Thursday, January 15, 2009

Rockin' Nut Road Snickers



As soon as B-Com reached for it I thought "Oh God. This is not going to be good." You know what? I was right. The Snickers Site is conspicuously sans Rockin' Nut Road. (Maybe they know something you don't!) But we will more than make up for it. Buckle up kids, it's going to be a bumpy, Rockin' Nut Road.

B-Com Says:
I have to ask myself a question each time I pick up a "limited edition" item based off a staple classic of the genre. I'm 36 years old, and Snickers has been essentially unchanged for as long as I can remember. It is a perennial favorite. It's pedigree is not to be taken lightly. I've found in similar circumstances in the past that a company can make an irreplacable classic (like the Snickers bar,) and yet are curiously incapable of "improving upon" the original, no matter how hard they try. Examples:
  • Snickers Peanut Butter and Dark Snickers. (When I tried Dark Snickers, I couldn't chew the thing. Not sure what's up with that, but I don't see people whipping out a Dark Snickers and chowing down as they're walking through the office, so I have to assume others feel as I do.)
  • Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with the chocolate cookie. Remember those? You're not alone.
  • How about Crystal Pepsi? The product's multi-million dollar advertising blitz was followed by a six-month flame out. I can still get my hands on some (thank you eBay) but do I want to? No.
  • And perhaps the biggest atrocity in this category: The New Knight Rider. What NBC exec green-lighted this fiasco? Hello? Hasselhoff and the souped up Trans Am were cheesy the first go around. It became a cult classic because it was bad!! You really think the concept deserved a rehash?
Anyway, we're here to discuss the Rockin' Nut Road Snickers bar. It tags itself as dark chocolate, almonds and marshmallow-flavored nougat. As I mentioned above, the last time I tried a Snickers bar covered in dark chocolate, I had a tough time biting through it. This one was surprisingly well-textured and soft. However, the flavor of the dark chocolate overpowered the other flavors to the point that it dwarfed the marshmallow and nuts. I doubt they would have gone through the trouble of naming it after Rocky Road if they intended for me not to notice the nuts and marshmallow. This unfortunately named Snickers bar is definitely a


TURD.
J-Lam Says:
Like I mentioned in the introduction, I wanted to run away as soon as I saw what it was. It was the marshmallow that threw me. I don't have fond memories of campfire S'mores or of roasting marshmallows with my Boy Scout buddies. My only vivid childhood memory regarding marshmallows is what I like to call "The Microwave Mushroom Cloud" which was an experiment gone bad when I was about eight years old. It proved two things: 1) A marshmallow nuked on high for 45 seconds will grow to the size of a basketball before exploding and 2) a basketball-sized marshmallow exploding inside a microwave oven takes about six hours to clean up.
This horrific incident aside, I've never been really fond of marshmallows anyway, so it seems to me that nougat artificially-flavored to taste like marshmallows may be worse. And if that equation could become even scarier, I submit this mind-bender: What the hell is nougat anyway? I mean, we eat this stuff all the time, but I challenge anyone reading this blog to explain in three sentences or less what nougat is! The comments button is right over there. Go ahead.
So, needless to say I was not expecting to like it, but I took one for the home team and popped it in my mouth. I pretty much got what I expected. I'm a fan of dark chocolate and almonds, but the marshmallow-flavored-whatever-it-is ruined those ingredients. I did not have a chance to enjoy them because I was too busy trying to get that funky marshmallow flavor out of my teeth. Not only does this Snickers bar look like one, it really is a

TURD!


1 comment:

Jim Kipp said...

Nougat is::: White nougat is made with beaten egg whites and is soft, whereas brown nougat is made with caramelized sugar and has a firmer, often crunchy texture.
I think 3 Musketeers have Nougat down to a science