Peter Paul® Almond Joy® Chocolate! Chocolate!
Although the marketing of variant, limited-edition products based on tried-and-true favorites is nakedly just an attempt to revitalize old brands, I'm all for it. Though the products are often bad, outright nasty, or, perhaps worst of all, no different from the originals, I like seeing marketing in action. Especially when it results in weird shit that disappears from the shelves so quickly that you're ultimately not sure they were ever there in the first place. I've tried unsuccessfully to convince several people of the all-crunchberry Cap'n Crunch (marketed as Oops! Crunch Berry), about which I'm still kicking myself for not buying up an entire palette.
Hershey has been foisting lots of limited-run candy bars onto the marketplace with little fanfare, usually reversing the concept of a given candy to give it previously unimagined "shock value." White chocolate on a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup?! Get out! Hershey's Cookies n' Cream with milk chocolate?!? Shut your fucking mouth!!! Not that anyone reacts so strongly. At any rate, here's Almond Joy Chocolate! Chocolate!, which breaks the Almond Joy convention of using milk chocolate (that and the almond are what differentiate it from Mounds) by covering it with dark chocolate, and using a choclatey coconut filling instead of a white coconut filling. Does it taste much different? No. Is it delicious? Yes. I kind of want them to get increasingly cynical and release Almond Joy No Nuts, which would actually just be Mounds. Or, better yet, Almond Joy, No Nuts, which would just be Almond Joy, but with an emasculating taunt in the name. Whether brazen hostility sells candy bars is up for discussion.
Review by Prez, First Teen President |