As always, the full article can be read here, but Nestlé have announced their Christmas range of chocolate and suchforth, and here it all is below. Nothing here seems interesting to me, they’re reducing packaging, the recycling is better and they’re focusing on core stuff like Quality Street and After Eight, there doesn’t seem to be anything new here.

Christmas is a key time for confectionery sales and for 2008 Nestlé Confectionery will help independent retailers to maximise sales and profits by recommending a core seasonal range, from iconic Christmas brands such as Quality Street and After Eight, as well as the ever popular Smarties, Black Magic and Dairy Box brands.

A massive £11.5m marketing spend is planned to help drive footfall to stores.

Graham Walker, Nestlé UK Trade Communications Manager, says: “In 2007 there were 305 confectionery products for retailers to choose from, but just 72 delivered 80% of sales.

“Getting the right range is the most important factor in ensuring that independent retailers make the most of this vital seasonal opportunity. It is with this in mind that Nestlé Confectionery has developed its new Christmas range.”

This year Nestlé Confectionery will once again make a significant commitment to reduce packaging waste across its Christmas portfolio. This includes reducing the amount of packaging used, using more recyclable packaging and encouraging consumers to reuse and recycle through innovative on pack communication.

What’s more, benefiting from an additional 1.7m households in 2007, family sharing is the fastest growing occasion. In 2008 Nestlé Confectionery will offer an even greater support package for leading brand Quality Street, which will include the return of the successful Quality Street TV campaign from Christmas 2007.

Quality Street

Quality Street is synonymous with Christmas and is the number one family share confectionery brand, an achievement, which it has accomplished for the third year running! As a result the 1.2kg tin and 480g carton are must stocks for small shops.

Also key will be the newly rebranded Quality Street MY Favourites, designed to have broader appeal than the previously named Quality Street Big Ones, as seasonal impulse is a growing opportunity for incremental sales. This Christmas, Nestlé Confectionery is adding to its range with the launch of a new MY Caramel Swirl variant to accompany its MY Green Triangle and My Purple One sweets.

Adding further to the range, Nestlé Confectionery is re-branding Matchmakers under the Quality Street banner. The change, which is designed to target sofa led sharing occasions will be communicated by a strong support package that will include sampling, money off coupons and PR.

After Eight

After Eight is the dominant brand for table led sharing, with 45% of the market, and it also has the most loyal customer base. To capitalise on its position, After Eight will benefit from a new pack design and a range rationalisation. A £3m media spend will focus on the core 300g pack, which will also be available in a 50% extra free format to help drive further sales.

Kids Gifting

Confectionery is the biggest and fastest growing area of small gifts, up 61%. Giant tubes make the perfect treat or stocking filler and should be stocked early to drive repeat purchase, especially as they have seen strong growth over the last 3 years.

The major trend influencing mums is permissibility. In line with this trend and building on its No. 1 position Nestlé Confectionery is expanding its range with the launch of two great new packs – the Rowntree’s Pick & Mix Giant Tube and Blue Smarties Giant Tube. Smarties contain no artificial colours or flavours as does Rowntree’s, which also contains 25% real fruit juice and Milkybar is made from all natural ingredients.

The growth in selection packs in 2007 was driven by Nestlé Confectionery brands, which performed excellently, up 18%. This Christmas, Nestlé Confectionery will only use full size bars and will significantly reduce packaging by re-launching its range in smaller packs, a message that will be communicated on pack and in women’s press.

Walker concludes, “Reduced packaging has major benefits for retailers as smaller packs lead to better shelf and space utilisation. All Nestlé Confectionery’s selection boxes are now made from recycled board and the plastic trays are made from recycled bottles. In total there will be 231 tonnes less packaging in 2008 and there will also be on-pack messages to encourage kids to recycle.”

So I figured I should review the Revels before one of the flavours gets evicted off, and then I figure they’ll get a re-review once the new flavour comes out. Sound like a plan? Thought so. This pack was bought 2 days ago so it has the eviction slogan on it. “Which flavour goes? You decide…”, Big Brother much?

So what are Revels and why is there so much hype over them all of a sudden? Well, they’re a little plastic bag full of chocolate balls, with each chocolate ball having a different flavour. There are six flavours - Chocolate, Raisin, Coffee, Malteser, Caramel and Orange. The Revels are shaped as such that it can be hard to tell which is which, though in my experience the chocolate ones are always disk shaped, the Malteser ones are bloody huge and the raisin ones are tiny. Fingers crossed.

So there’s a campaign going on at the moment where the public can evict one of the flavours, and then I assume it is replaced by another, though that’ll (sadly) be of Mars’ choice it seems. So let’s ignore all of that and get to the taste of these things.

