September 14th: Galaxy Smooth Truffle

Kcal 518 Fat 30.2g Fat(sats) 18.3g Carbs 55.4g (per 100.0g)

Not a week seems to by without some sort of 'New' product coming out here in the UK at the moment. Recent product launches such as the Galaxy Bubbles, Twix Fino and Cadbury Spots V Stripes bars have all been announced in the press, but the bar I am featuring today was one that caught me totally off guard whilst shopping in Tesco. Indeed, just last week when I was on the look for yet another new product (Cadbury Wishes - review coming Saturday!), I found this new Galaxy Smooth Truffle bar minding it's own business sitting amongst all the other Galaxy variants. On the wrapper the bar came described as 'milk chocolate with a chocolate truffle filling' and whilst not explicitly stating it was manufactured there it had Poland down as it's first point of contact. This Polish connection had me wondering if these bars have been imported as a WIGIG ("when it's gone, it's gone"), or whether they have been rolled out in Tesco first like the Galaxy Cookie Crumble as Tesco customer exclusive!? I guess time will tell until we hear from Mars!

The bar came in a 135.0g form that I took in to work in order to get a few second opinions. As you can see above the wrapper was aligned to the rest of the Galaxy range with the variant being solely differentiated by the secondary blue colours and very subtle on-pack branding (it could be easily missed don't you think!). My suspicions that this might not be a UK manufactured bar were further raised by the size and shape of the Galaxy blocks. In the UK this has changed many a time down the years, but I had never seen them shaped like this before - not being a frequent Galaxy consumer I could well be wrong in my thinking here, please feel free to chip in. Regardless the chocolate looked nice nonetheless and the truffle centre appeared clearly visible and lighter in viscosity when the blocks were cross sectioned.

In regards to aromas this chocolate was very similar to all other Galaxy products in that it didn't really offer much aside from a mild set of sweet chocolate flavours. Rather that go in to great detail about how this chocolate tasted, it is probably best you just head to my review of the original Galaxy chocolate bar I wrote a few years ago (See HERE). As you may have guessed the truffle filling was identical in taste to the harder, outer chocolate and brought no real flavour progression of any note. The chocolate was still sinfully creamy tasting and delivered a smooth, sweet cocoa set of flavours, but it was ultimately a little disappointing that the truffle filling had nothing else to offer. Myself and some of my fellow tastees did note that the chocolate did seem a touch more sugary than at previous times we had tried Galaxy down the years, but this was perhaps us paying too closer attention to detail - ultimately the chocolate was still very much to our liking. Speaking about the texture of the chocolate, I personally thought this 'Smooth Truffle' format was more of a hindrance than it was beneficial. Ergonomically (that's a big word haha!) the blocks weren't quite optimised, as they were just a little to big to place in the mouth all in one go. This meant it was required for the blocks to be bitten in to, which was obviously not a thing that was best doing given the nature of the truffle proposition. Casting issues aside this bar still offered a typical Galaxy chocolate experience that was relatively satisfying when eaten in sensibly sized portions.

Overall I have probably pulled out more negatives than I should have done with this product, however it was easier to pull out reasons why Galaxy perhaps shouldn't have bothered with this variant rather than coming up with reasons why it was a stroke of genius. If you think about the Galaxy truffles that you get in packs of Mars Celebrations, the reason they work so well is because those pieces are perfect for just popping in the mouth and letting them melt. Unfortunately the thinner, longer format of these blocks pieces just simply didn't work in quite the same way. Compared to the normal Galaxy bar, these Smooth Truffle blocks melted at twice the pace, offered no further enhancements to the taste and didn't have the elegance of individual chocolate truffles. When I asked the other five people I tried these with whether they would consider buying this bar themselves they all unanimously said 'no' citing the main reason as being they saw little reason to buy it over a normal Galaxy milk chocolate bar. At the end of the day I would still rate this as a decent enough mass produced milk chocolate offering, but I can't see it sticking around for long as it doesn't deliver a unique selling point worth buying in to.

7.2 out of 10