Erroneously or not, I always consider Quaker Chewy bars to be the market leader in snack size granola bars and end up comparing everything to them. I did that in my first Better Oats review and I'll be doing the same here when I take a look at this Better Oats Oat revolution! Apple Crisp Chewy Granola bar, which as I learned from Better Oats via Twitter after my last review, is part of a "top secret" test of new granola bar products and are only available in certain markets. Quaker Chewy has a similar flavor to this in its Target-exclusive School Days line, but it's not part of the standard line of bars that you would find at most grocery stores. I picked this up at snack time at work, so I don't have a particular cost to attach to it, but I do know it is 1.23 ounces, has 130 calories and is made with chia. Every time I see that ingredient, I think of the awesome Chia Pet, which has no relevance to this review at all. Anyway, I digress...
Unwrapping this, it carried pretty much the same characteristics that I would have expected, but with one key difference. It was quite sticky to hold and that came from what I'll call the brownish-colored compote of cinnamon infused apples that made up the based of the bar. The rest of the bar is just steel cut oats mixed with chia in the oat mix. Another thing of note with this bar was the power of its scent. It had unbelievable strength in both its apple and cinnamon smells and being that I'm used to tame smelling Quaker Chewy bars, I did not expect that and actually found it kind of fun. The bar was then topped with a yogurt icing for decoration.
Biting into this was quite an experience. At first it was all green apple (I know that because of the wrapper) and it was quite potent. Once that smack in the face settled, the next thing I tasted was some late arriving spice from the cinnamon. It wasn't overly strong, but it was enough to let you know it would not be forgotten as you made your way through this chewy bar that packed some surprising occasional crunchiness. One thing that I did not taste, thereby proving it was for decoration, was the yogurt topping. I would think that they yogurt would cool down the cinnamon a bit (it didn't need it), but it did nothing of the sort as I tasted nothing that even resembled yogurt in either flavor or melty mouthfeel.
Buy It or Fly By It? I found the Quaker School Days flavor that was similar to this quite mediocre, but I can't say the same about this one. I found this one to be particularly appetizing and for that, it gets a solid BUY IT rating. I've never seen these in smaller size boxes in the regular stores, but I know they do have them in monster size boxes at some local warehouse stores, so if you see a box that includes this flavor when you are in one of those stores, do not hesitate to pick it up if you want to try something a little different.
BUY IT!! |
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