Review: Kraft MilkBite Chocolate Milk & Granola Bar

This past fall, I took a belated look at what had been a new product release that had occurred several months prior to my review.  Despite the fact that I found that particular MilkBite bar to be downright delicious, I'd stayed away from these bars until recently when I picked up a couple of boxes of five bars consisting of different flavors on sale at Meijer for $2.99.  In this review, I'll take a look at the Kraft MilkBite Chocolate Milk & Granola Bars.  Each bar in this box comes in at 1.23 ounces and has 140 calories with five grams of protein.  It's listed as a good source of fiber and also proclaims to contain 30% of your daily calcium intake.  That's quite some whallop for in a small package.  Since it contains milk, it needs to be stored in the refrigerator.

After looking at this bar and comparing it to the first bar, I've pretty much figured out Kraft's recipe for these bars.  It's primarily a granola bar with mix-ins including little globules of milk (they look like small marshmallows), a mix-in that adds to the actual flavor of the bar (in this case, it's chocolate chips) and then an icing of the actual flavor as well (again, this is a chocolate icing).  Outside of that, they don't really venture too far outside the norm.  They added some cocoa powder into the granola mix to add additional flavor and darker visual appearance, but outside of that, there's not a whole lot else going on.  I will say it did smell refreshing and clean like a glass of milk can at times and it also had a slight smell of chocolate to tack on after that milk smell, which I certainly enjoyed.

Before I bit into this, I was pretty certain on what to expect based on my last experience.  What I figured it would taste like and was proven correct, was a bowl of cereal mixed with milk and this bar did not let me down.  What made this bar better and decidedly less boring than just a bowl of chocolate flavored cereal was the presence of the chocolate chips that were spread throughout the bar.  The added occasional crunch and when they reached the warmth of my mouth, they immediately melted and added some wonderful and dense chocolate decadence to the flavor.  It was just the right mix of having just enough chocolate to flex its muscles, but also enough that it didn't just become all chocolate, all the time.  That's sometimes a difficult line to walk and Kraft's product design team did an excellent job finding and walking that line in the instance of this bar.  I commend them for that.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This is not the best thing I've ever eaten, but it safely delivers with very good flavor and for that, it gets a BUY IT rating.  It's merely chocolate and is quite simple, but simplicity is often times very good and this MilkBite bar is one of those times.  If you need a chocolate fix or a refreshing bowl of cereal-like treat without having to eat an actual bowl of cereal, grab this for a reasonable approximation.

BUY IT!!