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Hershey'sFriday, September 19, 2008
ReeseSticks (Revisit)
I gathered up all the products I could find, including the ReeseSticks (previous review here). I found the single serve package at the drug store, but it was expired and I didn’t think that was fair, so I found this Reese’s Lovers Assortment (photo here) at CVS’s freshly stocked Halloween aisle. I found exactly what I wanted ... but I was a little surprised because the front of the package said that the ReeseSticks were crispy wafers | peanut butter | milk chocolate. Well, that didn’t match what I had. This is happy news, right? The milk chocolate is back! But when I opened up my Reese’s Lovers Assortment I was more than disappointed. The little single finger packages of ReeseSticks were quite clear, they said only crispy wafers | peanut butter. What are they pulling?
Well, I’ve already bought them, so I may as well try them and add them to my list of re-reviewed items. Flipping over the bag, they do list all the ingredients for the products separately and though the front and both sides of the package mention milk chocolate, the ingredients tell the full story:
The old ingredients (courtesy of Mike’s Candy Wrappers) from 2003:
The little sticks in the assortment are a little smaller than the regular twin pack. These are .6 ounces each, but are still pretty substantial feeling. The possibly-chocolate coating (well, the ingredients say that there may be cocoa butter in there and no other oils) looks pretty good, a little greasy but a nice medium color. It smells like peanuts and Easter grass. Sweet and artificial and, well, comforting. Unless chilled the coating was pretty soft and sticky. The crunch of the foamy and flavorless wafers allowed the peanut butter to come through. Without much chocolate flavor, these reminded me of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch, without all the sharp mouth-wounding bits. It’s pretty salty though, saltier than I would like. (135 mgs in a current twin pack versus 110 mgs in the original one.) Overall, I prefer the memory of the real chocolate one - less salty and I recall it having some chocolate flavor input. I don’t like ingredients lists that tell me what might be in there in there. I don’t want to eat palm oil, I want cocoa butter. But it’s still a pretty good candy product and not as noticeable a change as the Kissables. Final note: Though the package deceptively promised me milk chocolate in my ReeseSticks, it also said that the Fast Break was not real chocolate on the outside ... but on the inside and the reverse of the package it was. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:16 am Thursday, September 11, 2008
Scharffen Berger Milk Nibby Bar
The second one I bought earlier this year when I was in San Francisco. I needed to get my parking validated at the Ferry Terminal so I figured the Scharffen Berger store there was the perfect place to make my $5 minimum and try this bar again. And I did! I just, well, ate it, without making any notes. So then I had to find it yet again. Luckily after my dismal experience with the Krackel bar, I went on the prowl at Cost Plus World Market’s high end chocolate shelves to console myself and grabbed one. And then I ate it. Remember, I was depressed about the Krackel, grief makes you do strange things. Now I’m feeling better (3 ounces of real chocolate is one of the lesser known 5 Stages of Grief) and thought I should give it another go.
The Milk Chocolate Nibby Bar is much darker than most milk bars. At 41% cacao, it’s almost as dark as the middling Hershey’s Special Dark (which is 45%). So the color is like coffee with only a dash of milk. It doesn’t smell particularly sweet. More like wood chips and of course chocolate. Snapping the bar, it’s pretty solid and crisp. Inside there are the little nibs, not as many as a crisped rice bar, but a great many of them dotting the chocolate base. The chocolate is smooth but still a little rustic. The notes are a strong caramelized flavor, the cocoa and lots more woodsy scents. The nibs are crunchy and buttery, almost like they’ve also been caramelized before adding to the chocolate. The texture is like a macadamia nut and perhaps a little of the soy bean’s malty flavors. It’s a very dark bar for a milk chocolate product. The tangy bite that I didn’t care for in their straight bar is moderated well by the dark and bitter punch of the nibs. I’m in love with this bar. I can’t say that it’s a replacement for the Krackel, because, well, it was $3.99. But it sure makes me smile when I eat it and it’s pretty rare for me to go out and keep buying the same bar over and over again when I have so many new ones at home. The package has full nutritional labeling but also helpfully tells me that the whole 3 ounce bar has 410 calories. A quick calculation also tells me that this bar contains 100% of the my saturated fat for the day. Oops, I guess I’m eating pretty wholesome for the rest of the day. (But also 24% of my daily fiber in the whole bar plus 10 grams of protein!) UPDATE 4/11/2009: I’ve had two more of these since the review, including comparing it to the new 68% Dark Milk and have bumped this up from the original rating of 9 out of 10 to a perfect 10 out of 10. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:51 am Friday, September 5, 2008
Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses
This fall marks the return of the Candy Corn Kiss as well as two new harvest-themed versions: Pumpkin Spice Kisses and Caramel Apple Kisses. I tracked down the Pumpkin Spice ones at Target. (They weren’t in with the regular candy, just at the check out aisle candy display.) The package is Halloween-themed, with brown and orange webby pattern (which kind of reminds me of cantaloupes) and a taunting Jack-O-Lantern.
