Review: Bora Bora Tribal Cinnamon Oatmeal Bar

When I get bored, which is often, I head to the grocery store for my weekly shopping trip and end up at least tripling the amount of time that would be necessary for me to spend at the store.  Pretty sweet life, eh?  Anyway, when I do end up doing that, I end up browsing through aisles I wouldn't ordinarily visit and also looking at products that I wouldn't ordinarily view.  It's that boredom that led me to spend a little extra time in the snack bar aisle and that led me to this bar that I have never seen before in the Bora Bora Tribal Cinnamon Oatmeal bar.  Being that this piqued my interest, I picked up a variety of different flavors at Meijer for $0.75 each.  I don't know what makes it "Tribal", but it specifically comes in at 1.4 ounces with 170 calories and four grams of protein.  It's also all natural and organic.

As you can see, this bar is similar in design (very nutty/crunchy) and packaging (clear wrapper) to a KIND bar.  Within the bar, is a mix of cinnamon, oat pieces, peanut pieces, raisins, almond pieces and dried apples.  The raisins and almonds were particularly large, but everything else was fairly medium sized.  One thing was for sure though when you looked at the bar and that was that you certainly were not getting robbed on any of the ingredients.  All of this was bound together by the typical brown syrups, etc.  In terms of smell, it had a faint smell of cinnamon, but mostly smelled like your morning bowl of oatmeal with raisins.

Biting into this bar at first was somewhat difficult because the syrups had congealed to make this almost solid and the presence of all the nuts also made it harder than a typical energy bar.  Once made you first couple semi-difficult chews, it softened up in the heat of your mouth and the primary thing to notice here was that the almonds and peanuts did an outstanding job of making this bar crunchy.  The raisins and dried apples then added a soft texture to the chew that balanced out well with the crunch of the nuts.  The raisins also brought a nice sweetness to the bar as well, although the cinnamon from the title was hardly noticeable and only came in at the very end of the bite with a very slight hint of "heat" at the conclusion.  Also in the name was the oats and despite the fact that the bar smelled like oatmeal, it didn't really have a strong oatmeal taste and that was disappointing.  Outside of that, it's a pretty standard bar and not earth shattering or surprising in its taste.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I love crunch, as I've said a million times before, so I give this one a definite BUY IT rating.  If you have weak teeth or don't like crunchy foods, stay away.  If you do like crunchy foods, then definitely grab this bar and give it a try.  Don't expected to have your socks knocked off by the flavor, but do expect to have something that is going to give your mouth and teeth some great exercise along with giving your taste buds a pleasing enough flavor to get you through.

BUY IT!!