Created by Mackintosh's back in the 60's and now owned by Nestlé, the Toffee Crisp is a simple proposition combining puffed rice suspended in toffee with a milk chocolate exterior. Personally, I still love the brand and cannot help but notice its vibrant orange and yellow packaging which still feels so retro in design. Therefore, when I saw this Honeycomb limited edition offering, I was more than happy. That said, I did take pause as I realised, in a world saturated with variations on a theme, I couldn't ever remember seeing a Toffee Crisp spin-off before. Suddenly appreciating the added novelty of this happy chocolate bar encounter I just knew I had to give it a write up.
THOUGHTS
Packaging:
By retaining the brand's basic colour scheme of highly saturated colours, this offering felt vibrant and fun whilst visually connected to the original product. The striped nature of the background design was suitably indicative of a bee and, thus, supportive of the bar's key selling point. As for the added 'Honeycomb' serif-style text, like the brand name, it was centrally aligned and orientated in a standard fashion across the horizontal, thus, giving the bar a very balanced, classic look that spoke of reliability and trustworthiness. That said, some fun was injected in to the text with the 'o's' offset a little from word's baseline and a yellow honeycomb-shaped graphic positioned at the letters' centres.
The reverse provided no extra thrills in particular. Black was used very effectively to make the content stand out from the bright background, whilst further picking up on the bee connotations with the black-yellow aesthetic.
Bar:
Sporting a nicely rippled milk chocolate exterior, the bar was a decent enough size and looked appetising. Taking a bite, textural sensations immediately hit the palette with the rice and honeycomb providing a pleasant crispiness alongside the chew of toffee. Quickly, the chewy toffee took centre stage and sweet, rich tones developed. Admittedly, at this stage I thought the flavour of the honeycomb had been overpowered by the toffee. However, as I continued to chew, I was delighted to find the honeycomb flavour emerged and eventually took centre stage itself. Admittedly, with the chocolate being as thin as it was it didn't get much of a look in, bar some general sweet milky notes, but, nevertheless, this was a tasty offering full of interest both in terms of texture and flavour.
SUMMING UP
It was nice to see Nestlé giving some attention to this brand, which had been largely left to do its own thing. The packaging was identifiably Toffee Crisp but, at the same time, built on the original design to bring a vibrant, summery tone that stood out amongst competing offerings. Whilst the bar equally tacked on a new dimension with all the textural points of interest there, as per the original, plus an undercurrent of honeycomb. Indeed, I was very impressed with the way in which the honeycomb flavour gently built up and eventually took centre stage at the end to round off the experience nicely.
BRAND LINKS
No comments:
Post a Comment