Hershey’s Chocolate Bubble Yum

Purchased at: Grocery Outlet (Madrona – Seattle)
Price: 10 cents/1 pack  – Each pack has 5 pieces, so 2 cents per piece (what a deal!)

Marisa’s Take: I feel like this product came together based on all of the other successful sugary combinations of the past. Chocolate and peanut butter? Reese’s. Marshmallows and granulated sugar? Those adorable little Peeps. Cookies and pizza? A COOKIZZA. Some quick Googling uncovers that this product first came out in 2006, but I couldn’t find a current product page on Hershey’s website, so I’m going to assume it’s been discontinued.

At first thought, combining chocolate and chewing gum seems like a brilliant idea. The long-lasting gum base plus the cocoa flavor (with none of the extra calories/guilt that come with eating a regular chocolate bar), how can you lose?

You start your journey just breaking up the brown polymer clay-like cube in your mouth. I’m accustomed to the little pieces of sugar-free Orbits, Tridents, Eclipses of the world, most commonly used for breath freshening, so this was a much different gum experience. I admit I’m kind of a gum addict – when I’m not eating something, I’m usually chomping on a piece of gum. Thankfully, I haven’t stuck any behind my ear for safekeeping a la Violet Beauregard, but I’m currently working on my blueberry transformation. I think my record is between 10-12 hours for one piece (though 8 of that may have been sleeping).

The flavor reminds me a lot of a brown, er…chocolate flavored Tootsie Roll Pop (as also mentioned in another review). It’s enough flavor to get that ~chocolate essence~ but not enough to actually feel like you’re eating legit chocolate. The resulting gum portion was quite rubbery and snappy (as Bubble Yum is). When I took it out of my mouth and rolled it into a ball, I feel like I could have used it as a brown little bouncy ball.

If you want to blow any sort of bubbles, you’re gonna have to eat a whole pieces, instead of the half-piece I bit off for sampling. Even then, is a brown gum bubble really that appealing. Ben snapped a shot of the result (see photo below, the resulting bubble carefully placed on a dish as if it were an art piece). I’m getting a total Rover vibe from the bubble (any fans of The Prisoner here?), only instead of emerging from the sea, he emerges from a sewage treatment plant. I’d make a joke about Number 2, but that’d be too easy.

Final thoughts: it’s a decent product – I admit I ate two more pieces following the initial review, but that was more to feed my terrible gum addiction than actually craving the product.

Apparently, Bubbly Yum/Hershey’s took this product a step further and created “Bubble Yum, Hershey’s Genuine Chocolate Flavored Lip Balm”. I’m glad they included the disclaimer, “Goes on your lips, not in your mouth!”

Ben’s Take: Never once have I thought that “Boy, I really wish I could chew on a piece of Hershey bar flavored gum.” I mean I’ve thought of some pretty silly things as a kid, but who thought about making chewy chocolate? It’s not even like a gum version of a Tootsie Roll. Oh Nooooooooo. At least Tootsie Rolls don’t try and play any games. You know you’re eating a piece of chocolate taffy. These are far worse.

Don’t be deceived by its smooth taffy-like looks. When I bit into my piece of Bubble Yum Chocolate Flavored Gum, the first thing I noticed was the grit of the chocolate powder (hereafter referred to as choco-crystals) against my teeth. It was like gum loaded with sugar. The next thing I noticed was the distinct flavor of gas station mocha machine mocha. The same exact flavor in a chewy portable format! If they added some coffee extract or caffeine they could market this as some sort of disgusting mocha energy gum. I’d bet money it would taste exactly the same.

Once I got over the flavor and texture I had to attempt blowing a bubble. My first tries were foiled by the texture of the choco-crystals causing my bubbles to fail before I could even get them started. You have to chew on these choco-crystal-infused mocha-chews until the choco-crystals are sufficiently dissolved before you can even attempt to blow a bubble, and by that time the flavor is gone.

I have yet to figure out if that is a desirable attribute.

Other Hershey’s Chocolate Bubble Yum Reviews ‘Round the Net:
The Metal Misfit Review
Popgadget.com Review
Gigi-Reviews
Jim’s Chocolate Mission

Buy Bubble Yum Chocolate on Amazon!

Tags: Candy, Chocolate, Gum, Hershey's

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.