The chocolate ones were indeed disc shaped, and I only had two of them in the pack. Both of them tasted faintly orangey because of the orange Revels in there. Not a bad thing but perhaps a bit more quality control is needed. The Malteser ones are the huge ones and tasted like…Maltesers. Nothing bad about them at all. The orange ones were also fairly big, they’re very chalky but they have a nice taste to them. Same goes for the coffee, it’s a fairly milky tasting coffee which I quite like, but it’s so chalky it gets stuck in my teeth and it just feels so weird. Caramel is ok, I only had one in the pack and it tasted nice, not a problem with it except for it being very hard, more like toffee than caramel. And raisin is just…raisin. Tasteless dried fruit covered in ordinary milk chocolate, yum yum.

Overall, they’re not terrible, but they don’t excite me. Yeah so you don’t know which flavour you’re gonna eat next, but so what? When you like all of them then it’s hardly much of a risk factor. There’s no flavour here which makes me really want to buy these again, I personally think peanut butter should be brought in because it’s a market that’s growing a bit here, and people want it, and it’d certainly make me buy these again if done well.

Time will tell. Each pack has 168 calories, 1.9g Protein, 23.4g Carbohydrates and 7.5g Fat.

My last American review for a little while…hopefully, you boys sure do know how to put me off chocolate. Anyway, here we have some Mint Crisp M&M’s, which were new at the time of writing (mid-June) and released to coincide with the new (again, time of writing) Indiana Jones movie.

Each pack has a “fun fact” on the back, of which there are 16. I had fun fact 11! Wanna know what it was? Ok! When it came time to pick an actor to play Indy’s father, Sean Connery was always director Steven Spielberg’s first choice. Wow! And guess what? Mars put a M&M spin on the story too, wanna know that as well? Alright then! When it came time to pick a new color (sic <.<) to join M&M's Brand, Blue was the first choice of more than 10 million U.S. consumers. OH MY GOD. That is fantastic and my life is enriched because of it. Thank you Mars!

Ok, I overdid it there. Anyway, the pack looks nice enough. Indy is on the front, strutting his stuff with the green M&M, who I can tell is female due to the shape of her lips. No I didn't look TOO closely, stop judging me!

So let's open these up. Ok, they're open. I'm pouring them out and now they're all out. We have three different colours (proper spelling) here - dark green, light green and white. Each one tastes exactly the same, it's just to mix it up a bit.

They're slightly larger than normal M&M's, and after biting one in half, I saw that these are basically exactly the same as Crispy M&M’s! Oh wait, except for the mint flavour that comes through too. Do you have crispy M&M’s in America? I can’t be bothered to check, I hope you do otherwise it’d be odd to use that formula with mint but not on its own.

The mint is quite nice, these are quite nice. Maybe it was just me but when I bit into the crispyness, they tasted ever so slightly salty. Just a touch of it. I checked the back and…oh, there it is! They do use salt! I’m impressed with my palette but annoyed that they put that in there. I do not want to become addicted to your salt-sugar combos!

Oh yeah, like I said, these are nice. For the love of god Mars will you give us SOMETHING M&M-wise? I’m sick of the same three varieties on the shelves. Give us peanut butter, or mint, or some of those cherry ones or just something you cheap gits. I’ll buy enough to keep you afloat, promise (not really).

Each standard sized bag has 200 calories (80 from fat), 2g Protein, 27g Carbohydrates (20g of which sugars) and 9g Fat (5g of which saturates).

America has a habit of messing about with instituionalised systems for no reason. From the English language, to the metric system, and now Kit Kats, they like to do things entirely different to the rest of the world to suit their over inflated ego and…boy did I go off on one there. This is an American Kit Kat, hence made by Hershey, and not Nestlé.

I had a Christmas edition but I doubt it makes a difference except for the pattern etched into the Kit Kat. They had “3 cool designs”, whatever they mean by cool. Let’s see, crisp wafers in milk chocolate, the same sort of wrapper, it seems like a regular Kit Kat from the looks of things. Ingredients - Sugar, Wheat Flour, Nonfat Milk, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate. Lordy lord, why is chocolate so far down the list? I hate Hershey so much…

Open it up and it’s almost a regular Kit Kat. I’m sure that when it’s not a Christmas edition it’d be normal. Mine though was divided into two rather than four, with each pair of sticks culminating in one big stick at the bottom. Hard to explain I know, nevermind, forget I even mentioned it!

