America's Top Candy Bar

I walked by a bucket of free candy bars today and picked up a Twix bar for myself. I can't recall the last time I had a candy bar, but I was sure glad I had this particular candy bar. It sent me on a trip down memory lane to the days of Vanilla Cola and Willie the Water Bug. Here's my top five candy bars of all time:

#1. Caramel Twix – an underrated candy bar by all accounts, this thing is simple and straightforward, but it delivers with its crispy cookie wafer offset by creamy caramel and thin chocolate coating. This candy bar does not pretend to be something that its not and it does not pretend to be a candy bar ranked lower than #1 on the all-time greatest candy bar list.

#2. Milky Way – kind of like a Twix, but it relies on fluffy nougat instead of a thin cookie wafer. It might actually be better than a Twix, but it’s been so long that I can’t be sure. In theory nougat is better than a cookie, but the crispy nature of a cookie is a nice compliment to the creaminess of the caramel.

#3. Snickers - this candy bar is practically a health food as far as I can tell and it is probably the most common candy bar eaten by athletes. It’s pretty much a Milky Way with peanuts, but the addition of the peanuts makes for a significant difference. I’d compare comparing Snickers and Milky Ways to comparing a margarita to a pina colata. They’re both warm weather drinks, but one is coconut based and the other is (generally) lime based.

#4. 3 Musketeers – here’s where things get competitive as there’s only a tiny line separating the #4 candy bar from the #100 candy bar. However, the 3 Musketeer is a bold candy bar. It’s a giant hunk of chocolate nougat covered with chocolate. I remember when I was a kid I ate one of these while drinking a Mountain Dew and the nougat created some sort of protective coating around my mouth that prevented me from tasting the Moutain Dew.

#5. Butterfinger – probably the most unique candy bar in the mainstream candy bar world. Its brittle texture screams old fashioned but its brazen advertising strategy manages to sustain a mainstream chic. This is the candy bar I would eat if I was watching a movie in a Porsche at a drive-in movie complex.