DeMet's Turtles: Original

Product name: DeMet’s Turtles: Original
Purchase details: £1.50 for a 33g bar (A Quarter of Sweets)
Calories: 170 per bar
Country of origin: USA

For some reason I’d convinced myself that I’d tried these DeMet’s Turtles before but, since I had no clear memory of this, I decided it was about time I bought them again.

These ‘caramel nut clusters’ specifically contained pecans and were covered in chocolate. The gold and red wrapper contained a bar that was split into two pieces that were intended to look like turtles (hence the name and the cartoon turtle wearing a top hat on the packaging!).

Now, let’s be honest...the reality of these chocolates looked absolutely nothing like turtles! Instead, I was greeted with a couple of randomly-shaped pieces that featured a relatively thick chocolate shell that was half-filled with a thick-looking and deep-coloured caramel that sat on top of a base of chunky nuts. There was a slightly sweet chocolate smell on offer but this wasn’t particularly strong or interesting.

The Turtles turned out to be nothing like how I expected so it turns out I’d not had them before! It took me a few seconds to adjust to the pecan flavour as I found it a bit unusual in this type of product, but it did work, and I was actually a little disappointed that the nuts weren’t more of a feature.

The caramel was by far the main feature and had a toffee taste that the milky but sugary chocolate mixed well with. Whilst the combination of ingredients didn’t taste quite how I’d expected, it was the texture that surprised me most, since the caramel turned out to be chewy rather than the  runny type suggested by the image on the wrapper. This took further attention away from the nuts since their crunch was partly disguised. Out of personal preference, I would have liked a runnier centre, but I was pleased that the caramel wasn’t at an unpleasant or jaw-breaking level of chewiness.

I’m struggling to think of any pecan-containing mainstream products on the UK market so it was nice to try something a bit different on this occasion. However, these DeMet’s Turtles: Original, whilst nice enough, didn’t do anything to make me want to make them a regular purchase. I’ll keep my eye out for the Cashew variety though!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10