Bosco Chocolate Bar

You've probably heard of Bosco chocolate syrup. It was hugely popular in the 1950's and early 1960's and pop culture has ensured it's place as a true bit of Americana.  Bosco Syrup was often referenced on the popular TV show Laverne & Shirley, for example, and black-and-white horror movies through the late 1960's used Bosco as a stand-in for blood.

I've tried Bosco Syrup a time or two and to be honest, I really didn't think it was anything special - as good as any other chocolate syrup I've used but certainly not anything to get wildly enthusiastic about.  When I was a kid, my mother never bought Bosco at all; we always had either Hershey or Fox's U-Bet. So when I found Bosco Milk Chocolate Bars at Big Lots! I bought one out of curiosity rather than nostalgia.

Just like the syrup, Bosco Milk Chocolate isn't really anything special.  It's plain, serviceable milk chocolate with a typical American chocolate flavor profile: sweet, mild chocolate with the faintest sour-milk or "cheesy" background flavor (next time you taste a Hershey bar, pay attention and that sour-milk flavor will be noticeable.) Props to whoever is making the Bosco Bars for using 100% real cocoa butter, making the bar silky-smooth as it melts in your mouth. There's no mockolate in this bar, and yet the best I can say about it is this: The Bosco Milk Chocolate Bar is decent but ordinary.

I suppose it will sell well to the nostalgia crowd - folks who remember the TV ads in the 1950's (not me, though, I'm not that old) or the ones whose Moms set down cookies and a glass of Bosco chocolate milk in front of them for an after-school snack. For the rest of us, well, there's nothing about it other than the name to make it stand out.