Review: Muscle Milk Light Chocolate Peanut Caramel Protein Bar

I've always known that Muscle Milk has its own line of nutrition bars, but I've always stayed away from them because I've primarily viewed them as being for the meathead types.  I know I've reviewed those types of bars on this blog before, but for some reason, I drew the line with Muscle Milk.  Despite that, I've had several of their protein shakes and have had a wide range of experiences with them.  With that ridiculous explanation now over, I was recently cruising through Meijer recently when I saw that Muscle Milk now had a light line of mars that were "New! Improved!", so I figured then was as good of a time as any to grab one for a review.  This Muscle Milk Light Chocolate Peanut Caramel Protein Bar itself set me back $1.33 (on sale) and is 1.59 ounces with 170 calories and fifteen hearty grams of protein.

As you can see with this bar, it is encased in hard outer chocolate coating.  Within the bar is the standard soy crisp base which is topped by a layer of particularly sticky and surprisingly gooey caramel.  Within that caramel are little bits of peanuts, so Muscle Milk did a good job covering all of the named ingredients when they put this bar together.  So, I guess I don't doubt their engineering skills, but based on my experiences with their shakes, I do sometimes doubt their cooking skills.

When I bit into this bar, the chocolate was the first immediate taste and while I'm sure it was an entirely manufactured chocolate, it was clear that they were going for milk chocolate taste on this one.  While they did get that taste a little bit, the ended up with an overall taste that was just off and had a foul aftertaste.  Not exactly appetizing.  As for the caramel, it tasted nothing like caramel at all.  In fact, it tasted metallic and was actually kind of gross.  Metal and foul aftertaste...is there really any point in me describing the rest of the bar?  I'd think not and since there really wasn't much else to the bar since the peanuts were missing and the soy crisp was standard stuff, there's not much else to say anyway.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This bar was just not good, so it gets a FLY BY IT rating.  As much as I tried to give it a chance, it was just too foul for me and I ended up throwing the last half of it into the garbage can.  I didn't want to subject myself to be any more uncomfortable and I suggest that you do the same.  I will say that if this is new and improved, I shudder to think what the old version had to be like.  Ugh.

FLY BY IT!!