The package offers no description of the product and neither does the Hershey’s website. All I could figure out from looking at the wrapper was that these were some sort of orange-colored white-chocolate-like-confection (there might be cocoa butter in there, there might not, the ingredients are rather coy about it) filled with a cream that’s probably flavored like pumpkin pie. The little foil wrappings are bronzy orange with wavy little brown stripes. The flags are brown and say pumpkin spice though many are greasy and look a bit more translucent. The bag smells appealing, like ginger snaps or snickerdoodles. Sugary and spicy and everything nice-y. It was warm for a few days so I tucked these away in one of my coolers. When I took the photos they were very soft, but even at temps in the high sixties or low seventies, they’re still mushy. The orange confection outside has a bit of a greasy sheen to it, but otherwise is a nice pumpkin custard color. I bit a few in half (ended up cutting them for the photo) just to see what was inside, it’s a soft cream not unlike the New York Cheesecake flavored ones back around Valentine’s Day. The taste, though sweet, has a great harvest spice flavor - it’s mostly nutmeg with a little cinnamon and perhaps ginger or allspice and maybe a hint of clove. I really thought these were going to be terrible, especially since I didn’t like the fake butter flavor of the Candy Corn Kisses, but they’re pleasant. Not too sweet, a little bit of a custardy tang and though kind of grainy they remind me of a decadent flavored fudge. Or a very sweet cheesecake. I don’t think they’re something I’d buy again, even if they were seasonal, but I certainly enjoy a little spice in my life now and then. Sera at The Candy Enthusiast found them at the same time as I did and has a review today as well. She’s a bit more fond of them than I am, but I’ll chalk that up to her obsession with all things pumpkin. Other early reviews are also positive: Franklin Avenue, Megan’s Munchies and keep an eye on the Kiss Candy Spotting thread in the Candy Forums. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:00 am Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers AlmondI realized when I started Candy Blog that there was no way I’d ever sample every single candy out there, let alone review them. What’s making it even harder now is that candies that I’ve already reviewed have changed and it hardly seems fair that the reviews here still stand against the present day products. So, every once in a while I’ll revisit major products that have changed since my original review at least enough to warrant a new taste.
Sometime when I wasn’t looking (I photographed it last summer again) the Hershey’s Take 5 left the list of chocolate candy bars and joined the growing list of Hershey’s Real Mockolate. The package now says: made with chocolate & pretzels & caramel & peanuts & peanut butter. That “made with chocolate” part means that the coating may contain chocolate, but it has other additives such as vegetable oils that mean that it’s not pure chocolate. The actual chocolate as an ingredient comes far down on the list as the number 6 item, after vegetable oils and high fructose corn sweetener and before nonfat milk (you can imagine there’s not that much milk in there).
The bars actually still look quite fetching. Little rather rectangular lumps with a pleasant sweet & peanutty scent. Mine were exceptionally fresh, the pretzel was good and crunchy, a nice salty complement to the sweet coating. The coating didn’t have much flavor but did add a creamy texture. This one was passably good, but I’ve had others in the past few months (I picked them out of a mix of snack size in a bowl at the office a couple of times) and I didn’t realize why they were kind of empty tasting for what I remembered. I just thought they were stale ... turns out that they’re just not designed to be good any longer. Hershey’s still has an opportunity to reverse this and make it real chocolate again.
Worst part of this news? The grapefruit one was missing. (What is it about grapefruit disappearing lately? Is it because of the news that grapefruit juice interacts with some prescription drugs?) This is not to say that the Sunkist Fruit Gems don’t come in grapefruit any longer, just not in this particular package.
