I always liked 3 Musketeers better than Snickers or any of those others.

Well, they're my preferred candy bar. I love 'em.

One of my fave candy bars, too!!

"Even worse, carob"? You kids today don't know from good carob. Back in the day when people thought chocolate was bad for you, there was some damned tasty carob treats out there. As a kid, coming to the city and finding a CaraCoa carob candy bar at a health food store was quite a treat. Delicious and not much like the mediocre carob chips of today which seem to be all you can find. So back off, pal - quit pissing on my childhood.

My dear Schmader:

I believe Mars Bars are now available only in the UK. I have located a place to order them, though, should you have a jones:

http://www.candydirect.com/bars/Mars-Bar-English-Version.html

Carry on.

Isn't Mars the same as Milky Way, just you were buying them from some convenience store that went and bought cases from Canada when your dollar was stronger?

I like 3 Mustketeers too, tho. Tasty stuff. I especially like it Real Cold, but not frozen (you could cut your teeth on it then)

I loved 3 Musketeers for a year when I was 8. Blech now.

What does "blandly sweet" mean?

8: Go eat a 3 Musketeers and find out.

I love a Three Musketeer, with mint or without. But have you tried those mint M&M blobs? (I think they're an Indiana Jones tie-in, somehow.) They're like little tiny Girl Scout thinmints. Perfection. Someone needs to invent a boozy drink with them at the bottom.

@8: It means that the guilt won out over the flavor.

The Mars bar is avaliable in the British Commonwealth regions. It is very similar to the Milky Way, however, the nugat is denser and the caramel is slightly sweeter and grainier. Compared to the Milky Way, it is a much weighter and more manly confection.

I tried strawberry and mocha 3 Muskateer Minis last Halloween....

You might like those too. Perhaps they only come out for the Holiday because they aren't listed on the official website.

Also, and most importantly, the Mars Bar contains ALMONDS--making the Snickers with Almonds the best U.S. approximation.

Differences between a Mars Bar and a Milky Way MAY be attributable to regional rather than brand differences; I find that UK Rowntree bars (well they used to be) are better than the same ones from Canada...

Anyway, one testimonial from the Inter Nets....

http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/milky_way_mars_canada_uk/

Hmmm. I love dark chocolate, and I love mint. Sounds like this was custom made for me. I'll have to try one.

The old school 3 Musketeers is my favorite too. So I guess it's the preferred candy of at least five people.

I second the guy who said he likes them cold.

I always liked 3 Musketeers. They are great frozen. Not crazy about the idea of a mint one, but then, I fear change. The one candy bar update I have fully embraced is when they introduced the Milky Way Midnight (or whatever they call it). The dark chocolate version is far superior to the original!

The strawberry Three Musketeers bars taste like medicated kitty litter. Not for eating!

@16 for the win - and I've always liked 3 Musketeers.

They might be using some of the Neilsen data from my household, noting that sometimes we buy 3 Musketeers bars and we love to buy mint chocolate and dark chocolate ... and decided maybe they should sell dark mint chocolate 3 Musketeers ...

(glad to know all that scanning of UPC codes is useful)

wait a minute.. did that child say @4 just come out in defense of carob ?..i bet he's that same child that used to pull off the chicken skin off kfc meat because it wadn't healthy.. i ain't never in my life heard ANYbody say they liked carob. and never in the same discussion with chocolate.
i guess it do take all kinds..

@20 If I asked really really nicely? Like pretty please?

And, once again you've proven your place as the center of the universe by implying that 3 Musketeers invented this based on data from the purchasing decisions at your house. Please add a Canada reference. For the win.

According to Wikipedia (all thing mostly corect, sometimes):

The Mars Bar is a chocolate bar manufactured by Mars Incorporated. It was first manufactured in Slough in the United Kingdom in 1932 as a sweeter version of the American Milky Way bar which Mars, Inc. produced in the USA (not to be confused with the European version of the Milky Way, which is a different confection).

A different chocolate bar with the same name was sold in the USA until 2002 when its name was changed to Snickers Almond Bar. It contained then, and still does, plain nougat, almonds, caramel and milk chocolate.[1]

It tastes fine, but it's smaller than the regular one. I figure they're just trying to boost profits by giving me less chocolate/candy and making a minor change to create some excitement. I say we hold out for a bigger chocolate bar.

Yeah, I defended carob. There used to be carob candy that was tasty (aforementioned CaraCoa brand, which is long gone). It didn't taste anything like chocolate and I didn't eat it instead of chocolate...I liked it as a different taste. I was saying there used to be a market for it because people thought chocolate was bad for you and somehow landed on carob as a substitute. Now, however, no market, so any carob you DO find sucks majorly. I think they grew it for taste in the 70s and now anything turned into those not-so-good carob chips is leftovers from industrial crops. SO: I didn't eat it because *I* thought it was healthier, and I didn't pull skin off chicken...that's just why it was available.

What's all this talk about an extinct Mars Bar? Sure, I may be out of the loop on the US candy scene, but here in Switzerland they certainly are pushing the things. They've got buckets of them lined up at the cashier. And what's more, the packaging is in about a gazillion languages, leading to the assumption that they are mass produced for international export.

Maybe they were discontinued in the US because they were just a normal candy bar without any special pyrotechnic additions.

I don't think the Mars bar had caramel in it, like the Snickers Almond Bar.

Working off memory here, there are two types of Mars bars. One is, as described earlier, like a denser Milky Way. It has a dark wrapper, reminiscent of Milky Way. This is available in the candy section of a relatively local Stop & Shop in New Brunswick, NJ.

There was another, that I haven't seen in at least 15 years, that had a sort of tan wrapper (I am color blind), that contained almonds in it.

Actually, here is a great comparison.

Edit: had to remove a couple of links because this was viewed as spam, but there are also allegedly a Mars Dark and White, and a Mars Dark Gold.

Could someone tell me whether the "dense mint nougat" center of the mint 3 Musketeers is more dense/sticky than the chocolate fluff center of the original? This is a key question, as braces currently prevent me from consuming nougat that is as dense as, say, a Snickers, but the lighter 3 Musketeers filling is A-OK.

@22 - GFOAD.

A good question to ask is a comparison between the amount of actual chocolate (cacoa beans are fairly expensive right now) and the size of the bars.

A number of confectionery companies have been messing with ingredient mixes due to the costs, recently (source: WSJ, link: in the frickin recycle bin where I toss it).

(and they did give us an online candy survey for Neilsen Home Shoppers which specifically asked about candy bar choices, that took about 10 minutes to finish, PopTart)

Mars bars are different in the US than everywhere else, as anyone who's bought candy in Vancouver (one of the chief reasons to go there) knows. So are several other popular bars. When I was younger I could recite the precise differences off the top of my head -- a British/Canadian Mars is like our 3 Musketeers, or something, I can't remember now.

well right on with the right on greg @25..

i never had the good carob. i once let this cute boy i was interested in talk me into baking a german chocolate cake using carob and whole wheat flour as subsitutes. the three layer cake ended up being less than five inches tall and weighed maybe seven or so pounds.
the curly headed waif LOVED it, but even 35 years later i have still yet to unnderstand what was edible about it, let alone pleasurable.
and my apologies for being a little snarky. i really ain't good at it..
..peace on you then.

A fun book about regional, hard-to-find, utterly delicious candy is Steve Almond's _Candyfreak_.

(Re: @34) Oh, yeah—Steve Almond codified the First Rule of Male Adolescence about the late, lamented Marathon Bar:

"If you give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of the package, he will measure his dick."

Mass manufactured UK chocolate taste better than US candy bars. Don't know why, but it does. Plus, they have loads of white chocolate, like the awesomely named Milky Bar.

@34: that is a great book. I don't even like candy all that much, and it is a terrific read.

As for the old school 3 Musketeers, add my mom to the list of fans. I think they taste like sugary nothing, and sure hated how they always seemed to be the candy bar you got the most of on Halloween.

Speaking of dicks and candy:

Just because Philip Roth described Alexander Portnoy in a movie theater balcony "squirting his seed into the empty wrapper from a Mounds bar," I felt compelled to do the same in the back row of a Greyhound bus as a horny teenager. So now you know.

I have three things to say:

1. Carob rules. You're problem is you're comparing it to chocolate. Carob is not chocolate, it's carob. I challenge you to find anything yummier than a carob-banana smoothie.
1 frozen banana cut in pieces, + 1 cup ice cubes + 1 cup milk or soy/rice/almond alternative + 2 TBS carob powder… blend and serve. Scrumptious!

2. The original Milky Way was good-- not so dense like snickers or heavy feeling like Reese’s.

3. Anything with mint in it is delicious. That's just the way the world works.

Err that would be YOUR problem... not YOU ARE the problem... sigh. Is it time to go home yet?

Nothing to say except that I love the idea of caramel paralysis.

OK, I'll be the bad guy: I LOVE carob, and yeah those chips are bitter and a little weird, but the cube-shaped peanut or almond cluster things you get in bins at the health food store are fantastic.

Carob is evil, full stop. Tastes like the stuff you dig out of the Vibram soles of your waffle-stompers, and has an aftertaste that's like an hour of vomit.

The best candy bar is Big Hunk, followed closely by Look (which is the same thing only chocolate-covered). I like to chill my Big Hunk and then whack it hard until it shatters. Make of that what you will.

Please welcome The Stranger's new food editor.

@14: Snickers has an almonds version? I have always avoided Snickers since I don't do peanuts but I love almonds. Excuse me while I run to QFC...

While I agree candy bars from Canada are way better, Fnarf, I disagree about Big Hunk.

OMG! You should ALL get a copy of the book called "Candy Freak" by Steve Almond (his real name). You would totally love it!
It is humorous and a fun look at nostalgic candy and the candy biz! A great read!!!

I must admit I was confused at first. Our Canuck Mars bar does not contain almonds at all.

To answer Mr Schmader's original question, I think that the old US-style Mars Bar had whole almonds in it, while Snickers with Almond has smaller almond pieces, sort of like the peanut pieces in regular Snickers. I would suspect that the change was made to harmonize brands, and not some evil plot to decrease almond sizes.

@42 & Greg,
Carob's not the devil, but it's not chocolate. If you had one of those health food mamas from the 70's, you may have gotten a fair dose of carob candies, which were better'n'nothin'.

I've lost crowns over Big Hunks, and it was almost worth it.