Chocolate Ooh La La

I was watching tv the other day (or rather listening since I was doing 12 other things at once, Mom style) and I saw a commercial for a company called Brookside Chocolate. Upon hearing the word chocolate, my head whipped around quicker than Linda Blair needing an exorcism.

It started out good. I heard the words rich, dark chocolate. Then things got a little weird. The ad proceeded to say something about soft and sweet centers made with exotic fruit juices. Ok, now, I'm not a huge fan of fruit and chocolate, but at this point I'm still willing to give it a shot. Then they list the flavors: Pomegranate, Goji with raspberry, and Acai with blueberry. I  couldn't even understand what they were saying when they said Goji. I had to Google the company to make sure they weren't saying goat cheese. And then I had to Google Goji to see what the heck it was. (Apparently some sort of Chinese berry.) Listen people, if my chocolate takes this much research, it's obviously too high maintenance for me. Plus, if I don't eat these exotic fruits in my everyday life, what makes you think I'm going to want them smothered in chocolate. Ok, so I'd probably at least suck the chocolate off because come on, rich dark chocolate and all that. But you get the point.

What was wrong with chocolate that we needed to fancy it up? In my world, fancy chocolate means you hold your pinkie out when you eat it. I'm kidding. Fancy chocolate is the kind that you don't have to steal from your kid's Easter basket or Halloween goodies. In my world, chocolate is divided into 3 categories: Hershey, Dove, and Godiva. Hershey is your "working Joe" chocolate for the regular people. Dove is for when the regular people need to delineate the difference between we're having chocolate just because and we're having chocolate for a special occasion. Godiva is rich people chocolate. If it doesn't fit into these three subsections, it's not worthy of consideration.

And yes, I get that the candy market is super competitive. I know that they are always looking for the next big thing. But after all their brainstorming, this was the best they came up with? Fruit chews made with unknown fruits covered with chocolate? If I was trying to come up with an awesome new candy, I'd make a list of ingredients that people know and like first. I'm not sure I'd go straight to the goji berry. Not only did they come up with these exotic fruits, but they have really odd combos. Did they have a taste testing of various fruits to decide what flavors complimented each other? Did they try banana and raspberry and it was just too plebeian? Did they think that acai was getting a bad rap because it's always in conjunction with colon cleanse and they wanted to show how versatile this fruit was?

I guess I'm too common for these highfalutin chocolates. I'd better stick to snitching Twix from the kid's Easter baskets. Oooh, a miniature milky way. Now that's how you make candy!