Seeing how Sunkist is known as a citrus company, the fact that they made an assortment the neglects one of the citrus fruits and includes a berry is beyond me. The package is also similar to the old one and actually includes images of grapefruit (though the text clearly says which flavors are in the package). The change in manufacturing location and ownership, as far as I’ve been able to tell, has made no difference at all for the actual candy. It’s still a nice, soft and flavorful fruit jelly without too much of a granulated sugar coating. The only real difference here is that you get only 2/3 as much as you used to. I was hoping when Jelly Belly took over that they’d sell the jellies in individual flavors like they do with their famous jelly beans. No such luck yet. (For now whenever I see the Jelly Belly booth at a trade show I pick a half a dozen grapefruit jellies out of their sample bin and move along.)
Mars used to make a bar that was called, appropriately enough, the Mars Bar. That bar was discontinued and reintroduced under the much more famous Snickers umbrella of products as the Snickers Almond.
Then something happened, Mars mucked around with it and created the “More Satisfying Snickers Almond” which was really just the Snickers Almond with peanuts thrown in to make up for a lack of, well, almonds. It wasn’t a bad bar, but it wasn’t really distinctive. Well, the old new Snickers Almond is back. It’s a white lightly sweet & salty nougat with a caramel stripe and whole almonds covered in milk chocolate. I like the bar (though I prefer the dark chocolate version) and I’m glad they brought it back.
Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:09 am Candy • Review • Snickers • Hershey's • Jelly Belly • Mars • Caramel • Chocolate • Cookie • Kosher • Mockolate • Nougat • Nuts • Peanuts • 4-Benign • 5-Pleasant • 6-Tempting • United States • Rite Aid • Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Rising Cost of Candy - A Brief Study of Hershey Prices
Most of this is due to increased cost across the board. Rising fuel prices in all sectors means that it costs more to buy energy to operate their factory candy kitchens, air condition their warehouses and drive trucks around. Add to that the biggest change, the raw materials cost more because of their vast distances from the Pennsylvania confectioner on top of their actual costs which have risen 20% - 45% this year alone.
The change in the wholesale price for Hershey Co. is different than their tactics in the past when dealing with this sort of volatility. It seems kind of quaint now how Milton S. Hershey tried to lock down his costs by entering into long term buying deals for cocoa beans and even building his own sugar plantations in Cuba (and a community named Hershey there too, complete with schools, libraries and a railroad system). Back then attempts were made to keep the price of the candy the same, so they would change its size as needed. The green line at the top represents the size of the chocolate bars (shown in grams). It’s easy to see that through the early years the price of the bar increased steadily (though slowly) but the size of the bar sold was volatile, even when taking the price per ounce into consideration. Oddly enough, the bar did become a better value quite often, both growing in size and dropping in price, though that trend ended after WWII and shortages and price swings in raw materials normalized. Often though when the price went up, so did the size of the bar as a way to offset the perception of poor value. The trend more recently, in the past 20 years though, has been to keep the bar the same size but simply raise the prices as needed. This means that things like slots in store shelves, wrappers, nutrition panels and manufacturing equipment stays the same.
To demonstrate how else Hershey’s has begun to cut corners, I only needed to look at Hershey’s classic Hershey’s Miniatures to discover that two of their iconic and early chocolate brands, Mr. Goodbar and Krackel, are no longer chocolate bars at all. Hershey’s was a strong and vocal supporter of The Grocery Manufacturers Association’s attempt to change the definition of chocolate from its present and not terribly stringent one (chocolate must contain cocoa solids and cocoa butter and no additional vegetable oils). In order to get chocolate products from Hershey’s now, consumers have to opt for their premium lines like Bliss and Cacao Reserve or pay true premium prices for their Dagoba or Scharffen Berger product lines. Other changes to Hershey’s products over the past three years include: 5th Avenue Bar - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Take 5 - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Hershey’s Kissables - is now called chocolate candy as it is has additional vegetable oils Whatchamacallit - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Milk Duds - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Mr. Goodbar - no longer made of milk chocolate Reese’s Sticks - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Reese’s White Peanut Butter Cups - the white coating used to be white chocolate (with cocoa butter) now just a white confectionery coating Reese’s FastBreak - no longer has a milk chocolate coating Read packages of Limited Edition and Seasonal Hershey’s Kisses carefully - as an example, the Candy Cane Kisses introduced in 2006 were made from cocoa butter for the white chocolate but when re-introduced for 2007 they were no longer a pure product. Other products which have never been real chocolate (so you’re not confused): Reese’s Whipps Whoppers Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar
While Hershey’s seems to be concentrating a great deal of effort on honing their efficiency, based on the fact that they’re subcontracting, eliminating factories and a percentage of their workforce while manufacturing more in Mexico, they seem to have neglected their primary mission: making good chocolate. Milton Hershey was often derided for not embracing advertising for his products. He said, “Give them quality, that’s the best kind of advertising in the world.” But presently they’re advertising quality with their new Pure Chocolate campaign but neglecting to actually deliver it. Sources: Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:38 pm Candy • Hershey's • Featured News • Monday, August 25, 2008
Hershey’s Special Dark Miniatures
The bag was a bit larger than the other Hershey’s Miniatures that I bought at the same time and has only three varieties instead of four. But the most notable part is the appearance of the little seal that Hershey’s puts on some of their dark chocolate confections, it says that this is a “natural source of flavinol antioxidants.” At only about 45% cacao content, yes, I guess it qualifies as a source, though not a terribly dense one. Hershey’s has some wonderfully convincing documentation about this on their website, though they’re probably purposefully vague about how much of these beneficial compounds are in any given serving.
