Review: Level Life Chocolatey Peanut Crunch Bars

I like cheap things and I also like clearance sections.  Sometimes both of those things meet and I find something really cheap in a clearance section that is a diamond in the rough and that makes my day.  Simple pleasures for simple minds, I guess.  In the case of today's review, I was in a clearance section at Kroger and found something that while it was not cheap, it was at least less expensive than normal and that led me to pick up this box of four Level Life Chocolatey Peanut Crunch Bars for the clearance price of $2.99.  Within this box are the aforementioned four bars and each bar is 1.41 ounces and has 140 calories and thirteen grams of protein.  As the box says, these bars are designed for weight control and diabetic management, so that's their hook, I guess.  They are also gluten free too, so if you are diabetic, a celiac and looking to control your weight,  you've found your food (maybe)!

Taking these out of the wrapper, there's not a lot to look at and the product name pretty much described what these are.  It's a chocolate covered bar that has an interior of soy crisps that are bound together by peanut butter.  It's rather pliable, which is nice, but it's not all that exciting.  The chocolate and peanut butter both smelled kind of flat, so from an aromatic perspective (and also a visual perspective, I suppose), this wasn't the most inviting bar in the world.  BUT, something doesn't have to be pretty or smell good in order to taste good.  It always helps though.

Biting into this, I can write without a doubt that it was definitely chewy and grainy as that soy crisp mix broke up quite easily and then was held together somewhat by the sticky peanut butter.  The chocolate then coated the bar and in terms of texture, it was at least somewhat interesting.  I can't say the same about the flavor though as it was just like the smell:  flat.  It's disappointing, but not unexpected because the chocolate and peanut butter combination often turns out to be flat, in my opinion.  There's just not enough sweetness or not enough chocolate flavor or something.  That's a common recipe (for disaster) and that's what happened here.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't particularly flavorful.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Lacking flavor generally gets a negative rating and that's what happens here as I've got to give this a FLY BY IT rating because it is just too boring.  Not only was it boring, but if you buy these at the non-clearance price, they are quite expensive (they were expensive even at the clearance price).  High cost and lack of flavor don't often end well in my book and that's what happened here.  The only way I could conceivably see eating these is if a person was on a special diet and this fit those requirements.

FLY BY IT!!