The Big Bar Line Up - Wrapped

In case you missed it over the past month or so I posted an extensive look at some of the 'Big bar' chocolates available while walking the Candy Aisle here in Canada. I know it was more of a survey series but I liked all the pretty pictures and even just taking a closer look at them gave me a better understanding of what the various players are trying to achieve.

Does this mean I'll be eating more big bars down the line? I hope so. There are some really great offerings out there, especially from companies like Lindt and Ritter Sport. And hopefully that will translate here to the blog as well, in added reviews on some of the more interesting stuff.

For those who would like to check out the series of posts here they are in one handy dandy list:

Cadbury Dairy Milk

Hershey

Lindt

Ritter Sport

Dove and Godiva

Remainders

It seems like such a short list of posts but believe me it took a very long time to compile these lists with all the pictures involved.

I hope you do take the opportunity to go back and check out any of the posts you may have missed. They're fun looks at whats on the shelves right now. There's some great, and some definitely no so great looking stuff out there. Thanks for reading all :)

The Big Bar Line Up - Remainder

So if you've been following along with my series of posts on Candy Aisle Big Bars you know that we've covered a lot of ground. But there are really SO many more big bars that we could talk about. There are whole blogs out there that deal with this topic. Granted once you pass a certain point it seems like most of the big bars are more for the Fair-Trade, Whole Foods crowd than regular candy aisle walkers like myself. Now I know that there are a lot of chocolates out there for that market and its great, but I'm more interested in the everyday stuff. So what I've gathered here for today's post is a reasonable sampling of some of the remaining big sized candy bars I've seen some-what commonly around town, or at least in regular, popular stores.

I'm interested to know if I'm missing out on the one line of chocolates that I simply must try or at the least should have heard of, so if you've got something that I didn't cover in these posts, please feel free to let me know :)

Lets start with the two 'other' bars that in Canada you'll find everywhere.

Caramilk is fantastic. Just check out my review. So its no wonder that its a staple of the Big Bar section of every store here.

Neilson's Jersey Milk is an interesting one here in Canada. They are a Canadian company that's been around for just over a hundred years. As you might guess from a name like Neilson's Dairy, they make milk, and milk products. In Canada you can find them in the biggest national grocery chain (Loblaws) and these chocolate bars made by them most everywhere else as well. Jersey Milk chocolate is practically a Canadian institution. As a kid these were probably the most prevalent fun size candy in everyone's bag at the end of Halloween night. The company has a longstanding relationship with Cadbury Canada, even owning their Canadian operations for a decade or so. A few of Cadbury's Canadian chocolate bars like Mr. Big and Crispy Crunch even were sold under the Neilson logo for a time. Jersey Milk, along with the others were all sold back to British Cadbury in the late 90s and this bar is now produced by them (only it retains the Neilson branding). I haven't personally had one of these in quite a while, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it soon!

Now these next two are new but they're very heavily "candy bar" influenced, and the kind of thing you'd see in any regular candy aisle, so I thought I should mention them now.

Who knows if wither of these bars will stick around, but I'm interested in trying them. Sometimes the form factor can really matter. I think both of these could be significantly different in this larger form.

Here's a weird one right?! I can't say that I've ever seen a straight up Nestle Dark chocolate bar before... but here it is. Straight from the local dollar store (meaning it could be an import) with honey and almond pieces. Very interesting.

Talk about BIG bars, that's a 400gm bar! Although I'm not familiar with Waterbridge this is one of a few things I saw at Wal-Mart.This is apparently their Belgian style chocolate while this next Mountain Range themed line is Swiss.

I found the Waterbridge Mountain Range line up at my local Lowes and think simply based on packaging alone that I'd prefer to go with it than the Belgian Style ones I saw earlier.

Here we have another Canadian institution found in the Dollarama :( Laura Secord are not known for having big chocolate bars in stores however so I don't feel too bad. Somehow this must have slipped into production and ended up here. Laura Secord is known for having almost boutique 200 chocolate retail locations across Canada. They are a really wonderful very high quality chocolatier perhaps best known for boxed chocolates and I'm certainly planning on getting some of their stuff onto the site here soon!

Here's two that I know virtually nothing about at all... Although that Heritage bar sounds alright. Apparently Jacquot is a very well regarded French chocolate, and the only thing I can see online about Heritage is a listing for something produced by Mars Canada... which doesn't seem like the same thing as this...

Another Dollarama special the Rocher Blanc comes in Milk and Dark and has nice packaging. I believe its French, but can't bank on that.

Cote D'Or is a brand I'm not too familiar with, but I've got something from them in the works for a review soon. All I can say is that I found these two Dark Chocolate beauties at a grocery chain called Metro here in Canada, and I LOVE their little elephant logo. Adorable.

PC is a brand every Canadian will be familiar with. If you want more info just check out this post for some thoughts of mine on the line. Probably not something I'd buy, but I knew this had to exist somewhere...

Next up we're going into the world of Fair-Trade. Here is a line of chocolates that I've been told are very good. This is the Canadian chocolate brand Camino.

I'm not one to go in for Fair-trade stuff too often since I don't feel like I can justifiably afford the cost, but since this is a well respected Canadian brand I thought I should mention them. And hey lets not forget, Cadbury's Dairy Milk is also officially Fair-Trade.

There's are LOTS of environmentally friendly brands out there nowadays. How about these ones:

Endangered Species Chocolates, with the very desirable website http://chocolatebar.com/ have exactly the story you'd expect... 10% of proceeds, all organic, not fair-trade (but this is about the animals not the people or financial equity), and all the other good stuff you want from your socially responsible chocolate company :/

I should probably stop talking about this stuff, since I'm sure to say something to annoy someone.

