Nestlé After Eight

I was originally intending to review the Hershey’s ‘Take 5′ today, but my digital camera ran out of battery just as I was about to take a picture of the bar! Absolutely terrible luck, and as I still haven’t found the charger for it, I had to put up an old review, so here we have Nestlé’s After Eight thin milk chocolate mints. These at least used to be marketed as a sort of upmarket chocolate, they were supposed to be a little bit posh, but I don’t think they’re really seen like that anymore, especially as I never see them advertised anymore at all.

I’m not sure how many varieties and styles of boxes they do, but I have here the 300g box, which has around 35 After Eight mints in it. Each square chocolate mint is about 1.5cm in length each side, and is wafer thin. It’s basically a spearmint fondant creme, covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate.

I’ve gotta say I do quite like these. It’s good to just pop one in after a meal to freshen up. I don’t think you could really eat these en masse, I haven’t tried it and I think it’d probably make me a little sick to do so. I guess when these first came out they were marketed as a posh, after dinner chocolate, but in these modern days we’re a little more enlightened, and our palettes have changed. So while these are still around, I don’t think they sell as well as they used to, and people don’t think they’re particularly posh either.

After Eight mints have recently become very popular in Japan though, with a lot of new flavours coming out there. They’re a little expensive so I doubt I’ll bother importing any, but we’ll have to wait and see. Each mint has 36 calories, 0.2g of Protein, 6.3g of Carbohydrates (5.3g of which sugars) and 1.1g of Fat (0.6g of which saturates).

One of the adverts from the 1980s can be seen below.

Nestlé Koshian Maccha Green Tea Kit Kat

The last Japanese Kit Kat for a while again. This is another green tea variety, Koshian Maccha this time. Again I’m not sure what the difference is between this and ordinary green tea, so if someone wants to fill me in there then I’d be delighted, but I’m lead to believe that it has red bean in this as well. I reviewed the red (azuki) bean Kit Kat a while ago, and was impressed with its sweet, nutty flavour. So with the green tea flavour as well, I’m looking forward to this.

The pack is a lighter green than yesterday’s, which bodes well as far as I’m concerned. The bar is also a lighter green, and instead of smelling like tea, it just smells…sweet. There isn’t much aroma to it other than a very sweet smell.

The taste is sadly very plain as well. It’s hard to make out anything at all, I think there’s a little green tea there, but that’s only because it said so on the pack, so I’m really looking for it. Other than that, all I get is a sweet, creamy chocolate flavour coming through. It’s nice, just not what I was expecting.

A little disappointing in the end, there isn’t much to this bar. It’s a cross between the chestnut and the Uji-Kintoko green tea bars, but both do what they set out do better.

Note: These have been discontinued so if you want them then get them in ASAP. I’ve seen them around eBay but they’ll only last so long.

Nestlé Uji-Kintoki Green Tea Kit Kat

I don’t know what Uji-Kintoki Green Tea is, at least when compared to just ordinary…green tea. I doubt I’ll be getting many Google referrals from it though. I assume it has something to do with the tea leaves used, but in the end this is just a Kit Kat, how complicated can it be?

Hopefully not very, it looks like it may be strong. The wrapper is a dark green colour, and so is…the bar. Yeah, a green chocolate bar. It looks so tasty…still, in the interest of this blog…

The bar actually isn’t that bad. I bit into it, and my mouth was filled with a musty, bitter green tea flavour. It didn’t taste great, but I went through it, and all of a sudden it subsided a little and became creamy. Still with the green tea taste, just not the sort of bitter green tea feeling. That made the bar much better, though it’s still a strange one.

I don’t think I’d get this one again. It wasn’t bad, but it was just a little odd and not really to my liking. Then again I don’t like green tea that much anyway. If you do like it then there’s obviously a much higher chance you’ll like this, but I’m not making any promises.

P.S. I’ve since done some research before actually publishing this post. It turns out that this was red bean, maccha (green tea) and…condensed milk flavour. Well I guess that’s how I managed to get a creamy taste, but I’ll be damned if the condensed milk doesn’t put me off a bit. Also if you don’t feel a little ill from looking at the bowl of gloop in that picture that Nestlé of Japan have actually put on the front of these packs, then you have a strong stomach, because I know I feel just a little sick from looking at that.

