Purple and Pink, Do the Latest Localized Snickers Float or Sink?

Halloween may be over, but the candy saga continues. More than any other candy bar, the Mars company has pushed Snickers – its most loaded, hunger-satisfying chocolate bar – on the Chinese market. And on more than one occasion, it has stocked the country’s convenience stores with localized twists on the bar.

For instance, in 2018, Mars experimented with a mala spicy peanut Snickers, a reasonable venture into the land of candy with Chinese characteristics that took advantage of everyone’s favorite bar snack. Fine. The next year, celebrating the honor of becoming the exclusive chocolate supplier of the 2022 Olympics, several bizarre flavors were released such as peach, coconut, and even lemon. Okay.

Now, however, Snickers has gone in a different direction with black rice and purple potato (in pink and purple packaging, respectively) flavored bars. But this time, the question is not, “how does it match up to the classic Snickers?” Rather, “can this abomination even be considered Snickers at this point?”

Snickers has built its brand on satisfying hunger, exorcizing celebrity demons from the bodies of hungry commercial actors by the sheer power of peanut protein. The problem is that these “Snickers” bars do not contain peanuts – good news for those allergic to nuts, bad news for people who enjoy quality candy. Instead, the only protein is what little can be found in a thin layer of smashed purple potato or black rice.

That said, at least the flavored sludge pairs well with the caramel in the – oh wait, there is no caramel either. Meanwhile, the nougat is severely lacking as well. So what exactly did they fill the rest of the bar with, you ask? That is the most offensive part of this apparent attempt to create a healthy Snickers: the wafer. Not one, nor two, but three layers of wafer in a normally wafer-less snack, making the whole thing taste like a wafer, with the exception of the disagreeable aftertaste of the purple potato.

So there you have it – a lighter, blander, less filling version of a Snickers bar that bears no resemblance to the original apart from a logo on the wrapper. We just hope that this is either the last year Mars pulls one of these stunts, or that their China product development team gets their nougat, peanut, and caramel-filled shit in order.

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Images: Joey Knotts