A chocolate REVELation!!! (Mars Revels)

Member Name: tobymummy

Product:	Mars Revels
Date:	04/02/08 (315 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 6 different flavours, moreish, It's chocolate!

Disadvantages: A game of russian roulette if there's a flavour you don't like!

If you have read some of my other reviews, you may find that I do like my chocolate - well doesn't everyone!!

I would eat any chocolate offered to me, but my all time favourite has to be Revels.

If you go in search of them you will find an orange, yellow and brown package, the bag I have at the moment is the 175g share bag, which will be shared with.......Me! The bag is 6.5in (17cm) high x 5.5in (14cm) wide. The autumny colours of orange, brown, burnt orange, yellow, then brown and orange again run vertically down the pack. Across these stripes is the word revels in lower case bold white writing, with brown shadowing and orange outline. (Very similar to the picture above, but that is the small bag)

Underneath the wording you see 6 pictures of the chocolate inside, 1 for each variety. On the back you find the nutrition information and ingredients, as well as more pictures of the chocolates hidden inside, but this time, there is writing curved around the edge of each one, highlighting what filling is inside. These indicate Raisin, Caramel, Maltesers® Chocolate, Orange, and Coffee. An added extra on the back is a rectangular sticker which you can use to re-seal the bag once opened, keeping the chocolate safe inside until next time - if you can keep your hand out of the bag long enough, and bring yourself to put them away.

The bottom of the bag is made in such a way, that when you stand the bag up and tear the top off, the bag stands happily on the table and you can keep popping your hand in, reaching for the chocolate and eating all with one hand, whilst doing other things like reading, drinking, or writing reviews with the other,

I have eaten them whilst watching TV before, or in the cinema, and before I know it I've finished the pack.

When you first tear the top off, you can faintly smell the chocolate, you have to stick your nose right in to smell it properly, but even then, you get a gentle, sweet chocolatey aroma.

When you look at the chocolates, you can tell which ones are the Maltesers, and solid chocolate ones due to their size and shape - The solid chocolate are similar to minstrels, but without the hard crunchy coating. I'm sure I don't need to tell you much about the Malteser, but some may have never tried them before, these are malty and light, crunchy biscuity, melt in your mouth spheres coated in chocolate.

Raisins are just as their name suggests, a raisin coated in chocolate. Toffee is similar to the raisin, but with a small ball of hard chewy toffee, again coated in chocolate.

Coffee and orange - From past experiences, when sharing my chocolate around; these are the two flavours which are favoured less in the pack. Each of them you find a small orange, orange flavoured, or brown, coffee flavoured sweet, which is soft, and almost fudge like, but softer, made into a ball and - you've guessed it - covered in chocolate. These two flavours are not strong, but give enough flavour for you to be able to work out which one is which.

All the chocolates are covered in milk chocolate, and then mixed together in the bag to give you a variety and a different taste/combination with every mouthful. I like to eat one at a time, but a friend of mine, would eat 2 or 3 at a time, ending up with orange raisins, or coffee toffee! Once I tried this and ended up with three toffees at the same time, and that can be too much for anyone!!!

The milk chocolate is not too sweet, or bitter. It's creamy, soft and smooth, and best of all it tastes of chocolate, some chocolate tastes a bit artificial, but I don't find this with these ones.

So if you like variety and all these centres, then go for it - treat yourself to a bag. You can buy a smaller bag for around 40p which contains around 15 chocolates in total. If you want more for your money then I suggest you go straight for the larger bag.

This may sound strange, and I can assure you I have never done this before and don't intend to again, but for the purposes of this review, I counted up how many of each flavour I got.
Raisin - 15
Orange - 15
Coffee - 10
Malteser - 11
Chocolate - 9
Toffee - 13
This gives the bag a total of 73 chocolates, and at £1.65 that can't be bad.

One thing that is bad, is looking at the ingredients, I will include them here so you can see what goes into them, and see whether you are allergic to anything.

Ingredients: sugar, skimmed milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, raisins, glucose syrup, lactose, hydrogenated vegetable fat, vegetable fat, sweetened condensed skimmed milk, demineralised whey powder, milk fat, invert sugar, barley malt extract, emulsifiers (E442, soya lecithin, E492), modified starch, wheat flour, salt, invertase, flavourings, citric acid, pectin, raising agents (E501, E500, E341), acidity regulator (E331), starch, colours (E104, E132, E122, E124), glazing agent (E903), vegetable oil.
Contains traces of peanut.

I can tell you I was very surprised when I read all those E numbers, I'm assuming that most of these are because of the coffee and orange centres. I suggest that you don't give these chocolates to children, because of the contents, and also, the dentist won't be too happy if the toffees rot their teeth!!

100g will give you 480kcal, so if you do eat the whole pack, you are looking at 840kcal, so not a good idea if you are watching your weight!!

Did you know?
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When Revels were first introduced the fillings included coconut and peanut, the coconut was first changed to coffee, and more recently the peanut exchanged for raisin, this was due to the rise in peanut allergies. I never had a coconut centre, and only had one or two peanut ones, so can't really comment on whether this was a good exchange or not.

The flat solid chocolate ones were originally called Galaxy counters, and were found on their own, but since they were discontinued they can now only be found in a bag of Revels.

Some say, that eating a bag of Revels is like playing "Russian Roulette" especially if you don't like a particular centre, and then you end up with it. This was advertised recently, where two people sat opposite each other, each taking one chocolate and eating it, the one who didn't like that flavour was out - I'd love that game, as I like them all!!!

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If you have any problems with the product or need more info, you can contact Masterfoods -
Freepost, Masterfoods, Consumer Care - UK
Or
Masterfoods Ireland, Box 3856, Dublin - Ireland


You probably get the idea that I do like these chocolates and enjoy which ever one I pull out of the bag next. Although the cheaper option is to buy the bigger bag, it is all too easy to eat them all in one sitting, so I think I may have to buy the smaller bags in future, or be very strict with myself and ration them.

Now that I have eaten all those chocolates I think I better go to the gym and do a few extra minutes on the treadmill!!!

I would love to know what you think of these, and whether you enjoy one flavour over another, also let me know if you ever had a coconut one when they were first released.

Thank you for reading my review.

Nicola xx 04/02/08

Summary: A mix of different flavours in one bag.