5 Chocolate Flavors That Should Be Banned

How we eat chocolates in the Morris household

The other day while stampeding the Carytown Martin's with everyone else, I happened across a box of Russell Stover milk chocolates marked half off and couldn't resist.

I have a long history with Russell Stover. We go way back, all the way to my childhood when every Christmas my grandmother insisted on giving us kids a box of R. Stover assorted chocolates from her own personal stash. This was all good and well until we actually opened the box to discover that each oblong chocolate goody was coated in some kind of white pasty funk. Flipping the box over, the mystery of the off-color chocolates would be immediately solved when it was revealed that the "Use By" date had expired years ago.

For a kid, this was nothing short of torturous. In fact, it was almost as bad as receiving your very own box of candy only to find that it's filled with nothing but cherry cordials, and it was definitely on par with opening up your trick or treat bag while an old lady drops in a couple of boxes of raisins.

It's been years since I've actually bought my own box of R. Stover's. I figure this is due to the fact that a) they're expensive and b) I've never been able to get that crunchy, stale chocolate taste out of my head, so now that I am in my 40's 30's, I figured it's time to revisit my sugar-laden nemesis and give that infamous box of R. Stover's another try.

Luckily, the chocolates were fresh or as fresh as a box of chocolates on sale at a grocery store can be. Thanks to the handy dandy enclosed chocolate map, I was able to go straight for the best ones: the coconut cluster, the peanut butter crunch, the chocolate truffle and the caramel. However, this soon left me with a crap shoot of flavors, ranging from butter cream to Roman nougat (as opposed to nougat named after some other European empire?) which led me to develop this list of chocolate flavors that I feel should be yanked from the box.

1. Molasses Chew: This particular flavor made the list not because it's pucker-up crappy tasting, but because it's a total fake-out. When you first take a bite, for a brief, blissful moment you think you're eating a caramel, then wham, the rug is pulled out from under you as a sickly sweet fermented molasses flavor takes over. Molasses belongs in baked beans. It should never come in contact with milk chocolate. Period.

2. Orange Cream: What do you get when you take all the elements of a creamsicle and stuff it inside a cute, little round piece of milk chocolate? You get nasty, that's what you get. Orange and chocolate have never mixed well in my book, but when it involves marrying a bunch of orange fluff with a perfectly decent piece of milk chocolate, I've got to draw the line. I'm convinced that R. Stover markets this flavor to old people exclusively, so sadly this one's never going away.

3. Strawberry Cream: See number 2, but add in a dash of Nestle Quick Strawberry milk mixed with a jar of Marshmallow Fluff and you've got yourself one bastardized piece of fruit.

4. Raspberry Caramel: Once again, a perfectly decent chocolate covered caramel gets tampered with. This time, it's with the addition of raspberry flavoring. From the outside, it looks like a caramel, all nice and square. If you take your finger and give it a little push, a bit of an indent if you will (come on, you know you do it) it looks like caramel inside, so you're safe. Wrong! Bite into that sucker and you too can have a mouth filled with a chewy, sickly sweet raspberry goo that eventually settles into your metal fillings like spackling paste.

5. Maple Nut Butter: Even the title of this chocolate is confusing. What is a "maple nut" and can you make butter out of it? Who the hell knows. All I know is that I want my maple drizzled on a pancake or a waffle that's served up with a mess of fried chicken. There's just too much going on with this candy flavor-wise and the texture of the filling reminds me of the interior of a 3 Musketeers, all fluffy and whatnot. Finally, I detect nary a bit of butter flavor mixed into this chocolate, which in my opinion, was its only selling point to begin with.

Got a chocolate you love to hate? Feel free to share.

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