The assortment here is rather balanced between the three varieties: 13 Special Dark, 11 Special Dark with Crisp Rice and 12 Special Dark with Peanuts.
It smells sweet, a little woodsy. The texture is rather chalky and doesn’t melt into a creamy puddle in my mouth. Instead it just tastes sweet and more like hot cocoa made with water than real rich chocolate ... there’s a thin-ness to it all, probably because Hershey’s now uses milk fat. There’s a dry finish with a slight metallic bite to it. Rating: 4 out of 10
Though the ingredients on the wrapper are not broken out for each of the individually wrapped varieties, the list is clear, these are all real chocolate. There are no additional oils present except for those native to the chocolate or dairy ones (permissable in present definitions). The little bars are cute and look really just like you’d expect a dark Mr. Goodbar - dark sheen and little nuts poking through. It smells like dark roasted peanuts and cocoa. The bite has a good snap and an immediate mix of bitter notes from both the peanuts (which look like they’re roasted very dark) and the chocolate. The texture isn’t super creamy, but is consistent with an okay melt. Rating: 5 out of 10.
It looks much like the Peanut version, but smells much sweeter with only the lightest whiff of malt. The crunch isn’t as pronounced as the old Milk Chocolate or present Mockolate version, but has a nice texture. The malty flavor of the rice is completely lost in the thin cocoa flavor and sweetness. The texture doesn’t seem as creamy or melt as easily for some reason, but I can’t call it waxy. It’s less bitter than the others though, so provides a nice counterpoint. Is the Krackel and Hershey’s redeemed? No. But it’s a passable effort. Rating: 5 out of 10. I didn’t even try asking Hershey’s what the ingredients for the individual pieces are, because I’m not entitled to know should I decide to pick only one of the variety to eat. If I needed to buy a chocolate miniature assortment from Hershey’s again, I’d have to pick this one up instead of the old favorites. But even with the higher ratings than that one, I don’t see myself picking this up again. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:36 am Friday, August 22, 2008
Hershey’s Miniatures
Hershey’s bills the mix as A little something for everyone (r). I remember as a kid getting these in both my trick-or-treat haul and my Christmas stocking. They’re a great mix of candy because even though everyone has their favorites (and my rankings for them have changed over the years), even if you don’t like all of them it’s pretty easy to find someone to trade with. Each piece is a nice size, two bites for those who prefer to savor or one big bite for those looking for a quick fix.
I wasn’t sure when I picked up the bag if they have a consistent mix, so I documented mine. It actually feels like a good proportion: 11 Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and 6 each of the Krackel, Mr. Goodbar and Special Dark. This particular bag was 9.2 ounces, they’re available in a wide variety of sizes though and often in bulk bins at large grocery stores.
