The Kinder Surprise was a thin-shelled hollow egg. Inside the egg was a sealed yellow cylinder containing a toy. That combination of toy and food is what makes them illegal in the U.S.

The chocolate managed to squeeze two layers into its thinness. The outside was milk while the inside was white.

The chocolate had a thick melt with a dusky, sweet finish that had a bit of fruitiness. It was a bit too sweet for my taste, but the chocolate was so thin that there wasn’t enough of it to be overwhelming.

The chocolate was unexceptional and gets an O. But really, no one buys Kinder Surprise for the actual candy. It’s all about the toy – check out surfing Daffy Duck up there! And remember, don’t eat that toy!

It seems like Kinder is trying to play up the pseudo-healthiness of these bars. See that blue square touting more milk, less chocolate?

Each of the eight bars were individually wrapped in paper. They were nicely sized – slightly bigger than a Kit Kat finger – for snacking with portion control.

Each bar was pseudo-divided into 5 segments, and each segment’s top was stamped with a little crown-like decoration.

The bars were milk chocolate on the outside with an off-white, nearly yellow cream filling.

The milk chocolate was thick and creamy. It tasted sweet and slightly nutty, with that classic Kinder chocolate and praline taste.

The center filling brings lovely vanilla dairy notes that float above the rest of the bar.

My friends who got to try this and I all really enjoyed it. It’s a nice simple, sweet, and scrumptious snack – a great little creamy pick-me-up. An OM.

Everything on the wrapper was written in both Dutch and French. My French isn’t that great, but I got that these were made with milk and hazelnuts, and I’d loosely translate the description as “two individually wrapped bars of white chocolate and cocoa meringue bits”.

The underside of the bars were coated with these little crunchy cocoa beads, and each of the four segments wore a stripe of the beads as well. While I think they were called meringues, they tasted like cocoa powder cookies.

The outer shells were airy, crisp wafers that provided structural stability and a pleasant crunch. Each segment pod was filled with an amazingly thick and creamy white chocolate filling.

The tasted strongly of milk and vanilla and was reminiscent of really high quality frosting. I didn’t get any hazelnut flavors, but I didn’t really care.

The filling was quite sweet, but it was nicely tempered by that wafer shell. It’s basically a non-cute version of the biscuit Kinder Happy Hippo, but with chocolate sprinkle/cookie bits.

The Kinder Bueno White was tasty and delicious (thanks, Neil!). I rated it an OM before I reread my old Happy Hippo review and saw that the Hippo version earned my highest rating. Looks like presentation does count for a lot!

The two halves of Joy egg are split. One half contains a toy (in my case, a lame Ice Age 3 – yes, they apparently made an Ice Age 3 – badge), while the other half is a creamy spread studded with two chocolate cookie balls. Each half is individually sealed so that the spread doesn’t get on the toy (and vice-versa, I suppose). Finally, a flat plastic “spoon” is included to scoop up the spread.

The spread is a layer of white chocolate on hazelnut chocolate. It has the viscosity of Nutella – smooth and thick and glossy, but just short of the runniness of honey. Inside the spread are two chocolate balls comprised of chocolate ganache surrounded by a thin wafer shell covered in chocolate and crunchy chocolate sprinkles. They’re similar to Rocher balls, but smaller and without hazelnuts.

If you try to pry the balls out of the spread, a half shell of chocolate and sprinkles gets left behind, which imparts a nice crunch to the spread. Overall, I found this treat too sweet to eat on its own. The balls are managable, as their wafer shells help cut the cloy, but eating the spread is akin to eating straight frosting: okay for a lick or two, but too much beyond that. It did go nicely on bread, however.

All in all, a nice treat, but I’d rather buy a normal Kinder chocolate treat, like a Happy Hippo, Bueno, Rocher, or Duplo, and just put Nutella on my bread. The Joy gets an O, with the caveat that it would be great for gift-giving as soon as they stop coming with lame-O Ice Age 3 toys.

Kinder’s Happy Hippos, like nearly everything made by Kinder/Ferrero, is tinged with hazelnut deliciousness. The Hippos come in two varieties, cacao cream (left) and biscuit (right). Both varieties consist of hippo shaped wafers (complete with eyes, nostrils, and eyebrows) filled with flavored cream and half dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. They differ in that the cacao cream has, well, a cacao (cocoa) flavored cream, and while the Cacao Hippo can be found submerged in a lake of chocolate, the Biscuit Hippo’s prefers a lake of white chocolate.

The wrapper of the Biscuit Happy Hippo shows milk and hazelnuts, and that’s what you get in lovely combination in this chap. The light wafer crunch of the Hippo stands in sharp contrast to the thick hazelnut and milk cream that fills its three pods – bum, head, and nose. The fillings are so thick and creamy that they’re moisture-suckingly good, even if the finish is rather cloying.

The wrapper of the Cacao Hippo calls the filling fat-reduced. Clearly I should take that to mean that I can eat a bloat of Happy Hippos (yes, a group of hippos is called a bloat) and not have to worry about personally bloating from Hippo-related weight gain, right? There are two layers of cream inside, one brown that tasted of cocoa and one white that tasted of milk and vanilla. Online ingredients lists for the cacao cream Hippo lists hazelnuts in the ingredients, so the milk layer may have been the same as the filling of the Biscuit Hippo, but I didn’t taste any hazelnut in the filling of the one I got. The filling of the Cacao Hippo was thinner, which meant that it didn’t coat the mouth or cloy.