And there is a definite difference in the taste. What is the difference you ask? There isn’t much to a Kit Kat is there, it’s just wafer and chocolate…wait, chocolate, that’s it! Yeah, the chocolate here just plain sucks. Am I surprised? No. Are you surprised? Probably not. I mean, it tastes like chocolate, but it’s ever so slightly off, and it’s because it’s bad quality, basically. It has no creaminess to it, no milky flavour, it’s just chocolate with too much sugar.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. It didn’t taste bad, just not as good as a regular Nestlé Kit Kat. Those guys know how to do it right. Hershey should take their greedy hands off the Kit Kat and let Nestlé sort it out, for your sakes.

Each bar has 210 calories (100 from fat), 3g Protein, 28g Carbohydrates (22g of which sugars) and 11g Fat (7g of which saturates).

You may notice I now have a Subscribe page, this page speaks for itself in as much as it’s where you wanna click to either subscribe to The Chocolate Review either via RSS or email, and you’ll notice I also now have an RSS feed button at the top of my sidebar which actually works now, so I’m starting to give this website the attention it deserves.

If you have any ideas I’d love to hear them, either for site features or anything you want to tell me really, just holla at me.

Christmas chocolate in July!? This is madness! THIS…IS…forget it. “3 milk chocolate reindeers with white and dark chocolate decoration”. The dark chocolate is 60% cocoa solids, but as you can see there’s not much of it there, these are mainly milk chocolate based.

So the plastic pack these come in is pretty enough. Inside is another plastic tray with our Thorntons reindeers right there. There’s a spot the difference on the back, and Thorntons mention what cocoa beans they use too (of all the packages to mention it on). West African cocoa beans, primarily Forastero and Trinitario varieties, and 100% cocoa butter and no hydrogenated vegetable oil. How nice of them.

So let’s get stuck in. The dark chocolate is situated on the antlers, and the white chocolate as you can see is the entire head. When eaten all in one the white chocolate comes through with its creamyness, the dark chocolate doesn’t really come through at all. Milk chocolate is obviously the main taste base, and that’s what these taste like.

They’re quite nice, a bit overly sweet and a bit plain, the dark chocolate doesn’t really add much, and it has an uneven distribution between the three types of chocolate. Obviously aimed at children and I can’t see any of them complaining about it, unless we have some budding young chocolate reviewers about. Do we? I’m a bit worried now.

Each reindeer has 148 calories, 1.8g Protein, 14.1g Carbohydrates (13.7g of which sugars) and 9.3g Fat (5.9g of which saturates).

My final Valrhona bar, how depressing. I never wanted it to end but alas I knew it would someday. I’m not sure why I saved this one to the end, I’m not sure why I even bought it. I’m not a dark chocolate fan, I don’t have the palette for it, please bear this in mind before we even start.

This bar has 64% cocoa solids, not too shabby at all, when chocolate pushes 70% then I’m put off, but anything below that and I’m confident. This is from their Madagascar plantation, and here’s their blurb:

“Fresh, sharp bouquet. A blend of precious Criollo and Trinitario beans from Madagascar, Valrhona’s Manjari releases red fruit notes that captivate the senses.”

So there are a few things to touch on there. First off, Criollo and Trinitario beans. I wasn’t even aware they used two different types of beans! So I did some research and found the following out about both of them:

“Criollo beans fall into the fine flavor category of bean. Criollo beans produce chocolate with much richer and more intense flavors but at the same time more subtle than the other types of beans. Criollo trees are less resistant to disease, mature later, produce for fewer years, and produce fewer pods than forastero or trinitario trees. Perhaps the most highly prized criollo variety—it is certainly one of the rarest—is Porcelana, which comes from the Spanish word for porcelain, referring to the very pale color of the flesh of the fresh bean.”

“Trinitario beans are also fine flavor beans. Trinitarios are a deliberate hybrid of criollo and forastero beans developed on the island of Trinidad (hence its name). The trinitario is easier to grow than the criollo, but, while more nuanced in flavor than the forastero, is not as rich as the criollo. Trinitario hybrids are grown pretty much everywhere cacao grows.”

So basically we have two very high quality beans here. Criollo with its rich, intense flavours and Trinitario with its fine flavours and being easier to grow. I would assume they use more Trinitario beans due to them being easier to grow, but knowing Valrhona they may very well not, it’s hard to tell.

The box itself, same old story. The image is green this time, woo. The box opens, the gold foil wrapper inside, rip it open, here’s our bar. It’s obviously noticeably darker than the other bars, not that that’s a surprise. The taste is actually how they described, it’s a very sharp bar, it gets somewhat tangy as it goes on. There are hints of it being every so slightly milky in some places, and then the tangy, fruity flavour kicks in.

I enjoyed this and I’m not even a dark chocolate fan, so I can hardly imagine the pleasure that dark chocolate lovers will get from this. This is dark chocolate close to its best and if you can afford it and you want it, it’s definitely worth a look.