It has a sweet smell, a bit milky and dare I say, cheesy (feta) and milky. There are also notes of black pepper and caramel. One of the nice things about the Miniatures is that the bar is thicker, so a bite (half the bar), is a nice mouthful that give more opportunity to revel in the flavors and textures. The milk chocolate is rather fudgy, not quite firm even a room temperature. It dents instead of chipping or flaking and is more likely to bend than snap. It’s a little grainy like a fudge, but the particle size is small. The flavors are strong, it’s sweet without burning the throat and has some mellow cocoa notes mixed with that inimitable tangy yogurt flavor of Hershey’s along with some toffee and maybe a touch of hazelnut. I hate to sound like an old fart, but I think it was better before. I think something happened that it became grainier. It sounds like I hate the stuff, but I don’t. I feel the same way about it as I do for things like Fritos, American cheese, grape soda and Fudgesicles. They’re really not that good, but I love them anyway. All I can do is hope they don’t make it worse and give them a 6 out of 10.
Similar to the milk bar, this one also has a slightly soft snap. It smells sweet, a little woodsy. The texture is rather chalky and doesn’t melt into a creamy puddle in my mouth. Instead it just tastes sweet and more like hot cocoa made with water than real rich chocolate ... there’s a thin-ness to it all, probably because Hershey’s now uses milk fat. There’s a dry finish with a slight metallic bite to it. So while I’ve come to love and prefer dark chocolate, this is like eating cheap chocolate chips to me. A diversion while I wait for the better choice ... like those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies or a wonderful single origin Ocumare bar. Rating: 4 out of 10
Even though the bars are smaller these days and don’t cost a nickel, it’s tempting to think that this bar is unchanged since Milton Hershey started producing it. Sadly it’s not a war or a depression that’s change Mr. Goodbar. I can’t say what The Hershey Company is thinking these days but they’ve changed it. Mr. Goodbar is no longer a chocolate bar. Instead he’s a silly oiled up shadow of what he used to be. The description of the bar was more recently peanuts in milk chocolate but is now just made with chocolate and peanuts. The bar looks the same as ever. A milky, chocolatey sheen with little peanuts peeking through. It smells like deep roasted peanuts and sugar. (More like peanut brittle than a chocolate product.) The flavor is overwhelmingly peanut. The peanuts are roasted dark too, so there’s a slight burnt taste to it that I think is meant to mask the nonexistent chocolate. Yes, this mockolate is shallow and unimpressive. The texture isn’t all that different from the Milk Chocolate bar, but it has a different melt. It’s cool on the tongue. It’s actually salty (looking over the ingredients in the old recipe and the new, salt now appears). For a mockolate bar, it’s quite passable. For a time tested icon it’s a travesty. I don’t care how depressed I am or the country might be, this is not a tasty lunch. Rating: 4 out of 10.
It went through a few changes over the years, when introduced in 1938 it had nuts and crisped rice but by the late 40s it was a simple crisped rice and milk chocolate bar. (The packaging was also similar to the Mr. Goodbar, sporting a yellow stripe and brown instead of its present red.) Today the bar is all but gone. The full size has been discontinued (2006), only the miniature remains. To add insult to injury, the bar isn’t crisped rice in milk chocolate, no, now it’s made with chocolate and crisped rice. One of the things the Krackel bar has had going for it over the years, especially in the miniature size is the crisped rice. They’re big crisped rice pieces. Nestle Crunch has moved to some sort of BB-sized rice product that just doesn’t deliver the depth of crunch or the malty & salty taste. The crisp is definitely there, the malty flavor peeks through. But the
mockolate, oh this isn’t even worthy of being wrapped up and called R.M. Palmer. I’ve given away four of these little bars and asked people what they think to people who profess that the Krackel is their favorite in the miniatures assortment. I didn’t preface it with anything, yet they all recognized that this was terrible. Empty, vapid, lacking all chocolate flavor, no creamy component and no puddle of chocolate ooze melting so that all that’s left is the rice crisps. I was curious how mock this mockolate was but I am simply unable to get the information out of Hershey’s. (Read more about that experience here.) It’s just disgusting that Hershey’s, the Great American Chocolate Bar company, is making this ... they should have just let this bar die a natural death than let it be zombified into this mess. Rating: 1 out of 10 There is nothing to do but simply stop buying this deplorable product. 12 out of the 29 bars (41%) here are not even chocolate and yet I’m paying chocolate prices! If you like the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, I’d suggest getting just the snack sized bars, they’re a little bigger, but at least you don’t end up with any Krackels or Mr. Goodbars and you get more value for your money. (Unless you were looking for some individually wrapped & solidified cooking oils.) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:47 am Thursday, August 7, 2008
Kissables (Reformulated)Alert and distressed readers informed me that Hershey’s Kissables have been reformulated and not in a good way. I was fortunate enough to find both the old variety and the new ones at the 99 Cent Only Store, which is like some sort of time capsule, just dig deep enough into the layers and you can find stuff that goes back to the last century. (Don’t worry, both were still within their expiry dates - made only five months apart.)
The ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR & artificial flavors), sugar, red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1 & carnauba wax. The taste is familiar. The crunch of the shell is crispy and nondescript but gives way to the inimitable Hershey’s chocolate flavor that’s a little tangy, a bit like yogurt and has a rather interesting rum note to it.
The ingredients: Sugar, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, nonfat milk, whey, cocoa butter, milk fat, gum arabic, soy lecithin, artificial colors (red 40, yellow 5, blue 2, blue 1, yellow 6), corn syrup, resinous glaze, salt, carnauba wax, pgpr and vanillin. They look exactly like their old “pure” counterparts (which really weren’t so pure if you ask me). The colors and size are identical. The flavor though, is quite obviously off. The crunch of the shell is familiar, but the flavor of the chocolate lacks any particular pop and feels less fresh. The texture is cooler on the tongue, though has the same fudgy grain that it’s always had.
It’s not that the new formula is bad, but it certainly lacks a pizazz and familiarity that the old ones had. They old ones were like Kisses. The new ones are like, well, nothing much special. Kind of like chocolate frosting. As a mockolate product, well, they’re actually pretty good. These are still far and away better than the Garfield Chocobites or other off-brand/fake chocolate lentils I’ve had. The ingredient tweaking had some interesting results as well, which show that it’s entirely possible to tell the two apart on taste alone: ..............Original Formula ....................2008 Formula (This info was taken right from the packages, the Hershey’s website lists strangely different nutritional specs for this size package - where the portion is only 1.4 ounces instead of the full 1.5 ounces in the package.) So the new ones have more salt and sugars, a third of the calcium but no cholesterol. Ten fewer calories, but also made with all sorts of other replacement oils. Oh, and the new ones also have a resinous glaze, which is shellac, which is on most vegetarian’s forbidden list. The copy goes like this (set to a cover of I Melt with You):
Watch the video here or here. While it’s for Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar, I take it as a whole branding campaign that Hershey’s wants to stress that they make pure chocolate. I’m just not buying it. More fun with new formulas: Check out what Hershey’s has done to the iconic Hershey’s Miniatures collection. UPDATE: Kissables were discontinued in early 2009. They will be replaced by a new line called Pieces which will come in Special Dark, Almond Joy and York Peppermint. (No straight milk chocolate replacement though.) Look for them in December 2009. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:51 am 
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SUPERB
YUMMY 
TASTY 
WORTH IT 
TEMPTING 
PLEASANT 
BENIGN 
UNAPPEALING 
APPALLING 
INEDIBLE 
SUPERB 
YUMMY 
TASTY 
WORTH IT 
PLEASANT 
BENIGN 
UNAPPEALING 
APPALLING 
INEDIBLE 
TEMPTING 
It was big news this month when Hershey Co. announced that it was raising its wholesale candy prices by 11%. This is the second price jump for them this year, in January they raised prices by 13% for select products in their line as well. 
The falling value of the dollar hasn’t helped much either, as all cocoa products are imported and there is more competition for quality cocoa beans. Even though they’ve trimmed their 
I just reviewed the Special Dark on 
The Special Dark with Peanuts comes in a mustard yellow wrapper, which I figured is to remind us of the Mr. Goodbar. Why they don’t just call it Mr. Goodbar Dark or Mr. Darkbar or something, I have no clue. 
I brought a lot of my own baggage to the Special Dark with Crisp Rice as I was hoping Hershey’s could be redeemed. Perhaps with the one hand they’d taken away a beloved favorite but with the other they’d snuck a glorious replacement into this mix. 
It’s hard to approach a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar without some sort of personal history. Those of us who have grown up on them know the flavor pretty well, though I don’t think most of us think much about it. Those who taste Hershey’s for the first time as adults though have expressed strong dislike for the taste and/or texture. All I can say is that it’s distinctive and they wouldn’t keep making it if someone didn’t like it well enough to keep buying it. 
Mr. Goodbar was introduced in 1925. Later, during the depression, the bar was sold as “
Krackel, 
