Stop me if I’m repeating myself here, but I have a deep, abiding love for that most perfect snack-aisle pairing: peanut butter and chocolate. While I’ve devoted countless pixels to products from Reese’s, they’re not the only game in town, and Cadbury’s Wunderbar is happy proof of that.
Peanut butter and chocolate, you say? Despite the illustration on the package depicting what would commonly be called a chocolate bar, Wunderbar’s wrapper describes the candy inside as “creamy peanut butter and chewy caramel,” but fails to mention it’s a chocolate bar. Why? Because Canada has some very specific food-labelling rules.
Nerdy Aside: Life is like a box of chocolatey food regulations
If you’re interested in reading wordy government documents from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, you’re welcome to scan through the information on this page about the various nuances of food labelling in Canada as they relate to chocolate and confectionery products. If not, I’ll save you the trouble: When it comes to “chocolate bars” in Canada, it may look like a duck, walk like a duck, and quack like a duck — but it may not be legally allowed to call itself a duck. As the link above explains: “Only a solid chocolate candy, bar or other completely chocolate product can be labelled ‘chocolate candy’ or ‘chocolate bar’.”
Long story short, it’s possible for a candy bar in Canada to contain chocolate or cocoa but not technically be a chocolate bar. While this may seem silly, these rules help keep the marketing teams at food companies honest about what they’re actually selling.
And yet, for all the spelled-out nuance, I have yet to see someone at Safeway pick up something they thought was a chocolate bar, read the label, declare loudly, “What’s this? A CANDY bar? No thank you, sir!”, then toss it back on the rack and walk out of the store in a huff. But, you know, it’s the thought that counts.
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Thankfully, there’s no food-labelling concern with the name itself. Wunderbar is German for wonderful (or marvellous, excellent, etc.), and I can confirm from my own testing that this is a perfectly reasonable claim.
The centre core of a Wunderbar is a tube of peanut butter laced with rice crisps, which is then wrapped with a layer of chewy, stretchy caramel, and finished off with a chocolatey coating that ties the whole thing together. The chewiness of the caramel is surprising, and helps to distinguish it from other peanut buttery chocolate bars. The rice crisps are nice addition, and give the impression that the peanut butter is crunchy, not smooth.
Because of the peanut-butter core, Wunderbar falls into the fills-you-up category of chocolate bars. Instead of Aero or Kit Kat, think Snickers or Oh Henry. It’s not school-safe due to the peanut butter, but it’s a decent option to have in the office-drawer candy stash when it’s 2 p.m., you missed lunch, and you need a snack before the Teams meeting starts in five minutes. If that sounds like a very specific use case, know that we take real-world product testing seriously here at NEAROF.
The Details
Price: $1.11 (on sale!) for a 58-gram bar at Safeway in Edmonton.
Value for Money: For that price, fantastic. These usually run around $2ish.
Availability: Widespread in Canada. Wikipedia says the same bar produced and sold in Canada as Wunderbar is available in other countries as Starbar.
Nutrition: 300 calories per 58-gram bar.
Verdict: When you need to self-medicate with a bit of peanut butter, caramel, and chocolatey goodness, Wunderbar helps. It’s also nice to know there’s a choco-PB option made in Canada.