Of course I skipped a lot of stuff here. It seems like everyone has an in-house brand now as well. Wal-Mart has Great Value which for my money is actually pretty decent chocolate. There's also nationally here in Canada the Carnaby line at Shopper Drug Mart, as well as their lower end Life brand, out west Safeway has their Select Line. And there is Simply Foods, No Name, and you'll even see Milka or big bar Ghiradelli around here sometimes. Really there are about a zillion others, but this is a god enough place to stop.

Before I wrap up I think I should include a few pick ups of brands I've mentioned in earlier Big Bar Line Up posts. Here are some late entries into the Hershey, and Lindt posts.

I'd definitely like to try that Hazelnut Mousse...

So there you have it. Big Bar chocolates are interesting and a world I haven't really delved too deeply in. Frankly taking these photos for this series of posts is probably the most I've looked at them in my life. There are just too many other things to get done and if I'm personally buying a chocolate I know I'd rather go for a standard chocolate bar. Less cost, less size, better value on the spot.

For those interested though, maybe I should make a few exceptions and start reviewing a couple of these... especially the more 'candy bar' style ones... Let me know what you think and thanks for joining me on this walk down the candy aisle.

The Big Bar Line Up - Dove and Godiva

Today we're back with the Big Bars, and we're starting to run through them now. I think probably one more post'll do it. For now though we're looking at the small entry into the big bar market by Godiva and Dove.

Starting with Dove, I should say I have a weird thing about them. I think the only time I've ever eaten a dove bar was for a review here on the site. No you didn't miss it. Although I shot the review it is one of the handful of 'lost' Candy Aisle episodes. And since I never got to officially review it, I feel kind of mixed about it. Maybe these big bars are the way to go though. Lets have a look at their offerings.

Yup. That's nothing to write home about. I mean I'm sure its all fine, but they could add some variety to the mix couldn't they? Are these the bars that will sell the most? Seems like these are the most generic ideas they could find. Maybe I'm cynical though.... I guess I just don't see why someone is buying this over a Lindt or something else right beside it.

At least Godiva has a very specific type of chocolate eater in mind. They are playing directly into the dark chocolate and gourmet chocolate connoisseur world. Something I admittedly know very little about... (I'm an everyman here people). Anyhow, lets have a look at what they've got.

One Milk variety, and then its right into the Dark.

Frankly I'm a little surprised that they don't have anything higher than 85%. Those are already serious bars and I certainly don't think I could handle anyting stronger... but those dark chocolate aficionados can be very demanding.  This is at least in part probably a good alternative to the Lindt offerings though.


Anyhow, next time we'll pick up the remainder big bars for a final post on this topic. Until then I'll see you in the aisle.

The Big Bar Line Up - Ritter Sport

Today we continue looking at the so called Big Bars in the candy aisle with a step into the interesting world of Ritter Sport.

This is a bit of a weird one. Firstly, Ritter Sport is a German, in fact it may be the most widely spread commercially available pure German chocolate. Despite their reputation alongside the Swiss and French for some of the best chocolate in the world the Germans don't export too much prepackaged chocolate, and other than Kinder (which is actually the German arm of Italian chocolatier Fererro) I believe Ritter is the German chocolate seen here in Canada most often.

The word "Ritter" mean nobility in German, and the "Sport" comes from the fact that the creator apparently wanted a bar that could fit easily into the breast pocket of a sports coat. So all of the Ritter Sports feature the same form factor, small and square. In fact they've really run with the 'square' angle in their marketing. Small is a bit of a misnomer too because despite being square Ritters are thick and on a whole s good, so rich, and so creamy that a bar is more than enough. Really I couldn't imagine eating a whole bar of Ritter at once anyhow, they are just such a delicacy.

While Ritter Sport bars are found in Canada the States and lots of other countries they are often not found precisely in the Big Bar section of the store. They are more commonly seen in their own display pop up.

This may seem excessive, and I'm sure it costs an arm and a leg to send these out to the stores, but what great marketing. You may see pop ups for other chocolates at certain seasonal times of year but Ritter Sports are in these all the time, and it makes them stand out like no other. That said, maybe because of the investment in floor space, you might not find a Ritter pop up in your local 7-11. If you can find them, you should find a lot of them, and a lot of different varieties, but sometimes finding that pop up at all can be tricky.

I've only reviewed one Ritter Sport before here on the Candy Aisle, the Ritter Sport Espresso, which now that I look for it I can't seem to find in real life again. Please check out my review of that right here. But now lets have a look at the line up for Ritter Sport, here in the Great White North.

Starting with a few simple flavors Ritter is known for rich and creamy chocolate.

And then they've got the specialty Dark Chocolate.

And the specialty Milk Chocolate.

They've got a few nut mixes too. It seems like Ritter specializes in really good basic mixes, and I think that serves them well.

They all seem like sort of simple ideas, but these next ones are unique, especially on any mass scale.

Definitely interesting stuff here. Finally here are two flavors I think might be unique to Ritter. Not that they're so revolutionary, in fact I think they're great ideas that maybe should be obvious, but I can't think of anyone else to really feature these flavors in this kind fo form factor. Like I said, its very interesting.

Although I know there are more out there. In fact the Ritter Sport website lists something like 30 different flavors available, these are all the ones I see commonly here in Canada. Let me know if you've got a favorite Ritter Sport flavor or have anything totally off the wall from them in your neck of the woods. I'm hoping to review a few more of these soon on the Candy Aisle.

Thanks for joining me, and I hope you'll stay tuned for another look at the candy aisle big bars soon.