Review: Kellogg's Special K Berry Medley Bars

Recently I took a look at one of the new products that Kellogg's Special K had rolled out in their snack bars line and since it seems as if they rolled out their new products in a pair, I'm now going to take a look at these Kellogg's Special K Berry Medley Bars.  I picked these up on sale at Marsh for $1.99 and each box contains six bars that weigh in at a tiny 0.88 ounces and has a minimal 100 calories with two grams of protein (they are a snack bar after all).  Since this is pretty much the definition of a process and manufactured food, there's no sorts of all natural or anything tag lines to throw on here, which is kind of funny.  Still, that doesn't bother me one bit because I'm the same guy that willing throws candy, cookies, ice cream and beer into my body on a fairly regular basis, so I'm not exactly the bastion of health...I just sometimes eat healthy foods.

Special K went to extra lengths here to take away the mystery of what these bars looked like.  Not only is there an enlarged picture on the box, but there's also smaller pictures of the bar on each wrapper in the box.  There is NO mystery whatsoever on the looks.  Now, the bars are quite sticky and they do smell a bit berry like, but that's really the only observations I have.  Since I've basically mailed it in on this description, I might as well continue that and just copy and past the product description from the Special K website, which I find somewhat amusingly written:  "Delicious, real fruit pieces with flavors of fresh berries. Golden rolled oats you can feel good about. Together, they create a beautiful ensemble."  At no point in there did they bother to tell you what berries are involved.  Fortunately the box and wrapper take away that mystery by proudly posting cranberries and a strawberry so that we no longer have to wonder.  How nice of them.

Biting into this, my first observation was that this was soft and chewy, but that comes as no surprise because I've had a substantial number of these Special K snack bars before and that's the texture that I'm accustomed to.  In terms of flavor, the berry flavor really had a tangy presence to it that worked well with the tameness of the oats to "spice" it up a bit.  It was pretty much normal cranberry flavor and I really couldn't detect any strawberry, not that there's anything wrong with that.  The sweetness in this bar pretty much came from the exterior sticky coating, which included corn syrup (the high fructose kind, I hope) and molasses.  All in all, this was a moderately tangy bar with an ever-so-slight hint of sweetness.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Like most Special K bars, there was nothing special about this bar which makes the name of the products kind of funny, don't you think?  Regardless, it's a perfect snack bar in the fact that it has a bit of flavor, is low calorie and can help stifle hunger for a bit.  For that reason, it gets a BUY IT rating.  Just don't be expecting it to do anything more or replace a meal because it's definitely not designed for that.

BUY IT!!