Ben & Jerry's Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch vs. the old Coffee Heath Bar Crunch

[By Nick] This has been a Friday Night Fight in the making for a long time. You see, when we first got word that Ben & Jerry's was going to be replacing my beloved heath bars with a GMO-free toffee, I decided to store a pint of the original in my freezer until the new version was released. When it was finally time to pit the two against each other, I had discovered that someone decided to eat my pint of the Heath version. Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch was well distributed by this time and finding a pint of the original was beyond impossible. I was about to give up and just review the new version when I found a pint among a sea of newer pints. So, finally, it's time to see which toffee bar will come out on top.

Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Toffee Bar Crunch Ice Cream

Coffee Ice Cream with Chunks of Heath Bars Fudge-covered Toffee Pieces

It's been awhile since I've had CHBC so I think I can be pretty unbiased when it comes to this fight. To make things more unbiased, I made my friend who ate my old pint help me out. Instead of me photographing the ice cream, I had her do it as well as scoop me out two bowls of each so I wouldn't know exactly which was which from the get go. So just for reference, I'll be referring to each flavor as either A (left) or B (right).

This fight is going to go three rounds: 

Appearance, Texture and last but not least Taste. 

Ready? 

FIGHT! 

*mortal kombat theme song starts to play*

Appearance:‎ Both bases look about the same in color. Flavor B is a tad bit darker which I like to see. There are also bigger chunks of visible toffee. Flavor A makes a redeeming effort with the pools of liquidly toffee I see while having solid pieces still noticeable. I'm going to give this round to Flavor B just because Ben & Jerry's is infamous for their chunks and that's the case visually.

Texture:‎ Not surprisingly, the ice cream base have the same consistency. It's exactly what you've come to expect from a pint of Ben & Jerry's. The toffees on the other hand, aren’t alike at all. Flavor A is more liquidly while still being able to retain its crunch. Flavor B's texture is beyond off. Sure it does have a crunch to it but the toffee quickly begins to crumble as if it was a crispy cookie. This is not what I want in my toffee and while Flavor A could be more intact, it wins this round.

Taste: Both flavors have a mild coffee flavor but there's something off with Flavor B. The coffee flavor is weaker and the aftertaste is really bad. It's akin to what I'd imagine putting spoiled milk into coffee would be like. Flavor A isn't perfect but I'd much rather have that base. Things just go from bad to terrible for Flavor B when it comes to the toffee. While Flavor A is sweet and almost caramel like in flavor, Flavor B tastes awful. Really there's no other word for me to put it‎. It doesn't taste like any toffee I've ever had and it even comes across as burnt at times. This is not good at all. This round and the fight goes to Flavor A by a landslide.

And the winner is....

Now I'm pretty sure I knew which flavor was which after the fight but I made sure my friend didn't tell me which was which until after I wrote my review. Drum roll please >>>><<<<< And my suspicions were correct! Flavor A was Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and Flavor B was Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch.

I'm really at a loss for words trying to figure out why Ben & Jerry's would use such terrible quality toffee to replace an iconic candy bar. I know they want to be fair trade, gmo-free blah blah blah. That doesn't mean they couldn't have waited until they were able to find a suitable replacement toffee for this flavor.

What makes things worse is that the new version is even more terrible for you. The new version has 20 more calories as well as 4 more grams of fat (aka 40 calories from fat) as the Heath version. As it stands, Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch is the worst ice cream I've ever had from Ben & Jerry's. It can thank Liz Lemon and Pineapple Passionfruit from saving it from being the worst flavor overall. If I was you and we're a fan of this flavor, I'd buy every pint of the original version you can find. I say boycott this new version until Ben & Jerry's gets its act together and finds a replacement for this replacement toffee. That and they seriously need to fix whatever happened to the base. I had plans on trying the new vanilla version but after this incident, that's not likely to happen.