Monday, January 5, 2015

Review: Mariani Trail Mix Honeybar


Every now and then, something will just sneak up on me when I'm not expecting it.  For example, I was recently standing by the deli case at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market and I happened to just glance over to one of the cooler cases nearby and next to it was a wire rack filled with a new kind of snack bar that I had never seen before.  It's placement was odd since it was right by the cheeses and nowhere near the actual snack or nutrition bars that were located in a different section of the store.  Frankly, I would have never thought to look there and Walmart is probably hurting the sales of these by having them in such an odd location.  That said, since I did happen upon them, I grabbed a handful of varieties and today's review of this Mariani Trail Mix Honeybar is the first of one of these reviews.  This bar set me back $1.29 and within the 1.4 ounce bar are 190 calories and six grams of protein.  It's also all natural, cholesterol free, gluten free, vegetarian and wheat free, so it's got a lot of healthy characteristics going for it.



With a clear wrapper, Mariani lays this one out for the world to see prior to even buying it.  That's especially emphasized with the fact that there is not any sort of coating on this bar and everything is held together by a strong smelling and sticky batch of honey (thus the name) that is punctuated with a nice nutty smell.  As I said, this bar leaves it all out there for the world to see and it was quite easy to see each of the limited amount of ingredients in this bar as they were all present in large (size-wise) and ample amounts.  Those ingredients included Peanuts, Honey, Raisins, Sunflower Kernels, Almonds and Pumpkin Seeds, by the way.

Being that this was a bunch of large ingredients bound together by honey, it was no surprise that as I bit into this, it was a bit airy with the punctuation of crunch from the various nuts and seeds.  It also had a chewy component to it from the large raisins that were scattered throughout the mix as well.  In terms of flavor, this bar was nearly entirely honey and it was rich and dense and bordered on being overly sweet without crossing that line.  The raisins added a bit of tang to this and that worked well to balance out the rich honey.  What a was a surprise was that the ample nuts in the mix of this bar really did not have all that much flavor.  Well, they probably did have flavor, but the taste of the honey was so potent that it just overwhelmed them.  Lack of nut flavor or not, their presence from a texture perspective was greatly appreciated.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Like I said, this one bordered on having too much honey but in the end, it stopped short of that line and was just a fine tasting bar that earns a BUY IT rating.  It'll be interesting to try out these variations of bars going forward since they have such a focus on honey and I think that's a new one for me.  One thing is for certain though, Walmart Neighborhood Market needs to do a better job locating these closer to like products so that it'll help their sales.

BUY IT!!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...