A Chocolate Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

You all know I appreciate it when companies make new, special products for the holidays. Not just different wrappers, but actual different chocolates - either their shape or color or flavor - it's festive and I like it!

But sometimes, there is just a truly pathetic rip-off.

I saw these and thought they were something special for the holidays:

Imagine my surprise when I opened the box and saw that all Mars did was slide a festive box over the same old product:

Oh - so Mars killed all those extra trees for THAT? Just to fool suckers like me? (Some body call the Naked cowboy! Maybe we can get in on his lawsuit!)

They even changed the plate the Twixels sit on to a fancy Christmas plate But it's just the same ol' Twixels. Cheaters. Here's what they look like inside:

Each one is only 35 calories, but trust me, if you open this package, you ain't eating just one.

I like Twix okay - I like the cookie, chocolate, caramel thing. In comparing these three flavors, however, Triple Chocolate is too chocolately for me.

French Vanilla is pretty good, especially if you're a big vanilla fan. It would be my second choice.

Caramel is my favorite. Now I wouldn't send you out in a rush to get these, unless you're having a party. If you're like me, once I start eating these little sticks, I find it hard to stop. Better to just get a bar - there's more caramel and the portion is controlled way better. And this holiday scam just pisses me off.

Speaking of pissing me off, look at this packaging fiasco:

Now this little box looked kind of cute, cost about $6 and seemed to have 4 cute chocolates in it. Well, when you pull the ribbon on the bottom and open it, it unfolds into this:

The first flap has a gift tag you can complete. The second part reads, "You must have been very good this year." And the third panel holds the chocolate - I've removed the cover here:

THIS is what you get for being good? Look at how freakin' tiny these things are:

Yes, that is a Q-Tip. Yes, these are about the size of a dime. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? All that for this? That's just wrong.

Let's see how the damn things taste. The one with the green Christmas trees is milk chocolate pecan pie flavored. The taste? Nothing like pecan pie (they were too tiny to autopsy, by the way). Tastes kind of chocolately, but that's it. What the hell?

Okay - let's try the gingerbread man (I do think these are cute, but I'm finding it hard to get past the microscopic size.) These are supposed to be milk chocolate gingerbread flavored. Okay, maybe a hint of gingerbread, maybe. But nothing to write home about. We've had much better gingerbread options.

The red and purple circles decorate dark chocolate brandied cherry flavored. Slight cherry taste - Hershey's cherry cordial creme Kisses are WAY, WAY better than this. There are many better cherry options.

And the final polka dotted one is dark chocolate spiced orange flavored. This one wasn't too bad - had the most flavor. of all the chocolates.

Summary - Twix bars are better and I hate being tricked. That choxie box is a complete rip-off.

Once again, we learn we can't judge a book by it's cover. You can wear a Santa suit and still be a Grinch. You can dress like a success and still be a complete failure. You can even tattoo a gingerbread man on your chocolate self and not even taste like gingerbread!

Why are we so susceptible to this? We don't want to spend the time. We don't want to really get to know the average looking guy at the bar when the really hot guy is flirting with us. We don;'t want to have to really look at the book, we'd rather just pick up the one with the most interesting looking cover.

So what do we do?

Learn from your mistakes. Where do you tend to make mistakes based on appearance? I know mine - all these hot guys I date who eventually treat me poorly. If I slowed down and got to know them better, I would have seen that they were not attractive at all on the inside where it really counts.

Slow down! I need to pay more attention to the weight of the chocolate, maybe then I would realize how much cardboard I was buying and how little chocolate.

Make it work for you! Realize that you will be judged by your cover. Make it the best you can - you want to make sure people get to know how awesome you are - don't let them pass you by because of your wrapper.

Just ask the Naked Cowboy.