Cadbury Crunchie

Product name: Cadbury Crunchie
Purchase details: £1.00 for a pack of four bars (tesco.com)
Calories: 185 per 40g bar
Country of origin: UK

The Cadbury Crunchie is a bar I associate with my childhood. It’s a product I like but I don’t love and, when included in Christmas selection boxes, it’s one of the ones I tend to eat first so I can save the best until last. But look at how few calories!

I did like the wrappers these bars came presented in. The gold, sparkly packaging was unique and reflected the colour of the honeycomb that was waiting inside, whilst the red writing stood out. I also had to smile when I saw that the individual wrappers had the phrase ‘Get that Friday feeling with Crunchie!’ written down the side. Since today is Friday, I’ve decided to thank Crunchie for this special day.

Each milk chocolate bar was quite long and contained a golden honeycomb centre. These elements were both present in the aroma but, I found, only one at a time – I couldn’t smell the filling through the chocolate.

Now, is it just me, or have Crunchies changed? I’m sure the chocolate used to be smooth, but these had a ripply surface. Inside, the honeycomb was pale and compacted at the edges, whilst its centre was amber and looked more like standard honeycomb, with larger holes.

I find it really hard to eat a Crunchie without sucking on it and letting it gradually disappear, so this is how I started off. The chocolate was standard and nothing amazing in itself but it did melt well. This was followed by the honeycomb which had a burnt toffee taste. It was, unsurprisingly, rough and I found that it dissolved at different rates. The outer edge was quite slow to melt but, once the centre was reached, it suddenly sped up. This was, of course, after it had unstuck itself from the tip of my tongue. There’s something about the experience that makes me think of licking batteries!

For research purposes, I did ensure that I chewed the bar, too, and guess what? It was crunchy! The centre of the honeycomb was also slightly sticky on the teeth. Again, I’m not sure if it’s my memory playing tricks on me, but I thought the honeycomb used to taste stronger than it did. It did still slightly catch at the back of the throat but, before that stage, it just didn’t seem that flavourful for some reason.

Whilst the Crunchie will never be a favourite of mine, I will always have a fondness for it, and I can’t think of any other mainstream products like it. I think it would be nice for it to have a thicker layer of chocolate, particularly as the honeycomb flavour was not overly strong when chewing, but there’s no denying that it was a pretty substantial snack for so few calories. 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 6.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.13/10