REVIEW - Tesco Banana Bliss/Berry Blast Fruit Bars

Still on my hunt for a decent cereal/snack bar, I picked up these (fairly) new bars in Tesco the other day - Banana Bliss and Berry Blast fruit bars. I'd heard tales that they were Tesco's answer to Nakd bars and, with individual Nakd bars costing up to 75p, two of these Tesco boxes (each with 4 bars) for £2 seemed fairly reasonable to me!

Being incredibly fond of Nakd bars, I was interested to see how these offerings would shape up as a humble snacktime product.

Ingredients-wise, they are quite similar to Nakd bars - the Banana Bliss bar is made of dates (49%), soya protein crispies (18%), raisins (15%), cashew nuts (10%), dried banana (4%), as well as other ingredients like grape juice and rice starch.

Nakd bars are generally either 30g or 35g, but these Tesco bars are slightly lighter at 26-28g. In my opinion you could definitely feel the difference when holding the bar in your hand - however at the cheaper price it's difficult to get too miffed about the slightly smaller size.

On unwrapping the Banana Bliss bar, it certainly *looked* pretty similar to a Nakd bar, especially with the little soya crunchies distributed within. Flavour-wise it was quite nice - admittedly the banana taste wasn't overly strong but it was definitely there and the overall flavour was quite pleasant. The texture was a bit too chewy for my liking - it required a bit of jaw effort - but it was soft enough and the soya crunchies added some nice textural variation. Overall, it wasn't exactly the same as a Nakd bar but it came fairly close.

A fairly good Nakd impersonator

After the positive experience with the banana bar, I was looking forward to giving the Berry Blast one a try as well. Unfortunately I didn't have such a great encounter with it... The texture was slightly different and seemed a little 'off' to me - it almost felt dry and again was quite chewy and tough to eat. I also really didn't like the flavour; it didn't taste of berry at all to me, but rather something strange and artificial!

I'm going to give the banana bar a 7 out of 10 and the berry bar a 3 out of 10 - I'm not sure how one turned out reasonably well and yet the other was the polar opposite?!

Whilst these don't exactly live up to Nakd bars (which I'll admit are a personal favourite of mine), they are quite similar and I certainly enjoyed the Banana Bliss bar. Even though they're slightly smaller, they are also cheaper than Nakd products and therefore I'll definitely be stocking up on the banana bars whilst you can get 2 boxes for £2. Unfortunately, I'll be giving the Berry Blast bars a miss!