Nestlé Waguri Chestnut Kit Kat

Chestnut is a popular ingredient in traditional Japanese desserts, so it’s not surprising to see a Kit Kat that has been chestnut flavoured finally come out. It’s not a common ingredient here though, so will my taste buds accept this strange, new flavour?

The pack is an off-white colour, a slightly dark white or pale brown, depending on how you see it. It has some Japanese writing on the front that I can’t understand, it’s probably just the name of the flavour. Opening the pack reveals the Kit Kat, which is the same colour as the pack.

It smells sort of roasted. Sweet, but a roasted nutty scent to it. The taste is absolutely delicious though. It’s very creamy and nutty at the same time. That may make it sound like hazelnut or something, but it’s nothing like that.

It’s not too rich, but nice and sweet and just a great flavour. I’d definitely want to try this one again. Shame it only came in the small 2 finger pack.

Nestlé Exotic Hokkaido Blueberry and Cheese Kit Kat

Kit Kats are back! Just a few that I got in recently, and here’s the first of four: Exotic Blueberry and Cheese.

In some cases, the word ‘exotic’ is a good thing, usually meaning something you’re not used to, but very pleasant. In this case though…exotic blueberry and cheese…suddenly the word ‘exotic’ takes on a whole new meaning. This is slightly different to the Blueberry Fromage Kit Kat I reviewed awhile ago, these have been created by Iron Chef Takagi, so are the ‘posh’ Kit Kats, and from what I can tell only come in very small packs like the one pictured.

The Kit Kat itself here looks like an ordinary white chocolate Kit Kat at first glance, but when bitten into you can in fact see that there is a purple cream between the wafers, which will be the blueberry flavouring. The taste here is really good as well.

What you get is a slight tang of blueberry, mixed with the pungent taste of the cheese. They go together really well, it’s a slightly plain taste, but it’s quite pleasant and whilst I wouldn’t go to the efforts to get this in again, I wouldn’t mind having it again at all.

Nestlé After Eight Munchies

I’m not actually sure if I should be calling these After Eight Munchies, because as you can see in the first picture, this pack merely says ‘After Eight’. The front of the pack also proclaims ‘After Eight – Mint Munchies made better’, at least I think that’s what it said because when I tried to open the pack carefully it was all sticky and that proclamation was ripped apart, so I’m going by memory here.

The design on the package is fairly normal After Eight business. The shades of light and dark green, with the After Eight logo (a clock showing the time to be just past 8 o’clock), and a picture of one of the After Eight munchies on the front. They make it look good, no biscuit this time round, just the chocolate case (plain chocolate this time) filled with mint flavoured fondant creme, that tastes of course exactly like After Eights.

I tried to make it as obvious as I could in my other 2 pics, but in case you can’t tell, these things look AWFUL. The chocolate was all chipped, there were cracks in them, scuff marks and holes, you name it. I thought the Munchies yesterday looked bad, these were a ton worse. Extremely offputting, but I ate them anyway, despite obvious disgust written all over my face.

Turns out they’re actually not that bad. My only gripe is that they’re really sweet, it’s either because I’m eating these at 1:30am, or because they contain a load of sugar, but they started to hurt my teeth after the third one. When bitten in half the mint creme actually almost falls out over the place, it’s sticky but it’s plentiful, so I recommend just popping the entire thing in your mouth.

Are these better than Mint Munchies? I don’t know, because I don’t remember eating Mint Munchies that often. They’re better than regular Munchies though. It’s just like eating bite sized After Eights here really, because the taste is identical. The nutritional information on these is much more detailed than on the Munchies, which confuses the hell out of me, and I wish Nestlé would standardise things like that, but there you go.

I’d recommend these if you want a mint based chocolate snack, they look dreadful, but the taste is pretty good. They’ll certainly satisfy your sweet tooth, if nothing else. Each pack has 267 calories, 2.3g of Protein, 41.8g of Carbs and 10.1g of Fat.

Oh yeah, the pictures are now thumbnails, which means you can click on them and view them in their original size. This’ll make things easier, rather than having to squint to view my 150×112 pictures from before.

Nestlé Munchies

Before I begin, I’ll point out that yes, this is me on film. The webcam is atrocious, but it just about gets the point across. I’ve got no problems showing my face on camera, so once I’ve got a bunch of old reviews out of the way (stuff I’d already eaten before I got the camera) then you can look forward to seeing more of my ugly mug in pictures. I try to use various expressions to get my point across. Should be fun.

