Review: thinkThin Chunky Chocolate Peanut Lean Protein & Fiber Bar

I've repeated several times on this blog that when a manufacturer is starting a new product line, the first flavor (or one of the first) flavors that they always choose to deploy is some variation of chocolate and peanut butter and I can't say that I blame them.  It's a safe choice.  It's popular, it's got a proven track record of being desirable, it's easy, etc.  So, when thinkThin was looking to roll out flavors for their new Lean Protein & Fiber Bars, it seemed like an obvious combination.  What is amusing is that the obvious combination is often boring, which is why I have reviewed some of the other flavors first before I got to taking a look at this thinkThin Chunky Chocolate Peanut Lean Protein & Fiber Bar that I was able to pick up on sale at Kroger for $1.00.  The bar itself is 1.41 ounces and has 150 calories (lean) and ten grams of protein.

As I mentioned in previous reviews, the shape of the bar itself definitely takes after the name as this is a thin and lean bar by design.  Outside of that, the bar is then encased in a layer of thick dark chocolate with a peanut butter/protein mix containing soy crisps, etc. beneath that.  Outside of that, there wasn't much else to describe concerning the visual characteristics.  In terms of the other characteristics, the only one I can really touch on is the smell.  Everything about it was just kind off.  It was like rotten chocolate and rotten peanuts.  I'm not surprised by the smell of the chocolate since it was dark chocolate, but the peanuts surprised me, despite the fact that they were clearly roasted peanuts.  I guess I could describe that smell as burnt and quite honestly, it was not appealing.

Not only was the smell not appealing, but the flavor was not appealing either.  Had the peanut mix had a sweet or even typical peanut butter taste, maybe it would have been okay and would have done a nice job balancing out the flavor of the dark chocolate.  As it stood, the burnt (roasted) flavor of the peanut made an already bitter and foul dark chocolate taste even worse.  As for the chunky part of the product, I'm not even going to touch that one.  Nothing about this was chunky except for the fact that it had an occasional pop from a soy crisp that was in the peanut (butter) mix.  The general texture of this was chewy, but not a soft chewy.  It was gummy and tough and quite honestly, my gums hurt after eating this one.  Aching gums and bitter/foul flavor are not a good combination.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I have reviewed a product that generated this negative of a reaction out of me in a long time.  Frankly, this was awful and thereby gets a solid FLY BY IT rating.  I think thinkThin's mistake here was putting roasted peanuts AND dark chocolate into the classic chocolate and peanut butter combination. Had one of those been either milk chocolate or just regular peanuts, I think it would have been enough to keep this one safe.  Instead, the mix of the two was a double-dipping disaster that ended up being one of the worst products that I've had in a while.

FLY BY IT!!