Aaaah, the granola bar: arguably the most boring and “standard” of all breakfast foods. It’s that one food item that are only popular because everyone has them, but no one actually really looks forward to eating them; thus, they become the “fallback option”, only getting eaten when everything else in the pantry is gone, yet you’re desperate for a snack.
That was more or less the situation here when I grabbed one of the first things I saw on my hurried way out the door for work…and that happened to be one of these granola bars, which was sitting front and center, as if it pushed itself to the front of the shelf and dared me to find something better. I easily could have, but I didn’t have time to think, so I grabbed one of the little guys from the box, sighed a little sigh of sadness to myself, and headed out the door.
Once there, I un-eagerly cracked the granola bar open and once again let out a sad whimper. True to form, these are pretty boring, but no worse than other granola bars, with a soft and chewy texture that gives way to a decent helping of semi-sweet chocolate chips. It goes down dry, but fairly easy; it’s just a textbook example of boredom in food form; nothing at all to write home about, and nothing really worth getting unless you just want the boring plainness of granola. Which no one really ever does.
At $1.33 per 8-count box, value isn’t bad, but also isn’t the best compared to similar products: At Aldi, a ten-pack is $1.29, giving you two more bars essentially for free, while Walmart’s Great Value line offers up a multi-flavor 24-pack for just $2.84 (for the sake of comparison, at Kroger’s going rate it would cost $5.32 for 24 of them). It’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to pay for one of the dullest, most over-purchased items on any store shelf. Seriously, it’s 2020 and people still buy these just to get pushed to the back of the pantry and forgotten about, where they will sit collecting dust until they’re expired, then eventually tossed in the trash without so much as a second thought?
Overall: 5.5/10. Just your standard granola bar, through and through, with nothing at all to even remotely differentiate itself from the rest of the pack. This is fine assuming you’re a person that enjoys the boring taste of granola mixed with semi-sweet chocolate chips, which I even happen to myself every once in a great while. So while flavor is pretty much on point with every other line, it’s just that, with so many varieties of granola bars out there, and with all of them pretty much tasting exactly the same, it all comes down to price. And while the $1.33 retail for eight bars isn’t terrible, it’s still bested by the likes of Aldi’s ($1.29 for 10 bars) and Walmart’s ($2.84 for a multi-flavor 24-pack) store brands, making it a less appealing value overall.
