Raising the bar

I’ve blogged about See’s Candy before. Little bites of heaven in an old-fashioned box (since 1921). Conceived and executed in California, See’s has stuck with me as my favorite candy since about 1955 (despite many side trips into other, sometimes way more expensive, exotica). Although See’s has attempted forays into other parts of the continent, it never really took hold and I’m not really sure why that is. It’s always good stuff with a great variety of individual recipes for their bite-sized wonderfulness’s.

But something has happened that recently came to my attention. See’s is making and marketing their own line of candy bars. Although I’m slightly chagrined that an old favorite is marching on (I try not to live in the past); I’m still not convinced they can be successful. They are taking an adjective, the word “awesome” and turning it into a noun, AWESOME candy bars; e.g. Awesome Nut & Chew Bar, Awesome Walnut Square Classic, Awesome Peanut Brittle Bar...you know, like that. What they’ve done is take the recipe for some of their best (self perceived) chocolates and quintupled the volume, packaging them separately as candy bars.

To me, there is a problem with this. Biting into a small chocolate morsel is different than eating a candy bar. You get the blast of chocolate taste with whatever filling has been devised, so everything is self-contained in one bite (or two, for the dainty). With a candy bar you start at one end and work your way down, every bite exactly like the one before it. What happens is that the taste buds start to recoil at the repetitiveness and the sweetness becomes too powerful. In other words; too much of a good thing!

Usually (said very carefully), I can eat one or two morsels from a box and let it go at that, sometimes for as long as 24 hours! A candy bar normally demands completion in one sitting. So there’s the diet thing going on there…although I was trying to avoid that subject. After all, a discussion about candy and diet is not very convincing, either way. I’m not saying you should avoid the candy bars…but what’s an informed consumer to do in this situation? My advice is to, in this case, live in the past. Or, for goodness sake, eat a banana.