Keep chocolate chocolate

We have a chocolate problem in America. The problem is not chocolate itself (God forbid) but the proliferation of non-chocolate substances where there should be chocolate.

We were in a drugstore recently and saw something called a “Strawberry Kit-Kat.” The luscious brown of the chocolate shell was replaced by the bilious pink of strawberry. Can you imagine such a thing?

I’m guessing this was some test market candy that will not appear everywhere. This will probably go over as well as Crystal Pepsi. Americans will turn their noses up at these faux Kit-Kats and the United Nations will airlift crates of them to some war-torn or starving country. And then the people in that country will also turn up their noses at the strawberry abomination because they have some standards.

These aren’t the only horrifying types of candy on the market. I’ve seen Oreos with the gorgeous chocolate cookie replaced by vanilla or some other nonsense. I’ve seen Hershey’s kisses with some kind of non-chocolate swirl of wrongness mixed with the chocolate. I don’t understand what companies are thinking when they do this. It’s like they said, “Let’s take what people like about these candies—chocolate—and replace it with something else.”

I have no problem with strawberry or vanilla or anything else. But you know what, if you like those non-chocolate foods, there are candies for you. Buy something else but don’t mess with my chocolate. Every inch of space that strawberry occupies on that assembly line is another inch that could be occupied by chocolate to stuff into my bottomless maw.  

Chocolate candies are perfect as is. A Hershey’s kiss, with its bite-sized burst of pure chocolate, is a perfect object. Don’t experiment. Just leave it.