Cadbury Crispello Velvet Vanilla

Cadbury have launched their new product, Crispello, so quickly I didn't even get time to gossip about it! An imported product, Crispellos are actually made in the Czech Republish for the UK market and were launched there late last year. And for one reason or another, Cadbury decided to launch it here as well. (They seem to be doing a lot of that lately...) They were originally launched in the Double Choc flavour, and Velvet Vanilla followed in the middle of this year. Here, Cadbury have launched both flavours at once.

Crispellos are little bite-size pieces of wafer filled with a flavoured filling and covered with Cadbury chocolate. The packet describes them as 'thin crispy shells', and I suppose that's an accurate description. There are three of the pieces in one 30g 'bar', and each piece is a good 3.5cm long, by 2.5cm wide and 2.5cm tall at the tallest point. I'm not sure what shape they are exactly - they are like two trapezoids, joined together at the base, like a little pillow. Rather cute, actually. And then there is a thin layer of Cadbury chocolate over the top.  (The chocolate is a little melted on mine as the check-out was taking for-ev-er!) The ingredients list reveals that the chocolate is 29% cocoa solids, better than the last UK-market Cadbury product I reviewed that came in at 20% cocoa solids.

They have that nice milky sweet scent that is very Cadbury, and the chocolate is mostly instact - surprising, as there is nothing to protect the bar aside from the wrapper. Wafers are naturally fairly fragile so I was expecting a tray or similar, like what is used with Nutffles, but nada.

Biting in, the first thing that I notice is the texture. The wafer makes a loud crunch and sheds bits of the chocolate layer everywhere. Oops. The wafer does give a very nice texture to the chew though, providing nice contrast against the quick-to-melt chocolate and soft filling. In this case the filling is white, and is supposed to be vanilla flavoured. By itself, I get a weird milk-inspired flavour that is quite sweet. There's definitely no vanilla here. In the context of the chew itself, the piece is soft and disintegrates quickly. Its taste is sweet  but with no real discernible taste. It's like a bad version of Kinder Fingers (and I love those). Even the chocolate flavour I was hoping for is quick to disappear. On the upside, the product does not stick to teeth, or leave a nasty aftertaste, so at least there's that.

I'm going to take a wild stab and suggest that these are marketed at women looking for that sweet fix but not wanting to feel guilty about it. (See, I can do this marketing shizz too!) A serving size is the whole packet (30g), but comes in at a hair over 700kj, for those who count that sort of thing. With only three pieces, the bar is gone very quickly (even if you do try to be ladylike and bite each piece in half), and I didn't find it very satisfying. It was nice but the flavour of the centre could have been stronger.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Cadbury Crispello Vanilla Velvet is made in the Czech Republic. It contains milk, wheat and soy products, and may contain traces of egg and tree nuts.