Lindt HELLO Sweet Popcorn

Lindt and Sprungli launched their HELLO range back in 2013, a selection of bars, blocks and gift sets based around four flavour combinations: Crunchy Nougat, Strawberry Cheesecake, Caramel Brownie and Cookies & Cream. Just recently they announced two additional flavours to join the range: Dark Chocolate Cookie and Sweet Popcorn. Today we'll look at the latter.

As Lindt is wont to do, this particular flavour combination is unusual and unique; it's one you're more likely to see from a specialist or small-time chocolate maker than a large corporation. Kudos to them for jumping in! Sweet Popcorn combines not just pieces of popcorn but also a 'choc-cream' into a filling inside a 30% cocoa milk chocolate outer. The package uses a red foil  highlight on the ends, but the name alternates red and white to match the red and white-striped bucket of popcorn imagery on the front.

The bar is a tiny 39g, but as with other bars in the HELLO range, is long and skinny to appear bigger. The moulding is the same as for the other bars, with each well-defined block featuring images from the range's advertising: hearts, lips, and the Lindt and HELLO logos. It's divided into six pieces, each a smallish bitesize piece. The outer chocolate is Lindt's famous milk chocolate; it smells creamy and sweet, without any trace of its contents.

Biting into a piece reveals a soft truffle-like centre, similar in colour to the outer milk chocolate. It's studded with small, crunchy pieces of popcorn. Only chewing the piece makes the popcorn reveal its strong flavour. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't buttered popcorn flavour! It adds a strong, savory and salty note to the sweet centre. Lindt have absolutely used real popcorn in the creation of this bar and it shows in the flavour. The popcorn pieces are fresh with varying texture as you would find in a bucket of real popcorn; some of it is crunchy, some more spongy and then some hard pieces.

The flavour took me a little while to get used to. I like sea salt in my chocolate, but the butter adds another dimension I'm not 100% comfortable with. The milk chocolate is lovely and it kind of reduces the strength of the popcorn flavour, but not by a lot. Team the flavour with crunchy bits and I don't think this bar is for me. Credit to Lindt for being innovative and playful with their flavours. I'm sure someone will love it!

Score: 3 out of 5 jelly beans

Lindt HELLO Sweet Popcorn is made in Germany. It contains soy, milk, barley, maize and wheat, and may contain tree nuts.