Those of you who like to partake in recreational drug usage, will most likely be familiar with the term ‘munchies’, the term meaning when you’re high and become very hungry, and need ‘munchies’ (i.e. food) to satisfy your insatiable appetite. Here, munchies means something different, here it is a chocolate snack.

As you can (hopefully) tell from the pictures, what you get here is a long tube filled with 12 chocolate cubes. Each cube as a biscuit centre, which is then covered by caramel, and then covered again with a layer of milk chocolate. It sounds good, but I’ve had plenty of chocolate in the past that looked and sounded good, yet wasn’t at all.

In fact, these don’t even look good. The chocolate is a poor quality, sort of cheap looking and not too pleasant. The caramel is plentiful and quite thick, but the biscuit centre is…not good. It overpowers everything else with its…well, just bad taste.

I found that eating these in quick succession with just a few bites and then swallow was the best way to do it. They were actually tasty when I did that. But with my last few I had to savour them in different ways in order to get a good feel for the flavour. And quite honestly they were not good when savoured.

The sad thing about these is that they’re also quite expensive. As if Nestle are trying to make us believe these are a high class product or something. Well they’re not fooling me, these are just not that good at all.

The entire pack has 273 calories, 2g of Protein, 34g of Carbs and 13g of Fat.

Nestlé Mirage

Hailing from Canada is the Mirage bar. It’s billed as ‘Bubbly Milk Chocolate’, which sounds like either an Aero, or one of the old school Wispa bars I guess.

In fact, upon opening the pack, this thing really did start to resemble a Wispa. A long milk chocolate bar, quite thick, ordinary milk chocolate. It didn’t smell cheap or anything, just good chocolate. Biting into it reveals that the inside is all bubbly, again like an Aero or a Wispa.

It tastes very good too, there’s not much to it which is good in this case. No hidden caramel or peanuts or anything, just bubbly chocolate covered in another layer of chocolate. and really…that’s it, I don’t know what else I can say about this, and Nestlé certainly don’t help me, because the package is very plain and that’s all the product info there is.

There’s 215 calories, 25g of Carbs, 11g of Fat and 3g of Protein in this bar. If you’re a fan of Aero or Wispa bars, then definitely get this, it’s a very good bar, and while it may sound like I’m being harsh, it is a little boring.

Nestlé Milo

This is an interesting one, or at least it was before my friends at the Chocablog reviewed it. This is from Australia and is made by Nestlé. It’s billed as energy food, ‘soft on [the] top and [with] a crunchy mild base’. Now when I think of energy food, I think of either protein bars, or those ‘super’ carb bars from Lucozade or whoever. I’ve tasted a few protein bars in my time, and most of them taste awful. This isn’t a Protein bar though, in fact looking at the nutritional information it looks like a standard chocolate bar, and with sugar as the first ingredient, then I’m pretty confused here.

Opening the pack, it looks a little like a Toffee Crisp. Tastes like it as well. I’m not sure what is ‘on top’, but it’s not soft, it’s hard and toffee-like. The base is crunchy though, with a lot of puffed rice there. I really can’t think of anyway to describe this except for an Australian Toffee Crisp. And energy food? Sure, I suppose sugar is a form of energy, but no one calls chocolate energy food.

It’s not bad, but it’s just annoying what Nestlé have tried to pull here. It’s not energy food, and it’s not anything new as far as my taste buds are concerned. If you live in Britain, just eat our Toffee Crisps.

This has 280 calories, 29.5g of Carbs, 13.6g of Fat and 3g of Protein.

Nestlé Aero Temptations Caramel

This is from Australia, but I’m pretty sure that we had these in the UK as well. I’m also pretty sure that this is no longer being made, and the one I’m about to eat is in fact out of date, so it may effect the taste of this, but of course I’m hoping that it isn’t.

I don’t really remember these coming out when they did, but I never paid attention to Aero bars much back in the day anyway.

This is a long bar with aero bubbles on the bottom, and thick caramel on the top. It’s quite like the Wispa that we used to have years ago.

I’m pretty sure being out of date has changed the taste of this somewhat, the chocolate tastes a little off, but fortunately the caramel overpowers the chocolate a little, and it tastes very good. The bubbly chocolate is standard Aero fare. And regardless of how out of date this is, it’s still a ton better than the Japanese Aeros.

It has 205 calories, 25.4g of Carbs, 10.5g of Fat and 2.3g of Protein.