Review: Detour Lower Sugar Chocolate Chip Caramel Whey Protein Bar

As I was walking through the office, I came to a big cluster of people and knew that I had to take a detour to get away, thus today's review.  Okay, that was perhaps the cheesiest and worst opening line I've ever written in blog history and that's saying something because I've written some truly AWFUL introductions.  My awful introduction notwithstanding, today's review of this Detour Lower Sugar Chocolate Chip Caramel Whey Protein Bar is the first Detour product that I've taken a look at here on the blog.  I grabbed this at office snack time, so it was free to me, but I have seen these at the store in the $2.00ish range, I believe.  This bar itself is of the lower sugar variety (50% less sugar than a normal bar) and is 170 calories with fifteen grams of protein.

Being that this was my maiden voyage with Detour bars and despite the fact that there was an image on the wrapper, I wasn't sure what to expect when I ripped this out of the wrapper.  What I got was something that looked strikingly similar to the image on the wrapper, so that was quite nice as we all know that is not always the case.  The next thing I was struck by was the nice milk chocolate smell of the sticky outer coating of chocolate.  When I tore the bar in half to examine the inside, the bulk of the interior reminded me of the nougat interior of a Milky Way candy bar (this will be a recurring theme, by the way).  On top of that nougat-like interior was a layer of gooey caramel (sugar free) and a smattering of small chocolate chips. What was surprising, although not hugely so, was that there was also a small smattering of rice crisps in the interior nougat-like portion of the bar.  Not expected, but no big deal. Regardless, this was pretty much just like the wrapper described it (outside of my Milky Way comparison), so there were no huge surprises going in.

When I took my first bite out of this, my first comparison to a Milky Way bar held true in terms of a flavor comparison as well.  It was very chewy and almost gummy.  The milk chocolate flavor itself was dense and flavorful, while not being overpoweringly sweet.  While the chips did not provide any crunch to this definite gummy chewiness, they did melt almost immediately in my mouth to provide some additional chocolate decadence.  What minimal crunch the bar did have was from the rice crisps in the interior of the bar and since those crisps were only sporadic, it wasn't a lot of crunch that was brought to the table.  The only other flavor here that I haven't touched on yet was the caramel and it was mildly interesting.  Since it was sugar free, it wasn't overly sweet, but it did have a gooey and somewhat decadent quality that it brought to the table.  It's wonderful what artificial sweeteners can do for the world, eh?  Natural or artificial sweeteners or whatever, this bar was basically a candy bar disguised in protein bar form.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This is a "healthy" candy bar from where I sit and it's one that tastes pretty good, so I'll give this a BUY IT rating.  I've reviewed a lot of products on this blog that have tried to emulate Snickers candy bars, but this might be the first I've ever seen (I've done a lot of reviews and can't remember them all) that tried to emulate a Milky Way candy bar and I like the creativity.  It's also nice that Detour's creativity paid off with something as solidly tasting as this.  Now, if I can just talk the office into getting more of these bars so that I don't have to pay for them...

BUY IT!!