I should have mentioned this in my last post, but the Coconut M&M’s, Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar and 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar were all released this month from Mars. The Coconut M&M’s were a re-release, but the latter two are brand new offerings. I bought all three at the same time, and apparently there was some sort of promotional coupon for doing so, but the cashier at my local convenience store and I had some language barrier problems, so when I looked at the receipt when I got home, there were all kinds of mysterious discounts.  I guess I got one free for buying all of them at once.  Who knows.

The point is that these guys are kind of related, and while Coconut M&M’s got a whole website for me to make fun of, both Milky Way and 3 Musketeers don’t even mention their new products on their website. Way to promote, guys. So, with little information to go off of beyond the wrapper and my own taste buds, I decided to combine the two into one review, since apart, they would probably be pretty short reviews. Consider it a twofer!

Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar

Milky Way Simply Caramel is described on the wrapper as “Real milk chocolate surrounding nothing but rich delicious caramel”. For any of you out there who grew up with parents who refused to allow you any sugar, never went trick-or-treating, and grew up to be the same kind of hippy douchebags as your parents, a regular Milky Way bar is a thick layer of nougat topped by a thinner layer of caramel, all coated with milk chocolate. Simple, tasty, familiar. So basically, all they’ve done is removed the nougat, leaving caramel to stand on its own.

I probably should have tried to pull the bar apart instead of cutting it, to better represent the gooeyness of the caramel, but I used a knife, so deal with it. Trust me, though, it is gooey. Very gooey. The caramel is super thick; chewing it will get you nothing more than a bunch of teeth coated in caramel. You have to sort of roll it around in your mouth, letting the caramel and chocolate melt and slide down your throat. It’s very akin to eating one of those Brach’s Milk Maid Caramel Cubes, except you get the chocolate in there, too. You gotta work at it. You can’t just muscle through this candy bar, unless swallowing a big hunk of caramel whole is your thing, in which case, that’s just weird and I hope you choke on it.

I also probably shouldn’t have left the candy bar in my special picture-taking place while I went to check out the photos and start the review on the computer. Silly me, thinking a cat would take no interest in a chocolate and caramel bar. A few minutes after that picture was taken, the plate was on the floor, the top half was nowhere to be found, and my cat was licking his lips compulsively. I marveled at how a cat could eat that much candy bar that fast, but the intrigue evaporated approximately 30 seconds later, when he barfed up a giant, half-chewed piece of caramel and chocolate. So I guess he is one of those guys mentioned in the paragraph above. I’m glad he barfed instead of choking, but I do want to choke him a little bit for almost ruining my review.

Perhaps I should thank him for taking half, though, because there’s no way I could finish this whole candy bar on my own. The combination of chocolate and caramel is obviously tasty, but it is so rich. The caramel is very thick, and sweet, and each bite takes about three minutes to fully melt in your mouth. My jaw and tongue were exercised to their limits on the one half that I ate, and I felt like I was going into sugar shock.

Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar is a tasty choice if you’re in the mood for a candy bar. Caramel and chocolate always go great together. But you’d better have a friend (or cat) that’s got a serious hankering for some caramel too, because Simply Caramel ain’t playing around. If I had to choose between Simply Caramel and the regular Milky Way bar, I’d choose about one fourth of the Simply Caramel. But if someone had a gun to my head and demanded that I eat the entire bar, which, by the way, happens so often it’s getting ridiculous, I’d go for the original Milky Way. I’m not terribly fond of nougat, but its inclusion in the original Milky Way makes the candy bar lighter, and lets the caramel come through without you feeling like you just sucked your way through an entire bag of those caramel cubes. So, give it a try with some of your caramel-inclined friends, or wait until the fun size version comes out, because that would be the perfect portion of the Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar.

3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars

Quite the departure from an original 3 Musketeers bar, 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars are described on the wrapper as follows:

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t exactly know what chocolate truffle means. I’d imagine they aren’t literally truffles, as in, the fungus that pigs are famous for finding. So I looked it up! According to ehow.com, they are not, in fact, truffles, but are called that because the cocoa-dusted ones resemble truffles.

Okay then.

I like the use of the word “enrobed”. I imagine the 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars wearing a silky milk chocolate smoking robe, a glass of scotch on the table beside it as it sits in its red velvet, high-backed chair before the fireplace, nonchalantly smoking his fine wooden pipe. 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars is the shit, and it knows it.

Anyways, the bars look pretty much like they do on the wrapper. Kind of enticing, really. They smell very rich and chocolaty, a much higher quality of chocolate than you’d typically find when sniffing a candy bar. This could be the chocolate truffle coming into play.

When you bite into the bar, it gives very easily, and the texture is very delicate. There’s a fun little snap when you hit the crisp. The crisp bottom part of the bar is much lighter than, say, the crisp of a Kit-Kat, and it plays well with the smooth chocolate of the truffle part.

I’ve never had a chocolate truffle, so I can’t honestly say if 3 Musketeers has hit the mark on the taste, but it’s definitely tasty. Satiny, and with a more refined taste and texture than the chocolate you’ll find in most other candy bars. The crisp part doesn’t really have much of its own flavor; instead, it takes on the flavor of the truffle, and adds that little crunch that plays with the smooth chocolate.

3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars are quite different than other candy bars. I feel like I should hold my pinky out while I bite into the bar; it’s light and delicate, the chocolate is silky, and it melts quickly and easily in your mouth. It’s like the polar opposite of the Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar. I’ve got more of a salt tooth than a sweet tooth, so I don’t buy candy bars often, but if I did get that rare chocolate craving, this would rank high up on my list when it came time to decide what impulse item to buy. If you’re in the mood for chocolate, but don’t want anything too heavy and also don’t want to go down the more expensive road of fancier chocolates, I would definitely recommend you try a 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar.

Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar

• Score: 2.5 out of 5 jaw workouts
• Price: $1.19, $1.00 on sale
• Size: 1.91 oz. bar
• Purchased at: Circle K #2821
• Nutritional Quirks: Cats can swallow it whole.

3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar

• Score: 4 out of 5 times I had to think of a synonym for the word “smooth”
• Price: Free, I guess?  Something here was free.
• Size: 1.1 oz. pack of 2 bars
• Purchased at: Circle K #2821
• Nutritional Quirks: 85 calories per bar ain’t bad.  Also: smooth.