Black Thunder – Nut Mix

Insert nut joke here.

Ok now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about this bar. Black Thunder is known for being inexpensive but tasty snack that people can find in any convenience store. When I was in Japan I was always on the lookout for them. They are small but they have a way of satisfying you just the right amount – the right amount being you want more but if you have enough self control you can stop there.

This bar is quite ambitious, and looks to fit four nuts in it. Hazelnuts, almonds, cashews and coconuts. I’m guessing that technically coconuts can be considered a nut, as well as a fruit, but it’s just kind of weird for me to think of it as a nut in the same sense o cashews or almonds. Nevertheless, that’s what they’ve decided to go with so I’ll just have to roll with it.

As with most Black Thunder bars, this smells like a chocolate cookies and cream bar. The outside looks the same as the standard bar as well, some round, some jagged edges, give it that feature that makes you think a lot of things are going on in there.

The flavour is not noticeably nutty, given that there’s apparently four types of them in this bar. I’d say the almond and coconut are most predominant, and the other two probably mostly just adding texture. It comes together to really remind me of a clodhopper or OMGs. For those unfamiliar, clodhoppers were basically graham cracker clusters that were combined with various nuts and covered in chocolate. At some point the brand was purchased by Brookside and discontinued. The original two founders decided to release a new brand that does mostly the same thing. It really feels like this bar is basically that, but in a small, square bar. Personally I love it.

In terms of texture, it’s also like the aforementioned clodhopper – it has a very crumbly cookie texture in the centre, surrounded by standard chocolate and really small bits of nuts here and there. The whole experience is like if you took graham crackers, nuts, rolled it into a ball and dipped it into a chocolate coating and left it on a baking pan to dry and harden. I don’t really have anything to complain about here. It all just works.

I guess if I had to nitpick, the only thing is there’s not enough nuts. But given the size of the bar, that’s hardly surprising. Even though I don’t like coconut, this didn’t lean in too hard on them, and the flavour they add is actually pretty pleasant. Strong points for this bar all round. 8/10, would do again.