You only have to look at us chocolate bloggers to see how smart we all are and how the obvious massive quantities of chocolate we eat have aided this, but now it’s “official” and there’s an article on it at the BBC website here, but as usual I have reposted it below, complete with bold text where required, there is a video over on the website though so it’s worth a look.

A Norfolk headteacher has said there have been no exclusions from his school since he started rewarding pupils with chocolate for good behaviour.

Dr Andrew Sheppard began the scheme in 2005, since when exclusion days at Redcastle Furze Primary in Thetford have dropped from 65 a year to zero.

Critics said he was contributing to childhood obesity and dental problems.

But Dr Sheppard said: “It has improved behaviour, they are polite and… they have a sense of responsibility.”

In September 2005, Dr Sheppard pledged to give all 240 pupils a bar of chocolate if they made it to the half time break without any exclusions.

The scheme proved so successful it was extended term by term. Since then discos, picnics and Easter eggs have been handed out.

Internet poll

“We had people saying how terrible it was that we were bribing children and it was unsustainable,” he said.

“We had complaints saying we were contributing to childhood obesity and rotting teeth.

“But the children really liked it and it really works.”

Dr Sheppard said he hoped other schools would follow his lead.

Earlier this year in an internet poll of 2,581 parents, 27% said teachers were giving their children sweets and three-quarters thought it was a bad idea.

At the time the School Food Trust said it would be better to use healthy food as a reward.

Guylian…Opus? Opus? What on earth is that? Well according to Wikipedia it’s the Latin word for work. It’s also a music term, and after looking at the back of the box that’s evidently what it refers to. With chocolates entitled Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. it’s a musical Guylian selection box!

Described as a “symphony (haha!) of finest Belgian chocolates (filling 50%)”, these look decent enough, hopefully Guylian have actually worked with this one and so opus has a double meaning (see, I can do it too), rather than them lazily boxing their ordinary chocolates.

So ok, it looks nice enough on the front, some work has gone into the box. There’s a musical score on the box too, all very pretty. The box flips opens at the front and shows the list of chocolates right there. I’ve got to say I’m impressed, this is much better than those lame little sheets that come in other selection boxes.

I had to really zoom out to take this picture with everything there. As you can see there are eight types of chocolates, and two of each one. One thing Guylian have again put a ton of effort into is the design of each chocolate. Some of them are amazing to look at, from the multi-coloured butterfly to the pyramid, the flute and the drum, these are all huge chocolates and it almost pains me to eat them.

But, the taste is where it counts. Now, let’s say this first, these are absolutely delicious. Every one of these was lovely, and I greatly enjoyed it. But…a lot of them taste similar. This is something I mentioned I was worried about, and it’s happened. Even the ones that are really meant to be different such as the orange cream and the cappuccino cream aren’t that different, and far too many of these are hazelnut or praline based. Delicious, but…ah forget it, I’m nit picking, they’re just delicious, a marvel to look at and better than so many other selection boxes. Try these, they’re worth it.

Back to Valrhona again, I know where I am with these guys. Here is a milk chocolate with split pecans bar. Pecan and milk chocolate? That sounds nothing short of delicious, I was very excited when I saw this bar, and it takes a lot of self restraint to not dig right in.

It’s described on the back as “milk chocolate with a long tasting, mild flavour which blends perfectly with the crunchy texture of caramelised pecan nuts.” Yummy. Very yummy. The box looks the same as always, except today’s has a solitary pecan on the front. Other than that there’s not much to say that hasn’t been said already, so let’s dig in!

Box open, gold foil wrapper slit open, and the pecan laden bar stares us in the face. Like a lot of nutty bars, on the backside of this bar you can see where all the nuts are stuffed, making one side of the bar extremely pretty and the other side…not. Like all their regular 75g bars, this has 10 pieces which all break off easily. The bar smells somewhat nutty, though it’s not exactly screaming at me.

Breaking off a piece and you can see the pecans in the chocolate, some brown, some white. They’re extremely small, but the bar is absolutely laden with them, and they can be tasted right from the beginning. Letting it melt was an odd experience, with the chocolate gone I was left with a whole bunch of small nuts in my mouth, which tasted great, but like I say, a bit weird. Chewing down on the chocolate straight away meant it tasted much more chocolatey than nutty, as the pecans have a more subtle flavour than the chocolate, and than other nuts in general.

It’s a great tasting bar, the pecans are obviously nutty, the caramelised flavour comes through, and it all mixes so well together. Valrhona haven’t compromised on the chocolate at all, everything just tastes excellent. Another extremely high quality, and extremely satisfying bar from Valrhona. Impressive as always.