Milky Way Simply Caramel: A black hole of sweetness

How would you make a Milky Way bar better? The options aren't as plentiful as you might think.

One answer is to swap the milk chocolate coating for dark chocolate. The folks at Mars did that recently with the delicious Milky Way Midnight. Another train of thought says adding nuts would be helpful -- but that's called a Snicker's bar.

All nougat composition? 3 Musketeers has that ground covered. And changing to a peanut butter nougat starts to encroach on Reese's-dominated territory.

That leaves only one option as far as my candy-aisle telescope can see: all caramel.

Enter the Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar, which I recently found at the supermarket. It's shaped like a regular Milky Way bar on the outside but contains a whole different galaxy of ingredients and flavor on the inside. And by "different galaxy" I mean one giant gravity well of caramel. Bite into the bar and the chewy stuff spills forth like a gamma ray burst.

It's similar to a giant elongated Rolo with its ingredients all out of proportion. It even tastes a little out of proportion. Not bad, mind you, just unbalanced.

There's so much undiluted sweetness to contend with that eating an entire bar is borderline brutality. The first bite flows around your taste buds with a welcoming shock. Then the rest of the experience is like a black hole sucking all flavors but sugar from your pallet.

Honestly, it needs a peanut butter nougat, nuts or dark chocolate to dispel everything and give it a little "oomph." I was hungry 10 minutes after eating the bar, since all that sugar metabolizes quickly.

A gold star to Mars for trying to find a successful new variation of the Milky Way. Unfortunately this offering is worlds away from perfect. Two sporks out of five.