Cadbury Marvellous Creations Jelly Crunchie Bits

Cadbury's major 2012 release is of the Marvellous Creations range, a series of blocks and bars featuring Dairy Milk milk chocolate and assorted add-ins. The range coincides with the introduction of 'Joyville', a fictional Willy Wonka-like factory, complete with munchkin lookalikes, where the Marvellous Creations chocolates are made. As expected, there's a Facebook page and a website.

You can read more on the TV commercial and marketing info here if that's your thing, but let's get onto the chocolate!

The range comes in three flavours: 'Jelly Crunchie Bits', 'Jelly Popping Candy and Beanies', and 'Peanut Toffee Cookie', all of which are blocks or bars featuring Dairy Milk chocolate, plus 'Mini Drops', a bag of bitesize candy-covered pieces of chocolate. All feature a bright, carnival-esque striped wrapper and matching text.

The chocolate blocks are most interesting. Unlike the last ~new~ blocks Cadbury launched (Bar of Plenty in 2010), the MC blocks are larger than the normal 200g blocks. In fact, these planks are positively huge. Though the mere 100g difference doesn't like much on paper, in hand the blocks are noticeably bigger, thicker and just all around hefty. And in case you didn't get the memo, there's a not-so-subtle hint on the back that these blocks are made for sharing. The MC range also comes in 50g bars, though the Peanut Toffee Cookie variety doesn't seem to be available in this size.

Here for review we have the Jelly Crunchie Bits variety. Going by the neat picture on the front, we should expect to find glossy red jelly pieces (anyone else thinking they will be the same as the pieces in the Black Forest block?) and what looks like golden honeycomb pieces. (The wrapper doesn't actually call it honeycomb, just by the way. Even in the ingredients it's listed as 'Crunchie pieces'.) The back of the pack notes that this is made in Australia (woo! No crappy imported UK versions!) from local and imported products.

Inside the foil packaging, we have a huge plank that looks like a cobblestone street-wannabe. As well as the Cadbury branding, the top of the block also features wavy lines, and a textured surface that's pebbled like the skin of an orange. Of course, the downside of the cobblestones is that the block doesn't break into neat rows for sharing, so when you try and break a piece off, expect to be rained in crumbs.

  The block itself is 1.5cm thick, 13cm wide and 16cm tall. It's got that rich, supersweet Cadbury smell, evident from the first opening. Peeking through the gaily-patterned cobblestones are glimpses of the jelly and Crunchie pieces, giving the block an interesting speckled appearance. While the top of the block shows off mostly the jelly pieces, it's on the underside we see lots of rough, pointy pieces of Crunchie. Snapping open the block shows a fairly even distribution of Crunchie and jelly pieces.

As for the taste? Well, it's about what you'd expect. There's lots and lots of texture play - smooth, milky chocolate; sharp, crunchy, er, Crunchie, and bouncy jelly pieces. There's a lot of chocolate, so much that it can overwhelm the mouthful and you might end up losing track of the other pieces. It's also incredibly, tooth-searingly sweet, so make sure you have a drink close by. It's an interesting combination, for sure, and I bet it will be popular with kids.

I should mention the price, too. The RRP is $5.49 (regular blocks are $4.59). I bought this on special at $4.49 - still expensive in my books. The 50g bars are the same price range as other Cadbury medium bars, around $2.00 RRP.