Back in 2008, candy giant Hershey changed the formulas of many of its “second tier” candies like Mr Goodbar. Today’s Mr Goodbar is no longer “peanuts in milk chocolate”, but instead “peanuts in chocolate candy” (which is actually “mockolate“, a confection made with cocoa solids but no cocoa butter, substituting instead much cheaper vegetable oil).
The new bars taste like crap, of course. However, like all good marketing wonks, Hershey’s PR people are falling all over themselves to tell anyone who will listen that people actually prefer the new, non-chocolate version of Mr Goodbar. If that’s the case… then why does this new product exist:
There it is… yet another sign that the end of the world is coming!
See if you can follow this: Hershey decided that using milk chocolate to make Mr Goodbar was too expensive, so they opted to change the Mr Goodbar formula to use mokolate instead of chocolate. Hershey’s PR reps claimed victory… but “so many people loved the new Mr Goodbar” (sarcasm) that now the company is using the Hershey brand to sell a new product that amounts to the old product… instead of just going back to the old Mr Goodbar formula in the the first place!
In case anyone from Hershey is reading this, it’s stuff like this (not to mention your complete embrace of mokolate) that keep me an M&M Mars fan. As a kid, I ate enough Hershey bars to sink a battleship… but now I’d rather eat a 10 year-old Milky Way bar than anything from Hershey!
Thanks for the informative post – I wondered why the chocolate bars I enjoyed as a kid do not taste the same.