't get too excited about the Snickers Nougabot Bar.

While clearly a cool name, this is simply a regular Snickers bar that's been "transformed" with yellow nougat (à la the Shrek bar a few years ago) to tie in with the new Transformers movie.



Since nothing is really different, this isn't really a review. I just wanted to show off the new look. Everything tastes the same -- with the lone exception being that the nougat itself seems a little drier than normal. (I am guessing this is probably caused by the dye.) Otherwise, identical.



Sadly, any attempts to get the bar to transform my lame car into a cool car, or my DVD copy of Jason Segel into a real life Jason Segel didn't pan out (but at least my neighbors looked at me funny). And YES, I am well aware that Jason Segel isn't in either Transformer movie -- it's just that the thought of trying to do grownup things with Shia LaBeouf left me feeling icky in a Chester The Molester type of way, so I substituted Jason.



While this bar is perfectly OK, it does seem likes a waste of a good tie-in product. I am thinking of all the things they could have done working yellow into a bar -- for example, they could have done a bar with peanut brittle pieces. How good that would have been! Or they could have done something with lemon -- again, perfectly good.

I think they just missed out.

(Not really a review, so no rating.)

PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket