72% Dark Chocolate was a plain, solid square. Instead of looking like a smaller segment of the larger bars with the World Market logo imprint, it just had a striated top.

The chocolate first melted into fatty lumps in my mouth before smoothing out. It had a light, nearly fruity sweetness with a dry, just shy of astringent finish.

Not bad, but not great texture-wise, and nothing to crow about. An O.

Pomegranate dark chocolate had a 64% base. It had a sharp snap with the same uneven melt as the plain dark chocolate.

The chocolate started with a nice touch of fruitiness that grew progressively stronger as it melted in my mouth. The flavor developed quite nicely, though I wouldn’t have pegged it as pomegranate. Some nice plain dark chocolates can carry such a fruitiness naturally.

I enjoyed the flavor, but the texture knocked it down a peg for me. An O.

Finally, the chipotle chili dark chocolate also had a 64% cacao base. It smelled quite smoky, as expected from chipotle chilis.

I usually love chili chocolate. When it’s well done, it leaves a slightly smoldering tingle in the back of your throat.

This bar packed a firey punch that did more than smolder – it burned painfully and set my whole mouth on fire, including an especially acrid burn in my throat.

It was far too spicy for my taste. A –.

I was curious as to exactly what World Market meant by toffee caramel. Generally speaking, your basic combination of sugar and butter is either toffee or caramel, depending on the texture, so how could something be both? I guess they were just trying to cover all their bases.

The chocolate bar had an unusual appearance. Flecked with bits of toffee throughout, it was funnily speckled and rather visually unappetizing in my opinion.

The toffee bits were visible along the break of the bar. Some looked craggy, while others looked light and full of air pockets.

It smelled strangely of spices with a strong overtone of anise. Blech. I hate anise, hence my aversion to licorice and fennel and absinthe.

Alas, that anise scent crossed over to the flavor of the bar. It just tasted off, like no toffee/caramel I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t handle more than a bite.

The texture didn’t help matters either. It had the same poor melt and deficient mouthfeel as their dark chocolate. A –.

Greetings again from the soggy Netherlands, dear ZOMG, Candy! readers. Today’s post is about a 150 gram bar I found at a local discount store, Wibra.

Wibra is good for generic 1 Euro utensils, deeply discounted name brand toiletries, socks, and an odd assortment of other goods. Basically a dollar store but across a variety of low prices.

Each time I’m there I try to find something that’s worthy of throwing at Rosa or trying for myself. Finally, I broke down, for your sake, to try the curiously named “Saturn”.

Saturn comes from ChocoTense, a brand of the Strootman Group. As a recovering prescriptivist, I am amused that they advertise themselves as “moving consumer goods discretely” But enough business-chatter. Let’s get down to chocolate tacks.

The bar was fairly well scored, but individual blocks were perfectly flat and unmarked. This just added to the already overwhelming feel of genericness. The blocks broke easily along the scores, but each time I did this, some shards resulted.

Little visual pips of the candies dotted the surface. Upon further reflection, I suppose they’re supposed to be like flying saucers of alien men from Saturn.

Sadly, the appearance made the bar look not entirely healthy. It’s also of note that the top is a bit scuffed up, likely as a result of it kicking around in my backpack for an afternoon.

Overwhelmingly, the flavor was bland milk chocolate, with hints of sour milk. To add insult to injury, a sticky gummy texture persisted, almost frustrating to get through, bordering on the mouthfeel of a Tootsie Roll. The miniature candies — similar to Nestle Smarties – were crispy and were definitely the highlight.

An unfortunate and inexplicable after-effect of heat and irritation in my throat came on after eating a few pieces. The overall experience wasn’t quite so bad that I chucked the remainder, but I found myself wondering what I would do with the rest of this unsatisfactory bar.

In the morning, I found that it was marginally better with my morning coffee but not worthy of any further consumption. Should you ever find yourself in line at the Wibra, skip the Saturn and reach for the Haribo bags. A –.

Spray/liquid candy is a weird genre. It was basically a tube of liquid candy with a little squirting nozzle attachment at the top. Each squirt delivered just a few drops.

My sample was Cherry Chase flavored. The candy blogger’s worry with cherry (and grape) flavored candies is that it will taste of cough syrup. Unfortunately, this fell right into that trap.

To be fair, the spray finished with a brightly sweet finish that wasn’t unpleasant. Still, the bulk of the flavor profile was that of artificial cherry with a horrid medicinal tinge. A “toss the remainder into the trash” –.

The wrapper promised chocolate, caramel, and peanuts. Two of the three were readily visible upon unwrapping the bar; it was completely covered in half peanuts and coated in chocolates.

The nuts were dry and crunchy with a light nuttiness. The chocolate contributed just a light cocoa-ness.

The center of the bar was a pale, golden brown. It was dry, chewy, and grainy and turned into a bland paste that tasted of protein.

Sadly, the chewy center was really unpleasant. I guess it was supposed to be the caramel part, but it didn’t taste like caramel at all. It just tasted like yuck.

To be fair, the purpose of the Oh Yeah! bar is to serve as a post-workout, protein-packed snack, so I didn’t expect it to be as delicious as a true candy bar. Then again, if they’re promising caramel, they should deliver! A –.

I’m not one who would buy sugar free candy for myself, but I was happy to give them a try. I’d had Crystal Light’s Sugar Free hard candies before, which I had found quite nice.

The candies were super sticky, so sticky that I couldn’t get the orange one cleanly out of its wrapper. That was likely due to the summer heat.

They came in four flavors: strawberry, lemon, orange, and raspberry. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a good handle on any of them.

I tried biting into a couple and immediately had to spit them back out. They tested overwhelmingly of musty paper. Sweet musty paper, sure, but still like paper!

That mustiness was so off-putting that I just had to get them out of my mouth. I threw the bag away, but not before noting that their best by date was given as 02/10/12.

I’ll concede that it’s possible that they wouldn’t have tasted so gnarly if they weren’t melting into the paper. But the Hi-Chews that I’ve been keeping in the same weather all tasted fine, so I’m still blaming Crystal Light for making an inferior product. A –.

Instead, they turned out to be little caramels with a blueberry flavored center. It looks like I wound up with the blueberry version of Neil’s Cadbury hazelnut treat.

The caramels were soft and chewy, with a texture similar to that of Starbursts, only grainier and not quite as sticky. The caramel flavor was rather boring, just generically sweet with a one-dimensional caramel flavor.

The center filling was where it went all wrong for me. It tasted weirdly artificial with dark plummy undertones that really didn’t mesh with the caramel at all.

In fact, the combination was downright off-putting. A –.

Peppercorn and Sesame was a dark chocolate square prettily decorated with a pink speckled white chocolate topper. It had a breathtakingly sharp peppercorn scent that was echoed in its acrid flavor.

The ganache also tasted weirdly floral. A light undertone of sesame wasn’t enough to counter the off-putting acrid floralness. I can see why it was on sale. A –.

The Ocumarian was prettily molded with fluted sides and the Moonstruck logo on top. Moonstruck’s website describes it as, “a ganache of dark chocolate derived from rare and exotic criollo cocoa beans from the Ocumare Valley of Venezuela, infused with ancho and chipotle chiles.”

The thick and smooth ganache was deep and rich with cocoa flavor, while the spices brought in a latent tingly burn. The dark chocolate shell tasted deep and dusky, with an incredible intensity. An OM for the awesomeness of the chocolate that formed the foundation of this truffle.

I bought the Chocolate Malted Cream Cone because of its striking appearance and because I love malt. It was described as “a milk chocolate and malted milk-flavored French butter cream, inside a milk chocolate cone, topped with dark chocolate and finished with a dusting of malt.”

The cone itself was milk chocolate, while the top was dipped in dark. The butter cream filling was incredibly airy, more like a whipped mousse than a typical butter cream. It melted very fattily on the tongue and tasted of cocoa powder and malt.

The sprinkle of malt powder on top brought a slight crunchy grit. I love malt, and I loved this. An OMG.

First up, a Belgian 41% milk chocolate infused with cocoa nibs. The chocolate was dark for a milk bar and scored into 6 even sections.

It had a weird plasticky, moldy undertone that was rather off-putting. The melt was mostly smooth, except where it was broken up with the crunch of the cocoa nibs.

While I wanted to like this bar for its organic-label, the chocolate was far from scrumptious, thanks to that weird undertone. An O.

The other bar was a Belgian 41% milk chocolate infused with cinnamon and nutmeg.

It smelled amazing! Sweet with the undertone of cinnamon spice. I wanted to mix it into tea and drink it up.

Unfortunately, the heavy spice scent was the result of an overly spiced bar. The strong presence of spices made the chocolate extremely gritty and astringent.

I found it unpalatable and couldn’t manage a second bite. A –.

Kheops was described as, “crunchy gianduja and whole almond.” It came in a pretty flat-topped pyramid shape with Kheops etched into the side.

The center gianduja was rather dry and pasty. It had a light, almost airy crunch that made me think there were rice crisps inside.

The chocolate and hazelnut filling tasted sweet and fruity with notes of citrus. Hitting the center whole almond bought a nuttiness to the confection, but the finish was still too fruity for my taste. An O.

Evasion was a square “hazelnut and almond praline” with leaves etched on top. It had the same citrus fruitiness of the Kheops.

The almond praline was featured in little crunchy toffee bits. They would have been a nice addition to nearly any treat, but the cloying, cocoa finish of the rest of the Evasion was off-putting enough to outweigh any praline benefit. An –.

Arabica was described pretty simply as “coffee mousse.” I thought it was the most visually striking, with the contrast between the chocolate brown coffee bean (not a real bean; it was made of chocolate) and the white chocolate coating.

Biting into the Arabica revealed even more contrasts – the inside ganache was milk chocolate. It tasted lightly of coffee with a slight, almost burnt bitterness. The whole thing made me think of Mocha Frappuccinos.

The ganache was thick and, like the other chocolates in this box, a tad too sweet for my taste. Another O.

Finally, the Coupelle, which was, “crunchy chocolate mousse.” It was a pretty little fluted cup of ganache topped with crunchy chocolate sprinkles.

This was by far my favorite of the bunch. It was made with dark chocolate. It was still sweet, but not as cloying as the others, and the cocoa flavors were deeper with red fruit notes.

And it had an amazing dusky finish that made it addictive. Furthermore, those chocolate sprinkles added a nice depth of cocoa flavor. An OM.

I’m really glad that I didn’t pay full price for these chocolates, as the Coupelle is the only one that I would want to eat again. Overall, not recommended, despite all the fancy packaging and hoity-toity names.