Mars Snickers

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Mars
Mars is a well known company around the world, and I'm pretty sure almost everybody you ask in the UK will have heard of at least five Mars Products. The Mars Headquarters remain in Virginia USA, however the products are sold world wide.
The most famous Mars product, is namely the Mars Bar, however there are many other delicious and well known confectionary items produced by Mars, such as Twix, Malteasers, Skittles ...
...2008, Mars inc. bought the worlds largest chewing gum company, Wm. Wrigley Junior, and now there sales are expected to go up by $27 billion, and are due to take over Cadburys Schweppes as the worlds largest confectioner.

Mars was founded in 1911 by a man called Frank Mars. One of Mars' first most popular and well known chocoalte bars was the "Milky Way" in 1923. After the Milky Way was born, the Mars company grew more popular ... more

DON'T GET YOUR SNICKERS IN A TWIST!

HISTORY

Mars
Mars is a well known company around the world, and I'm pretty sure almost everybody you ask in the UK will have heard of at least five Mars Products. The Mars Headquarters remain in Virginia USA, however the products are sold world wide.
The most famous Mars product, is namely the Mars Bar, however there are many other delicious and well known confectionary items produced by Mars, such as Twix, Malteasers, Skittles and the classic Topic bar.
Recently, in April 2008, Mars inc. bought the worlds largest chewing gum company, Wm. Wrigley Junior, and now there sales are expected to go up by $27 billion, and are due to take over Cadburys Schweppes as the worlds largest confectioner.

Mars was founded in 1911 by a man called Frank Mars. One of Mars' first most popular and well known chocoalte bars was the "Milky Way" in 1923. After the Milky Way was born, the Mars company grew more popular and so it began to grow. The Mars company, since it was born, has remained extremely secretive and literally nobody has been allowed access into the factory. Now almost 100 years since Mars was founded, it is still a family owned business however now, it has been passed down four generations.

The British branch of Mars, is named Mars Limited. Many of the products in the UK, are also around in the USA, however Mars Limited does produce some products only in the UK such as Malteasers. Mars products such as Starburst, Skittles and Twix were first introduced in the UK, but later moved in to the USA.

Snickers
In 1930, Frank Mars, created the Snickers we all know and we all love today by adding a delicious milk chocolate coating to the bar- which already consisted of nougat, peanut, and caramel bar. The bar, when it was first created was originally called the Marathon, but in 1990 it was changed to the name we all know and love today ; Snickers. The Snickers was the second product produced by Mars, and unusually it was named after the Mars' favourite horse. After the Marathon had changed to the Snickers, it shot up the list of the most popular bars, landing itself in third place.

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The other day, I was on my way back home from school, and I decided it was time for a little snack to keep me going untill dinner time. I didn't quite know what I fancied so I nipped into the corner shop, to see what I could devour. I scanned the various different products, and I was in the end drawn to the chocolate bar section.
Sitting nestling inbetween various other products was in fact the Snickers. I grabbed it straight away, as I hadn't had one for a long time, and the temptation was proving almost too much! The bar was one of the more tempting ones sitting on the shelf, although the packaging was quite dull, it looked very thick and so it lured me into purchasing.

The bar itself was fairly large. The main colour of the packaging was a deep brown, not very interesitng but somehow the minimalism worked. To the right handside of the packaging sat on the brown colour, was the image of peanuts dancing about the wrapper. Very delicious looking, I moved onto scanning the rest of the package. Sat on front of the deep brown background, was the word SNICKERS in large, blue, block capital letters. The blue writing was mounted on a clean white background, which was handy, because if it hadn't have been there, the writing would have been very hard too read. The white background was then bordered with a block red margain which again meant it stood out well. The wrapper had an unusal texture, almost papery, yet a definite plastic feel too it too. The edges were "spikey", as with most chocolate bars, which meant ripping it open to enjoy was easy enough to do.

Now, most Mars products are usually decently priced, however prices largely vary depending on where you are purchasing. Some shops can be selling them for a cheap price of 30p, however some places will charge you, a rip off price of up to 60p- normally cinemas. I bought mine in our local corner shop, and I was charged 38p. I wasn't too disappointed in this price as I thought it looked quite a chunky chocolate bar and it did contain alot of ingredients and textures by the looks of things, so it couldn't be too bad. Checking online at other retailers prices, I was told that the supermarket Tesco, sells Snickers for 33p, Asda also for 33p, and WHSmith for a rip off price of 49p. Overall, I think I did get a good bargain, but you may have to shop around a little bit for the cheapest price.

After purchasing my Snickers bar, I was very excited to tuck in. However as it was raining outside I decided to wait untill I got home to enjoy my snack properly without having to fight with the rain and wind, and I would have found it incredibly hard to carry two bags, and an umberella while tucking in. So as soon as I got in, I plonked myself down on the sofa, and unpeeled the wrapper. I pulled the whole bar out at first just to take a little look at the product in question. It looked quite scrumptious. The bar was a deep brown, milk chocolatey colour. The bar was very thick with smooth milk chocolate on the sides and bottom, however the top of the bar had a kind of rippled effect to it. I was quite curious as to what the rippled effect was, perhaps it was bits of peanut layered under the milk chocolate.
As soon as I had removed the Snickers bar from the packet, I was hit with a deliciously mouth watering smell. It smelled strongly of chocolate, however it wasn't overly creamy, more of a sweet cocoa smell. Although I prefer creamy chocolate, I didn't let this put me off, and so I took a bite...

