Review: Muscle Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Crunch Bar

As we've learned throughout the years, names are just names and they don't really have to mean anything.  For example, in my neck of the woods, the major collegiate athletic conference is called the "Big Ten."  You'd think tat would mean that there were ten schools, but au contraire, you'd be incorrect.  Since 1992, there have been a minimum of eleven schools that has now grown to twelve schools and starting this fall, there will be fourteen schools.  In America's heartland, there is a conference called the "Big Twelve" that has...wait for it...TEN schools as members.  Anyway, I mention this because the source of today's review comes from a manufacturer that has focused on drinks in the past and I've done prior reviews on some of those drinks (and also one of their bars), so their name made sense.  With today's review of this Muscle Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Crunch Bar, the manufacturer name no longer makes sense and just really becomes a name like those collegiate conferences.  Anyway, I picked this one up for $1.99 at Kroger and it comes in at a beefy 2.9 ounces with 360 calories and a muscle popping thirty grams of protein.

As you can see from the photo above (and the photo on the wrapper), this is a very dense and heavy bar that has a chocolate coating base.  On top of that coating base is what sort of resembles a brownie, but in reality is the typical soy crisp interior found in these hearty protein bars.  On top of that chocolate "brownie" soy crisp is a thin layer of gelatinous substance, which I assume is supposed to be peanut butter.  Either way, it's weird and very manufactured looking.  Within that peanut butter are FOUR peanut halves, so Muscle Milk must have been on a budget when putting this together.  LOL.  Finally, to top off the odd smelling bar (it was that manufactured smell that I've mentioned many times before), was a decorative chocolate swirl to make this one look fancy...or something.

Looking at it after the fact, I wish I had prepared myself for my first bite by sharpening my teeth or something because when I bit into this with my incisors it was rock hard and nearly shattered my teeth in my mouth.  Now, the entire bar wasn't rock solid, so at least that was somewhat of a positive.  The gelatinous peanut butter layer was soft and semi-gooey, so that was a redeeming quality.  What was redeeming was that the peanut butter flavor was mediocre at best.  As for the rest of the bar, which was supposedly supposed to be chocolate, I can't really say that it was all that appetizing.  The chocolate flavor was barely present and what flavor there was tasted flat.  Flat peanut butter and flat chocolate...not exactly a winning combination.  I'd like to say something about the peanuts in the bar, but since there were only four of them in what was a huge bar, I couldn't really find them at all, so it was a waste of time.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This entire bar is a waste of time in my mind.  The flavor is bland and the texture of it is a dentist's dream, meaning that with as rock hard as it is, it'll keep them in business from consumers messing up their teeth trying to eat this.  I'm not a large fan of dentists and I'm not a fan of anything that brings them work, so I give this as solid of a FLY BY IT rating as I've given a product in quite some time.  Stay away from this unless you've got a real urge to start wearing false teeth or have major jaw pain.

FLY BY IT!!