Next up: Hershey's Myrrh.

Hello again! It is I, your post-Christmas pal, ten pounds heavier from the feast yesterday. By Jove, that goose must have been as large as a Victorian urchin! 

Which is why, if I'm going to write about Hershey's new candy bar, I think I'd better do it now rather than after my doctor's appointment later in the week, when he discovers that my blood test result reads 70% Dark Brown Sugar. 

Hershey's unleashed its first new Hershey's branded candy bar since the Cookies 'n' Creme in 1995, a sort of white chocolatey bar called Hershey's Gold. It was in all the papers. It's said to be made of "caramelized creme," which tells you very little, and includes "peanuts & pretzels." Here it is, clothed and naked. 

A few things you notice right off:

🍫 It's not chocolate. It's not, in fact, just colored white chocolate either. I don't know what it is if it isn't white chocolate. You'd think you would be able to tell by the taste, but it doesn't really taste like white chocolate.

🍫 It's very thin, like the original Hershey bar, so the peanut and pretzel bits are microscopic. I couldn't really tell they were in there, except for the very satisfying crunch. It gives the bar a nice texture, but the flavor, especially of pretzel, is barely detectable.

🍫 They played with the pieces. A normal Hershey bar is just a line of rectangles that can be snapped off for sharing (yeah, right) but the Gold bar has pieces of differing dimensions and is not lined up. Those Hershey rascals!

🍫 I liked the flavor quite a bit, and I knew it was familiar, a taste from long, long ago. It took me some time to realize what it was, and it was a surprising revelation:

Mary Janes.

I'm sure some Halloween along the line you had Mary Janes, the peanut butter chew from 1914 that Necco still makes. The distinctive taste of the Mary Jane comes from its combination of peanut butter and molasses. That's what I got from the Hershey's Gold.

Molasses is not listed as an ingredient on the label, but sugar is, and that could include sugar extracted from cane in the form of molasses. Or perhaps the caramelization of the "creme" made it molassesy. I happen to like the taste of it, and it's definitely nice here, not overpowering.

So my review is: If you liked Mary Jane candies but you didn't like the way they resulted in or yanked out fillings, you will probably like the Hershey's Gold. It has a lot in common with white chocolate, but not the flavor. Of course, your mileage etc. etc., and I welcome your thoughts, reviews, and general snide remarks.

Just remember to compare notes quickly; after New Year's, it's kale all day, every day. 😭