I’m not big into trail mix (again, my wife picked these up for me), so you’ll probably need to adjust the final score accordingly: if you love the stuff, add a couple points, while if you hate it even more than I do, then stay away.
That being said, this is a decent little bar, which I took to work with me and basically ate as a breakfast in the mornings. The main reason I don’t like trail mix is because of the raisins…when I was younger, I was huge into the dried fruit, but ever since I was around 10 years old, I just couldn’t eat them much anymore. The flavor of the raisins is strong enough to overpower almost everything else in these bars. I don’t appreciate that so much, but again, that just comes down to personal preference.
On the flip side, there are two different kinds of chocolate, which does help to at least neutralize the raisin flavor somewhat. Neither of the chocolates (chips and circular candies) are all that sweet, which is also a good thing, because it prevents it from being almost overwhelmingly so, like the above almond bars. If you like trail mix, chances are you are really going to like these.
The same issues for the almond bars apply however: despite the even simpler setup (there’s no coating at the bottom), the ingredient list is incredibly long, and the bars somehow have even higher fat and sugar content than the almond bars! Talk about a surprise! We can expect some fat and sugar to derive from the chocolate, but I wouldn’t have expected it to be that much considering the lack of intense sweetness. The sticky binding agent is also a bit of a problem, as it sucks away any feeling that this may be “all-natural” (and is probably the main culprit behind the dozens of seemingly-unnecessary ingredients).
It’s a decent bar that once again comes down to price…assuming these are $1.99 or less (again, my wife picked these up so I’m unsure) then I’d consider these a worthy value; anything more and they’re completely overpriced. Either way, I probably wouldn’t get these again, but they were worth a try.
Overall: 6/10.I’m not really into trail mix, so adjust my score accordingly to your tolerance for the peanut/chocolate/raisin mixture, but these bars are pretty decent for throwing something in your stomach first thing in the morning. I thought there were too many raisins, which was the overwhelming flavor, but there is a good amount of chocolate, thanks to both chocolate candies and chips. The bar feels unnecessarily sticky thanks to the binding agent used, which kind of disrupts the feeling that this might be a “natural”, “healthy” bar (it’s not), but it’s edible and that’s sometimes all I’m looking for in a snack.
