Black Thunder – Almond Hazelnut

And we are back at it again with yet another Black Thunder bar. I’m not a betting man, but I am willing to stake good money to say this will be a solid flavour. Take the classic chocolate cookie bar formula of Black Thunder and add in nuts, what could possibly go wrong?

I legitimately feel really bad for people with peanut or tree nut allergies. Not only are they incredibly common and it’s very easy to slip up and get into trouble with them, it also severely limits what chocolates and candies a person can have, and that makes me sad. Something I enjoy about snacks is sharing them with everyone and being able to connect with people over them. Seeing people who can’t share in so many different snacks makes me sad, and I don’t like leaving people out. But I am hopeful someday we will find a solution to that so everyone can have the chance to try out all snacks on the spectrum. Whether they want to or not is another issue, but they should have the freedom to.

Soapbox rant aside, let’s get into these bad boys. These are the small mini bars, and my biggest struggle is how small these are. I get the sense that they don’t ship out the regular bars outside of Japan too often, so I’m limited to these super tiny ones. I’ll take what I can get though.

It’s got almond and hazelnut sure, but it also tastes as if they added something extra. It’s like they added some hazelnut spread like Nutella somewhere, because hazelnut on it’s own isn’t usually that flavourful or sweet. I can’t tell from not being able to read Japanese, whether there is or isn’t any. If I was a betting man I’d say…maybe. It has a very pronounced nutty flavour that you don’t expect from the nuts alone. Maybe they added some MSG here, aka the magic white powder that makes everything taste better. Either way the flavour is really nice and it has a great texture to boot.

The texture is really simple, you take a light chocolate biscuit, add in some cookie bits and pieces of hazelnut and almond slivers, and throw some chocolate on it. It’s basically a regular Black Thunder but with some nuts to add another layer of crunch. I can confirm that it does indeed improve on the classic, time tested formula in a beautiful way. It just feels natural somehow, and it almost makes me wonder why this wasn’t done more regularly. Whether it’s due to the addition of nuts or not, it also has this snappy texture to it, which again I’m not sure. All I can be sure of is that I want more.

This is a delicious flavour and I don’t know if this is part of the standard line up, but I would love for it to be a permanent fixture since it’s a solid flavour and a great variation on the tried and true formula.