Review: Pure Fitness Nutrition Krave Peanut Butter Jelly Crunch Protein Bar

Pure Fitness is a manufacturer that reached out to me as a way to market their new line of protein bars.  With that outreach, they sent me a couple of bars to try out and today's review is the first of those two.  This Pure Fitness Nutrition Krave Peanut Butter Jelly Crunch Protein Bar is modeled after a childhood favorite food of mine, so it had to be the first of the two bars that I tried out because I was so intrigued by how they would transform one of my favorites into a protein bar, although the sandwiches of my childhood mostly used grape jelly, but this one is instead modeled after strawberry jelly.  Before I dive into the review, this bar's essentials are it is 2.5 ounces, has 242 calories with twenty grams of protein and is also all natural.

When I took this bar out of the wrapper, the first thing that I noticed in a huge way was that this truly smelled exactly like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it was a strong smell.  To say I was giddy and excited would be an understatement.  Obviously, smells are made up of materials and within the mix of this semi-stick bar (from the peanut butter) was chia seeds, oats, pretzels and strawberry jam.  I must say, I didn't put pretzels in my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I was growing up, but I can appreciate the fact that Pure Fitness Nutrition is trying to add a bit of crunch to the sandwich.

After taking my first bite, there were two things that I immediately noticed.  First, this bar had a strong bread-like taste and being that this was modeled after the sandwich, that's obviously a positive.  The other primary thing that I noticed was that this was extremely dry and while the bar was soft, it was tough to chew because it kept drying out my mouth with each bite.  As for the peanut butter and jelly flavors, there were noticeable but not particularly strong or sweet in any way.  They were just there.  It was almost as if someone made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with minimal amounts of peanut butter and jelly leading to a flat taste, thus making it a mostly bread sandwich (I did the exact opposite as a kid and used TONS of peanut butter and jelly).  One compliment I do have is that the most surprising ingredient here, the pretzels, was actually a strong positive to the sandwich.  Their presence added some surprising crunch to the mix and that was nice because with the flat flavor of the bar, this needed some crunch to break up the monotony.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Despite the fact that the pretzels did a good job breaking up the monotony of the sandwich, it was just still too boring for me.  Due to that boring quality, I give this a FLY BY IT rating.  It's not that this was gross or anything like that...it was just blah.  With something that started out with so much promise based on its incredibly wonderful smell, the fact that this fell flat in flavor was beyond disappointing.  Hopefully the next bar Pure Fitness Nutrition sent me will be a different experience.

FLY BY IT!!