My mum actually bought me
these for Christmas as a bit of a jokey present but I was genuinely delighted –
I’m always pleased to find and receive new Ninja Turtles themed snack foods and
I know I can get a blog post about them – I’ve been meaning to write this since
Boxing Day but I got ill and then suffered from a heavy bout of depression that
has taken ages to lift to a level that, if not comfortable is at least a level
high of not shittiness high enough so as I can get excited about chocolate
covered in pictures of mutant reptiles. Anyway, behold:
A pack of eight, perfect
size for lunch boxes and trips to the National History Museum, chocolate
biscuits branded for the current Nicktoon incarnation of the TMNT. I probably
could have used a shorter sentence there. They’re developed by a Glaswegian
firm called Lightbody Ventures who I’d never heard of so I checked out their website, it uses a great deal of bullshit but
what I came to understand is that they make spin-off snacks, you know all those
biscuits and tarts with the Thortons name on ‘em you see in Sainsbury’s and
Tesco, the very things that helped make Thortons feel less elite and has led to
a significant drop off in their popularity and the closure of many of their stores?
Lightbody Ventures made those, they also work with Hershey, Reece’s, Universal,
Nickelodeon and eOne, gawd knows what they’re putting on eOne snacks but
whatever.
NECA Donatello is here to
model one of the bars (and give you a good idea of how big they are, because I’m not measuring a chocolate bar):
And naked:
If you’ve lived in the UK
for longer than, ooh, 20 minutes you’ve probably had a Rocky from Fox’s, the people
with the Italian-American Panda who can’t pronounce biscuit because he’s American
cos that’s really funny apparently. These are almost identical to the standard
Rocky (the one in the red wrapper) right down to those little chocolate
‘ridges’ on top that are supposed to be where the chocolate was poured on or
something. If it wasn’t for the fact that Fox’s label doesn’t appear anywhere
on the packaging I’d say they were
just Rockys redressed but as I can’t prove that, and I can’t see Fox’s leaving
their name off of something they made so a pretentious Glaswegian Hershey
licensee can have their logo on instead I am at the moment dubbing them ‘very
good imitations’. If you haven’t had a Rocky they are damn tasty, a real thick
layer of chocolate on a fairly soft bar of digestive biscuit, they have a
lightness to them, the biscuit isn’t dense and the chocolate a nice sweetness,
especially straight out the ‘fridge that I really like. All of what I’ve just
said is also true for these TMNT Choccy Biccies, the chocolate is a little
thinner (though not much) and the biscuit a little softer (though that could be
because they’ve been sitting in my fridge since Christmas) but if you’ve eaten
a Rocky you’ve had the same experience as eating a TMNT Chocolate Biscuit. I
have no problem with this, I like Rockys, quite a lot actually, and Rockys
always feel like good value for money so these bars have that going for them as
well.
But the big selling point
of these is obviously that they have pictures of Turtles on them, the packet
proudly announces ‘individual character wrappers’ and it wasn’t lying:
There’s only five different
designs so each pack has to double up three times, I only got one group shot
and one Leonardo, I was going to make a joke about that being ok because
Leonardo is no one’s favourite Turtle but this series has really changed that and
I know a lot of fans were pleasantly surprised about how, for the first time,
Leonardo was as likeable as his brothers. And yes of course I’ve scanned them
for you:
It’s all stock art, with
Michelangelo’s being the most common (they even use it on the group shot) and
Raphael’s seemingly being the least used, at least it’s the one I’ve personally
seen the least, which is a shame because it’s a good picture of him, sexy and
moody, very Raphael. LightBody Ventures wins points for having each wrapper be
the signature colour of each Turtle, as far as I’m concerned there’s never a
reason to do anything else with this sort of thing. It’s a little thing but to
me it says you at least have at least put a tiny bit of effort into this. And
I’ve never quite noticed now disturbing Mikey’s face is in that stock art, he’s
gone beyond happy into somewhere between deranged, pilled up and overly fond, I
imagine that place is a roundabout with a lone tree and a missing kitten poster
on it.
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