Cadbury Bubbly Strawberry

With little fanfare and even less excitement, Cdbury recently sneaked onto the shelves an updated Dairy Milk logo on the foil packets of their Bubbly 155g blocks. For a brand with such history in Australia and worldwide, it's rare to see major changes occur. I imagine the change will gradually be rolled out oer the coming months onto other Cadbury products.

 The Bubbly range itself was introduced way back in 2009 in two initial flavours: Milk Chocolate, and Mint (both blatant copies of Nestle Aero). Dark chocolate was introduced in 2011, and White Bubbly somewhere in that time frame too. The Cadbury variety tends to have more of the outer chocolate layer and less bubbles in comparison to Aero, and for many years was released in a bland rectangular mould. Along with the new packaging comes a new block shape, obviously inspired by the name (and also Aero's similar mould change). What's more exciting is the new flavour to the range: strawberry.

Described as being 'Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly chocolate wilth strawberry flavoured bubbles', the block is a pretty sight to behold. Although the new mould makes it somewhat difficult to break off pieces into equal servings for sharing, the bubbles (the largest measuring about 2.5cm in diameter and 1.5cm high) have a beautiful gloss finish. The packaging doesn't do a brilliant job of protecting the edges of the block, however; I had lots of crumbly bits from the thinner edges. When I opened the pack, I was greeted with a very strong and sweet milkshake scent, with lots of creamy milk chocolate in there as well.

Snapping open the block shows a soft baby-pick aerated centre. The ingredients list doesn't specifically state that the centre is white chocolate, but such a short list indicates that it probably is. Unfortunately neither the colours nor flavours are natural, and that's pretty obvious from the scent. With the thin chocolate cover broken, the smell of the strawberry flavour is very strong, enough that I would recommend storing this block in an airtight container or bag, as the smell will probably go everywhere!

As the scent suggested, the taste of Bubbly Strawberry is a lot like strawberry Nesquik. I was surprised by how overpowering the flavour is; there may as well have been no Dairy Milk in this block at all for what I can taste of it. It's not a very unique or multidimensional flavour by any means; its just milky strawberry and lots of it. I didn't get a lot of flavour from the chocolate, curiously. The block on the sweet side as well, and the flavour tends to hang around a little bit after you've finished your piece, so you feel satisfied for a bit longer. The texture is lovely, with the little aerated bubbles making for a nice chew.

I have a strong feeling that this flavour will be very popular with kids, but not so much with the adults.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Cadbury Bubbly Strawberry is made in Australia. It contains cocoa solids of 26%, and milk solids of 28%. It contains milk and soy, and may contain traces of wheat, egg, peanuts and tree nuts.