Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Review: CLIF Builder's Chocolate Chip Protein Bar


One of my main complaints in past CLIF Builder's bar reviews has been that the bars themselves have tasted fine, but for what you are paying, you are really getting no more than a Pure Protein bar for twice the price and that is not cool.  So, when I get a free Builder's bar from CLIF like I did with this CLIF Builder's Chocolate Chip Protein Bar, I'm more than willing to do another review because this doesn't hurt my wallet in any way and I can avoid that price remorse bias.  Anyway, this bar is the CLIF standard of 2.4 ounces and has 270 calories with 20 grams of protein.  Somehow, this is a new flavor (when they sent it to me), which I find to be pretty funny since chocolate chips are one of the most basic flavor profiles out there for these bars.



Anyway, when I broke this bar in half and took a look at it, I was decidedly underwhelmed.  Based on its name, I was expecting a lot of chocolate chips.  Well, guess what was missing (at least to my eye)?  Chocolate chips!  There was plenty of chocolate, but none of it was in chip form!  Weird.  Anyway, the basic construction of the bar was the rice crisp base with some chocolate mixed in and then a hard marshmallow like layer on top of that which I would assume to be the "cookie" layer and then the entire bar was wrapped in chocolate.  One particularly notable thing about this bar was that it was particularly crumbly.  I'm not sure if that is by design or if it was because my bar was damaged in shipping, but I just found it to be strange.

In terms of taste, it was pretty basic.  The chocolate was thick and hearty, but not particularly sweet.  The "cookie" layer had a taste of vanilla like cookies, but that vanilla taste dissipated the more I chewed and it turned into something that was almost noxious and acidic.  To say that I was put off by that would be an understatement.  It was nasty.  The rice crisp was crunchy as you'd expect and had a slight chocolate flavoring, but if CLIF intended this to taste like a cookie or even a nice chocolate bar, I'm not sure they succeeded on either front.  This was basically a big blog of somewhat chocolate tasting nothingness with some crunch.

Buy It or Fly By It?  When something is described as nothingness, I think it is pretty obvious that it gets a FLY BY IT rating.  I only hope that my bar was damaged somehow in shipping and that affected my review, because if this blob of boredom is how the bar really tastes, CLIF might have to take this "new" flavor and put in the flavor graveyard, to steal a concept from Ben & Jerry's.

FLY BY IT!!

1 comment:

  1. I've had this bar a couple of times, and while I think it's decent, you're right in that it doesn't taste anything like a chocolate chip cookie.

    The three new flavors (including this one) they introduced earlier this year are all pretty weak, actually. S'mores is better than this one, at least, but Crunchy Peanut Butter is almost flavorless.

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