Nostalgia Doesn't Always Cut It

So this week I'm reviewing a very special trio of bars - Nestle's Girl Scout Cookie bars!

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you've probably heard me rave about my obsession with the elusive, overpriced, and absolutely delicious Girl Scout cookies. In fact, I've probably compared a couple of candy bars to them. Imagine how excited I was, then, when my sister told me there was a series of Girl Scout Cookie candy bars coming out (oddly, only sold at Walgreens). So excited I requested she send them through the mail as I couldn't wait until Christmas, when I will be back in NJ.

So my wonderful little sister gladly obliged, traveling to a far-flung Walgreens, and when I reached the last stop on my recent West Coast odessey, I found the bars (only slightly crushed and melted from their cross-country journey) waiting for me. Bliss!

So it took me this long to finally review them, and the anticipation was high on the day. Could it be possible that one of my favorite candy bars - Crunch bars - would pair with not one but THREE Girl Scout cookies - Coconut and Caramel, Thin Mints, and Peanut Butter Creme. I think I was actually bouncing in my seat with the anticipation.

And then I sampled the bars. At first, it was great. The three bars had different fillings, but the same structure - thin layered wafers alternated with flavored fillings, and covered with a thin layer of chocolate.  They also all bore an incredibly strong resemblance to their original cookie - the peanut butter crème was very peanuty, which went well with the vanilla wafer and milk chocolate coating, the caramel and coconut had layers of chewy caramel and coconut that tasted exactly like the cookie, and the Thin Mint version was fittingly covered in dark chocolate, with mint chocolate crème and chocolate wafers (and for some reason, the chocolate coating seemed thicker than other two bars.) But then it all started going downhill.

First of all, these bars bore absolutely no relationship to a normal Crunch bar. They were all a bit wafer-y, missing the satisfying heft and crunch from the crispy rice pieces in solid chocolate.In fact, I'm not sure why they were branded under Crunch bars at all – they're more like an oversized, bizarro Kit Kat.

And then it started getting worse. The strong flavors, which made the bars so strongly resemble the cookies on the first bit, got more and more sickly sweet as I went on. Also, the wafer/chocolate and filling ratio is all out, meaning you also start to get a dry taste in your mouth as you go along. Luckily, the bars are divided into two mini bars, meaning I could pawn off the leftovers on unsuspecting co-workers.

I was so disappointed! These bars were good on the first bite, but then quickly rendered inedible by the awful aftertaste. I think I was being too generous when I compared them to a Kit Kat before - these are a disappointment along the lines of the infamous Tronky. I actually even felt a little sick the rest of the afternoon.

A big disappointment for a superfan - I'm going to stick to the cookies. 1/2 bar.

Bar-o-Meter