An ZOMG! for both because I am a sucker for chocolate and hazelnut things and cute things.

The packaging on my Kinder Cereali is all in Italian because I got it from my friend Andrew, who was lucky enough to spend his spring break in Italy. All expenses paid, I believe, as he is a geology major. There are few geology majors at Yale, so even undergrads get special treatment and get to do cool things and go on cool trips.

Unlike most Ferrero/Kinder products, the Kinder Cereali contains no hazelnut. Instead, it is chocolate-covered puffed wheat and a frosting-like confection. I guess if the wheat is supposed to be like cereal, the frosting is meant to approximate milk? If so, then this bar is reminiscent of those horribly processed Milk ‘N Cereal bars that General Mills makes.

I love how the Cereali looked outside of the wrapper. It’s already tiny as it, more fun-sized than full-sized, and even still it’s neatly pre-segmented. And the little imprints of heads of wheat are a lovely touch that make the whole thing quite darling (can you tell I’ve been in England for a couple of weeks now?).

The puffed wheat was, for me, an unexpected taste sensation because it was different from the usual candy bar go-to of crisped rice. The wheat was similar to puffed rice, but with more texture and flavor. Think Smacks instead of Rice Krispies. The milky white frosting that surrounded the wheat puffs tasted blandly of blah vanilla frosting. Finally, the layer of chocolate that coats the whole thing is quite thin but creamy.

The Kinder Cereali wasn’t bad, exactly, but it wasn’t good either. It just kind of… was. And though the use of wheat instead of rice made it different, it didn’t really make it better. Just a non-negative, tepid O.

The Duplo is composed of two crisp, crunchy wafers: a flat one to serve as the base and one with three spherical humps to serve as the top. I’m going to guess that the wafers are the duo that the name insinuates. Each hump is filled with a smooth and creamy chocolate paste with a whole hazelnut inside. I found the whole hazelnut to be surprisingly bland, and the filling itself didn’t have much of a hazelnut flavor. Overall, the Duplo was super sweet, but the sweetness didn’t linger or burn the throat.

The Duplo is extremely similar to the Rocher, minus the chopped hazelnuts on the Rocher and with a less hazelnutty paste. The wafers, as far as I can tell without having a Rocher handy for comparative purposes, are the same in both. It also reminded me of the Kinder Bueno, but not as good, as the Bueno had a thicker paste and more hazelnuttiness.

Despite the fact that I wished for more hazelnut flavor, the Duplo was still a wonderful treat. OM for its indulgent, creamy richness.

I used to eat these very methodically when I was younger. First I would carefully nibble away the outer chocolate and crushed nut layer, exposing the sphere of chocolate wafer. Then I’d eat half of the chocolate wafer, leaving me with a little wafer bowl filled with the smooth chocolate/hazelnut creme and the whole hazelnut. Next was the whole hazelnut, followed by careful, slow licking away of the chocolate/hazelnut filling, and finished by crunching up the second half of the wafer shell.

Now that I’m older, I know that these aren’t as fancy or as high-end as I thought they were. But they’re still delicious, and there’s a reason they’re so popular. The strong hazelnut flavors keeps the sweetness of the chocolate and Nutella-like filling from being overwhelming.

An OM. No G because I probably overdosed on these as a kid, and they’re quite ubiquitous, so they’re not as special as they should be.

The individual chocolates are individually wrapped in shiny gold paper to look like tiny gifts. However, once unwrapped, you can see the inferiority of the chocolate. Mine had a little bloom on it, and it didn’t look that appetizing. I wanted something with a nice gloss and sheen to it. Instead, I got ashen chocolate. Boo!

The outer chocolate layer had an okay snap and an okay taste. The one I tasted had a whole hazelnut in the filling, plus several chopped up hazelnut bits. I didn’t like the texture of the filling. It was crumbly, while I would’ve preferred something smoother and creamier, like a hazelnut ganache. The taste was great – slightly chocolatey and super hazelnutty – but I couldn’t get over the mouthfeel issue.

I give these an O. I ate one in my package of four and was happy to give away the rest. They’re not bad, but they’re nothing special, and there are better chocolate/hazelnut candies out there.

The Kinder Bueno consists of hazelnut creme inside crispy wafers that are enrobed in milk chocolate. It comes in two segmented sticks, so it’s nicely portion controlled and easily shareable. I was pleasantly surprised that the sticks came individually wrapped. Wasteful, yes, but perfect if you want to eat one now and save the other one for later. Or if you want to eat one now, save one for later, have the saved one discovered by a chocolate-loving friend, and find yourself graciously sharing your saved Kinder Bueno.

The hazelnut creme inside the Kinder Bueno is super rich and thick. The hazelnut flavor of the creme is strong, and that nuttiness is enough to keep the creme from being too cloying. It also pairs well with the dry texture of the wafer it’s encased in. My only complaint is that the wafer is a little too dry and a little too bland. Then again, maybe Ferrero knows what they’re doing. It’s possible that a sweeter, more cookie-like wafer could send the Kinder Bueno into too-sweet territory.

I give these guys an OM because they’re on the pricey side. For the price of two Kinder Buenos, I could get a whole jar of Nutella instead (though with the way I adore Nutella, that jar may not last much longer than two Kinder Buenos).