Friday, December 16, 2011

Review: Marathon Chewy Peanut Butter Energy Bar powered by Snickers


The amount of energy/protein bars in this world is amazing to me.  I was strolling through Meijer recently and came across a bar "Powered By Snickers."  Huh?!  Upon closer review, I found that this was a product of the Mars Candy Company and they were trying to trade in on the positive cachet the Snickers brand name to sell their energy bar.  Not a bad strategy because seeing Snickers on the label certainly got me to stop and look at it.  I wasn't sure how Snickers would work into the equation, but I was curious to buy the Chewy Peanut Butter flavor and give it a shot..  I don't recall the price, but I think it was roughly about $1.60.  At 210 calories with fourteen grams of protein, it's not as powerful as some of the protein bars out there, but it really isn't marketing itself as a protein bar...it's an energy bar.  Clocking in at 1.94 ounces, it is a pretty decent sized bar too.




As you can see, outside of the large peanut pieces, this one does not have a lot visually in common with a Snickers bar (nor are the ingredients identical either), but since this one appears to be all about brand name recognition, I'm fine with that.  What this bar does have is a construction of a solid brick of a slimy and sticky peanut butter-type concoction that has a cracker-like base and also has well-sized peanut pieces mixed in.  As for mouth feel, I would say that this one feels like a piece of chewy Laffy Taffy with crackers and peanuts mixed in.  It's not really gummy like a normal protein bar, but it's also not chewy like its namesake Snickers bar.  Basically, it's somewhere in between and that's because of the cracker-like base that adds in the requisite crunch to break up the chewiness of the peanut butter concoction.

What this bar also has is a very powerful peanut butter taste.  So much so that I felt like I was eating peanut butter straight from the jar and spread onto Ritz crackers.  Frankly, I enjoyed all the components involved in this bar.  The strong peanut butter flavor, the cracker-like consistency of the base and also to top it all off, it was nice to have the peanut pieces thrown in for another texture component.  All in all, despite it's weird, sticky exterior, this bar actually tastes really good.  If you are a peanut butter lover, you are really, really going to like this one.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I would BUY IT, especially if you can get it for a fair price.  It's a bit more costly than a lot of the protein/energy bars out there, but sometimes taste is worth the extra quarter or so that you have to pay and I would say that this one certainly is.  There are other Marathon bar flavors out there and the positives that this one brought to the table will certainly get me to give some of the others a shot.

BUY IT!!

1 comment:

  1. I'm crazy about these - they keep me going for hours

    ReplyDelete

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