The chocolate bar is a delightful thing – a little package of happiness made just for you. Whether you like yours simple and straightforward, or prefer something with more elements than the periodic table, there’s a bar for every craving, crisis and confoundingly long Zoom meeting. But which one reigns supreme? When it comes to 3pm and the clock slows to a crawl, the right choice is critical. Fortunately, we’re here to save you from mid-afternoon disappointment by ranking the lot, from worst to best. From the classics that haven’t changed since the early 20th century to the strange confections that may well be made with someone’s old insulation batts, these are the best and worst Australian chocolate bars, ranked with zero mercy and a slightly alarming level of blood sugar.
Look, we’ve got to stop making things that taste like toilet cleaner. While this one earns points for naming its unnervingly green crispy filling ‘cracknel’, it loses so, so many more for just being an all-round unpleasant experience. Please make it go away.
The great chocolate-bar misnomer. When you hear the word ‘chomp’, you immediately think of something big and hearty that requires chomping into with great gusto. This is a thin, flaky, chewy bar that tastes of buyer’s remorse.
Just because you coat a bar of soap in chocolate, this doesn’t mean people won’t notice this is just a bar of soap coated in chocolate. Frankly, it’s a pretty bold marketing move to use the word ‘delight’ here. This is the only chocolate bar that leaves your mouth feeling like it’s just been through a gentle rinse cycle.
Just eat two biscuits. You’ll enjoy it far more. Or you know, eat two chocolate-covered pencils, and see if you notice the difference.
Everyone loves chocolate crackles – they’re a super-nostalgic, crispy, chocolatey treat that made birthday parties and school fetes extra special. This is clearly some kind of attempt to recreate that magic on a strictly multinational mass-production budget. Chocolate crackles 2.0, for the adult who’s too lazy to melt some Copha in a saucepan.
We were surprised to discover that this poor man’s Mars bar was still around. Has anyone ever woken up in the morning and thought, ‘What the hell, I might treat myself to a Moro bar today’? Unlikely.
And what, exactly, is being boosted here? Not anyone’s morale, that’s for sure. Yet somehow, this bar has endured, even finagling its way into the Cadbury Favourites box. Obviously the Boost bar has some kind of magical staying power, and won’t go down without a fight. Watch out Caramello. This bar is the ultimate sleeper agent. Even in the mad chaos of a shared box of chocolatey treats, while the high-flyers are being fought over, the Boost will simply sit there and wait for the inevitable moment when your standards drop as low as your blood sugar.
Do we have a problem with the fact that this is a very ugly chocolate bar? No – ugly things have their uses, too. Just look at my driver’s licence photo. Appearances aside, this is simply a fairly average chocolate bar. There’s no real substance to it. And what’s with all those weird crispy bits? Oh wait – sorry, I was looking at my driver’s licence again.
Does anyone remember the Milkybar kid? Apparently, the first-ever child actor to play this role had to eat so many of them, it put him off chocolate for life. Can’t really blame him. This is so sickeningly sweet, you could almost get diabetes just from looking at it.
Clearly not enough people were falling into insulin comas from the Nestlé Milkybar, so Cadbury dreamt up Dream. It’s more than 60 percent sugar, you know. Approach with caution. And some metformin.
The Summer Roll has only lasted this long because most of us are still working through the one we bought at the school canteen back in ’93. It’s less of a snack and more of a long-term commitment. We’re convinced the brand is secretly a front for an underground league of dentists looking to hit their quarterly crown quotas.
A chocolate-coated bar of nothing. This is less a chocolate bar and more a concept. Namely, the concept that you can eat the entire thing and not even notice. But great for those who find chewing to be too much of a commitment.
A great idea in theory, but a terribly messy endeavour in practice. Much like a mango, you should really eat this while standing over a sink. But the Flake is a good choice for those watching their weight, as you’ll only manage to eat about half of it before the rest crumbles away into your cleavage.
The dodgy clip-art design of the wrapper makes this bar look like it’s still stuck in the 1970s, which also happens to be the last time anyone ate one. This might explain why it was discontinued in the early 2000s. However, it resurfaced again in 2019, clinging on to hope like its caramel toffee clings onto the gaps between your teeth.
This is for the kind of person who finds a standard chocolate bar ‘too aggressive’. As for the two bars in the one pack, this is to create the illusion that you are a sharing type of individual, when in fact you plan to eat them both at the same time while hiding behind the pot plant next to the office vending machine.
