Meiji "Black Chocolate"

Meiji

I think a better description for this bar would be “Meiji darkish”. On the global scale of dark chocolates, this ranks much closer to milk than the average. The word “black” would imply that this is one of the darkest chocolates you’ve ever tasted. If you’re reading a candy review website like this one, I’m thinking you’ve probably had darker chocolate than what’s found in this bar. Even the colour of the chocolate isn’t that dark, maybe a little darker than milk, but not black by any standards.

As far as the quality of the chocolate it’s pretty good. It’s not a fine chocolate by any means, but it’s a satisfying enough chocolate for something you might find at a corner store. The texture was smooth and melted in my mouth immediately. My fingers even got a thin coating of chocolate after eating this bar, which is a good sign in my book.

The reason this bar may get higher ratings is if we’re to look at it from the context of Japanese candy (which it is). This is a classic Japanese chocolate bar that’s been around for a while. Japan is not a chocolate country, although that’s changing a bit. So, if you look at this bar from the angle of a county that doesn’t eat that much chocolate, it’s more understandable. Likely when this bar came out, there were fewer chocolate bars for sale in Japan, and this was likely one of the darker bars on the market. So, at a period in Japan, this bar would probably be pretty extreme and a powerful dark chocolate bar. For someone who’s tried dark chocolate from the western world, you’ll probably find this bar a little disappointing.