Almond Joy Pieces

It seems so obvious in hindsight: Reese's Pieces are little M&M-shaped versions of Reese's Peanut Butter cups.  A realization that was only recently made clear when Hershey trotted out Pieces versions of several other classics, including the beloved and relatively antediluvian Almond Joy candy bar.

The first thing I noticed about Almond Joy Pieces is that they come in three colors: blue, a brown so dark that it's nearly black, and a freaky ecru color which - as you can see from the picture above - is almost exactly the same color as my skin.  

Why choose such a strangely fleshy color for your candy?  It is not a very appealing color.  Maybe if I were darker, I would be more used to candy coming in the same color as my skin.  (I am pretty pale, as you can tell - I have that complexion that crisps to a bright lobster-y red at the mere thought of sun exposure.)

Furthermore, it's a confusing color choice.  I have pored over pictures of Almond Joy's packaging online, and I cannot find this shade of tan.  It is not the color of almonds.   I guess you could make a case that it is the color of "joy," but I can't bring myself to do it even in jest.

Once I averted my eyes, ignored the color, and carried on, I found a reasonably pleasant experience.  I actually think that the Mounds bar would have been a better choice for Pieces-izing.  The Almond Joy bar, much as I love it, has a little too much going on to be miniaturized.  Every Piece contains a candy shell, a coconut-ish filling which includes chocolate flavoring, and wee little bits of almond.  

It took a while to get used to the texture, partly because it's so unlike any other candy.  You come to expect certain things from a candy which is shaped like an M&M.  You expect a crunch, or at least a homogenized chocolatey filling.  Biting into the soft duff of finely shredded coconut is kind of strange at first!

One thing I like about the original Almond Joy bar is the big ol' almond.  There aren't many candy bars that don't chop up their almonds.  (For one thing, using chopped almonds is presumably cheaper, since you can chop sub-par almonds, but a whole almond has to be whole, unbroken, and fairly perfect.)  You get a really good bite, and a nice chunk of almond flavor.

This is missing from the Pieces experiment.  Instead it's one more little bit of chaff to tickle the back of your throat.  Honestly they could have left the almonds out and I probably never would have noticed the difference.  The same cannot be said for the full size Almond Joy bar!

In the end, I didn't really care for these.  But I have to admit I've always preferred the Almond Joy's sister candy, the Mounds bar, because of its rich dark chocolate.  Almond Joy's milk chocolate has always struck me as being too sweet by comparison.  And in the end, that's my judgment on these Pieces as well.