Why Have I Never Tried: Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond?

Ed. Note: When's the last time you tried a new candy—just because? For the SE staff, that time is now. Each day for the two weeks leading up to Halloween, we will try a candy we haven't had before, and tell the tale.

My first taste of financial freedom came in the form of the 65¢ I was allotted by my mother each day to buy myself a snack at school. Often this would be Welch's fruit snacks from the vending machine, or an ice cold can of Cherry Coke from the cafeteria lady's under-the-counter stash.

But on the rare occasion that I planned ahead long enough to save up a quarter from the day before, I'd treat myself to a 90¢ treat: A Hershey's Symphony Bar. As a musician and orchestra nerd, I never quite grasped how a relatively simple mix of milk chocolate, almonds, and toffee chips could ever be considered a full on symphony, though I did agree with their assertion: It was music to my mouth.

It's strange that I liked them so much, because I was never really a fan of Toblerone, the Swiss almond and toffee chocolate from Switzerland in a prism-shaped box that the Symphony bar was clearly trying to emulate. Perhaps it's because the only time I ever saw Toblerone was when my grandparents brought some back after a trip to Japan, undoubtedly purchased at the airport (I think there might be a law against selling Toblerone bars anywhere outside of an airport gift shop). It simply couldn't compete with the other Japanese candies they'd brought with them.

It might also be this: The Symphony bar had chunks of almonds, while the Toblerone only had almond-flecked nougat.

Well Toblerone may have finally outdone Symphony with their new variant, which includes not only chunks of almonds, but chunks of salted caramelized almonds. They're not quite as salted as I'd like them to be—eat through the chocolate quickly and you may even completely miss the salt—but if you let the creamy milk chocolate slowly melt on your tongue, you'll be reawarded with chunks of salty almond and nuggets of nougat (It's really fun to say "nuggets of nougat"). It ain't world-class chocolate by any means, but it's got enough of that sweet-salty-creamy thing going on to hit you in just the right way.