Biting through the bar took a small bit of effort. As I hadn't had my bar in the fridge however it was soft enough not to break my teeth or remove a filling, however if you have had your bar in the fridge for any period of time, be careful when taking your first munch. The first thing I tasted when I took a chunk off was in fact the chocolate. It was delicious to say the least. It reminded me very much of any other Mars chocolate- espescially the Mars Bar. The smell had been quite decieving and the chocolate was in fact rather creamy- though not as creamy as other makes such as galaxy. The bottom layer of chocolate wasn't overly thick, however the sides, top and end of the bar was covered in a thick layer of chocolate. Once the chocolate had melted away, I was left with a crazy concoction of different flavours and textures. The next thing I came across was a large chunk of peanut. It was fairly chewy but had a nice little crunch to it too. The peanut was no salty matter, infact it was quite the opposite, it actually tasted as though it been covered in some sort of caramel. The nougut mixed with a thin but delicious layer of caramel was the last thing I tasted. The nougut was soft and chewy, and resembled that of a mars bars, however the caramel did tasted different and seemed slightly thinner. I'm not sure wheather this was just my specific Snickers bar, or if everyone is the same.
Overall, I was incredibly satisfyed with the taste of the snickers, however after I had finished I did require a huge drink as it left me feeling rather thirsty. The snickers was filling, but surprisngly it didn't make me feel overly sick aferwards. The Snickers bar kept me filled untill tea time, which prevented further snacking, probably leading me to consuming more calories than the snickers bar has itself.

I wasn't expecting great things from the nutrition information in snickers, and I was almost dreading looking at the values of the calories and fat contained inside. The back of the wrapper tells us the information in a small table. I say small table, and this is probably an under exxaggeration, it is tiny. However I managed to squint my eyes (And give myself a headache in the process ), and my nightmares did infact come true. The table told me that each Snickers bar contains a whopping 280 calories and a huge 14g of fat. The bar also contains 5g of saturated fats, and a rather worrying 4g of fibre. I say my nightmares came true, however I wasn't actually expecting anythign better from the chocolate bar. Some smaller, less tasty chocolate bars contain around the same calories and so if you look at this way, its not too bad.

Now obviously as the chocolate bar contains peanuts, it is in no way suitable for those allergic to nuts, but this is quite obvious I think. Snickers are also unsuitable for Lactose intolerants, as milk and lactose are included in the ingredients. Among the other ingredients are cocoa, cocoa butter, milk chocolate, egg whites, and corn syrup. Taking a look at the ingredients it didn't look as though there were many nasty hidden things however there are plenty of sugar packed ingredients aswell as sugar itself. Like I said people with nut allergies should stay well away as nuts are used widely in the product.

Eating my Snickers at around 4pm was the best time for me. Around two hours before dinner, and this meant I had enough time to get my appetite back for tea. I wouldn't recommend eating this when your not hugnry, and just for the sake of it , as it will probably leave you feeling fairly sick, and you will without a doubt regret it afterwards. As the calories are sky high, I wouldn't recommend having this chocolate bar on a daily basis as it may eventually lead to weight gain, but enjoying something like this once in a while shouldn't do you any harm.

**

Aswell as regular Snickers, Mars also produces various other mars products. The Snickers bar itself comes in different varieties such as Kingsize, Snickers-Duo, Snickers Mini and Snickers Funsize. These can be found mostly in Supermarkets and in some small corner shops however not all will sell them. Snickers Kingsize/Due usually sell singley at around 80p, and bags of mini's and funsizes usually around £2.99. The funsize Snickers are usually found inside multi packs of other mini Mars products such as Starbursts and Snickers.

Aswell as the regular Snickers Chocolate Bar, there are various variations on the classic. These include a special almond Snickers, and a Snickers Dark. None of these really appeal to me all that much though, as firstly I don't like almonds, and secondly i'm not too keen on dark chocolate. These usually sell at roughly the same price, however usually are slightly more expensive.
Another variation on the Snickers is the peanut butter variety. I tried this when I was in New York and it was utterly scrumptious with a layer of smooth peanut butter inbetween the peanuts, nougut and caramel. Im not sure if they are available in the UK, but in the US they sold for roughly $1.

There are also various ice products based around Snickers, these include the Snickers Ice Cream bars and the Cone. The cone does prove quite hard to find, but I have seen it in the pound store on one occasion. The Snickers ice cream bars usually come in multipacks in supermarkets however some ice cream shops and larger newsagents will sell them in the freezer section.
Many supermarkets now sell other confectionary items based around Snickers, such as the Snickers Flapjack, Snickers birthday cakes. Tiny snickers are also sold in the Mars favourite; 'Celebrations'.

**Overall;

• Sound- n/a
• Appearence- minimalist, attractive wrapper, chunky, milk chocolate brown bar
• Scent- milk chocolate, slight nutty aroma
• Texture- crunchy peanuts, soft chewy nougat, smooth milk chocolate, smooth, runny caramel
• Taste- deliciously sweet and creamy milk chocolate, sweet caramel, caramelised peanuts, delicious nougut mix between milky way and mars bar!

SweetTooth 93 

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