My apologies to anyone averse to verse, but I got challenged "in another place" to write this review in this form.
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If you go back a bit in time
And delve in the primordial slime,
You’ll see Daim bars were once called Dime,
A word far easier to rhyme…

…and far far easier to say;
No guidance needed on the way
It’s meant to sound – that’s clear as day,
And won’t embarrass or dismay.

But Daim? Why do the makers do it?
Discard a name when people knew it?
Replace it with one strange and new? It
Seems to me they went and blew it.

But this review will not get far
If it just says what fools Kraft are
Their well-established brand to mar.
Instead, I’ll focus on the bar.


*

Primordial slime, now there’s a thought;
It helps me tactfully report
The colour of the chocolate coating,
A shade for which I’ll not be voting.

Now I know what you’re going to say:
That all milk chocolate looks that way.
Which is one reason (not the main)
That I prefer my chocolate plain.

Daim’s chocolate may be smooth and silky,
Its taste is cloying, bland and milky;
Of cocoa solids the extent
Is “minimum 30%”.

Soft on the outside, inside brittle;
Accused (though I would urge acquittal)
Of being – a notion quite perverse –
An armadillo in reverse.

No metaphor could be more screwy.
No animal could be less chewy,
But then a Daim’s no good for chewing;
Toffee-textured? Nothing doing.

Hard butterscotch lurks underneath
So watch out if you’ve suspect teeth;
If they don’t break, they’ll later rot
And make you feel an utter clot.

Before your fangs begin to ache
The butterscotch will also break
In shards that you can only swallow;
It’s hardly a hard act to follow.

This butterscotch is meant to taste
Of almond. Yes, that can be traced,
But 3%’s not quite a glut
Of nature’s most delicious nut.

My take is: sugar’s the main flavour
And not one I would choose to savour;
When all that you can taste is sweetness
The lingering sense is incompleteness.


*

So let us now peruse the pack:
The tiny type upon its back
(Or, less politely, on its arse)
Requires a magnifying glass.

Sugar’s indeed the main ingredient,
No doubt a regular expedient
In formulating such a sweet,
But is it really any treat?

Vegetable fat, then cocoa butter,
(Ah, choc at last, I hear you mutter),
And then milk (dried and “partly” skimmed –
Light on the other “part” is dimmed).

Butter next, and so on down,
With little to induce a frown –
Nothing obscurely numbered E –,
That much at least is good to see.

But nothing to inspire delight,
No eye-up-lighting joyful sight,
Among the ingredients, or the weight,
Which, in grams, is 28.

Size (I know it doesn’t matter):
Ten cms by four and even flatter
Than a single centimetre.
Skinny; to help the slimming eater?

Well yes, you’d hope not to get fat
On such a dose, though even that
Packs a one-fifty kcal punch.
So don’t scoff lots on top of lunch.

Fronting the pack is a big logo,
In jazzy colours all à gogo.
On red and yellow, blue and white –
Primary shades, upfront and bright.

Alpha for looks? Or nearer Kappa?
I’d hesitate to call it dapper.
Biodegradable, the wrapper?
Best not to throw it down the cr… toilet.


*

If to save pence you tend to strive
And you’re alert and duck and dive,
The hardest bargain you can drive
Secures a Daim for twenty-five.

I got charged fully forty-six.
“This chocoholic needs a fix,”
They must have thought, “He will not nix
This chance to spend his spondulicks.”

I let them win that little gaim,
And I admit it, to my shaim.
They didn’t know that my sole ame
Was to review the bar called Daim.

It’s done. I hope this verbal frolic
Hasn’t come out too shambolic.
Although I’m still a chocoholic,
I would be driven melancholic
And maybe even vitriolic
If all the choc I had was Daim.



© torr/duncantorr 2007. Also on Ciao UK.