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- Morinaga DARS Dark Chocolate Review: Bite-sized love, Bittersweet and smooth charm, from one of Japan's big confectionery masters, with an angel charm.
Morinaga DARS Dark Chocolate Review: Bite-sized love, Bittersweet and smooth charm, from one of Japan's big confectionery masters, with an angel charm.
Nutthaphon "EvolGarlic" Phonthanee
June 30, 2025
Hi EvolGarlic Here, here's another blog post to read from your truly EvolGarlic from the EvolGarlic's Gumbo Goodies Blogletter! :
Life, sometimes you expect it to be smooth and sweet, but unfortunately, life will not always be smooth and sweet; it will give you a challenge to hop on, or wrestle till you either end: learn the lesson and fight the next one with new tactics, or be victorious.
Me? Well, I was flopping around in dust, and came out looking like a battered pork, and was now having a love for something bitter that I can savour in.
And one of those things that I can savour is Dark Chocolate, the type of chocolate that is not a milk chocolate, it's bitter, but has had sugar to lower down the bitter factor, so you can eat it without getting attacked by the full bitterness, and will make you feel bitter like it.
Now, I was into dark chocolate and eating a few brands, but I never got into a brand that was there for years, and it was an angelic brand, literally.
Well, who makes DARS? Morinaga! That's right, the brand that brings you Hi-Chew that you might be chewing on, or a curse commercial about a choco ball (Go watch it yourself, curse or not, it's up to you), and the chocolate that I will be reviewing today.
But First, the History of Morinaga and How DARS Debut.
In 1899, Taichiro Morinaga was returning from the USA, with an idea of selling a western confectionery in Tokyo, and well, he began manufacturing Western confectioneries, and with the help of his friend Hanzaburo Matsuzaki, the company started to grow.
1905 is rolling around, and the company has registered a logo that will be a symbol, a symbol that indicates that it is "it", and what better logo for Morinaga, as the Angel Mark, that was inspired by marshmallow that Morinaga produced at that time, the logo was evolving thoughout the years and decades, till this day, the logo was still an angel.
One of their main products was Milk Caramel, which debuted in 1914, a sweet, yellow box caramel that melted into hearts, and it was a legacy snack that stayed in people's hearts for decades.
Years go by, after a hiccup, Morinaga was putting their legacy in the market again in the 60s, by creating a campaign to advertised that women should give men a box of chocolate in the valentine day, this was changing and sweetened the valentine days to more romantic than before, love is in the air and the chocolate is the one that linked them together.
After that, Morinaga was debuting more products in the market, like Chocoball in '67, Hi-Soft in '69, HI-CHEW in '75, Ottotto in '82.
And then in 1993, the year when J-pop songs were popular and melt your heart, DARS was born as the bite-sized chocolate that will melt in your mouth with the taste that will melt your heart.
DARS became another brand that was a stable of the chocolate roster in the market. It's smooth, bite-sized love that you can enjoy, and it was so good that it was expanded to Thailand and into the shop in the city, where I discovered them.
Hi, EvolGarlic here, from the Product Review Department of EvolGarlic's Gumbo Goodies Blogletter, it's another full review of the Morinaga DARS Dark Chocolate, from a brand that was angelic and one of the best to do it.
Before I go into the details about it, here are the factors that I used to review this product :
Packaging, Taste, Unique Point, and Price, each one has 25 points, for a total of 100 points.
[Packaging]
Package? Well, it is simple but feels magical.
Outside was simple black and gold.
Inside was a tray of 12 bite-sized pieces, which sometimes would not line up well because you might be shaking it.
Each pieces have a logo of DARS, and that's it, nothing more.
25 points Full!
[Taste]
Here's the point, the main point of this chocolate, it is dark chocolate, tastes like one but not going as far as pure bitter.
It was a balance of sweet and dark, and when you bite it, it's not that crunchy, but rather a smooth entry that melted my tastebuds.
As for the bitter factors scale, I'll say that it was going to be somewhere between 4 and 5.
25 points Full!
[Uniqueness]
As I said before, DARS has something that I can love.... It's a melt-in-your-mouth taste.
But that depends on where you store it, as my rule goes: Freeze chocolate for maximum taste, don't overdo, it will be an object that might break your teeth.
As far as I'm concerned, DARS is less crunchy than other chocolates I taste; it still has a crunch, but not a loud one.
20 points out of 25 (cut 5 out because there might be another brand that will have the same quirk)
[Price]
For one box of DARS Dark Chocolate, it will cost you a hefty 49 baht.
It is pretty expensive, but there's a thing that makes it so good and worth the price: the unique point of DARS that I mentioned before.
It is melt-in-your-mouth-ish chocolate from Morinaga, one of the best to do it.
But what if you don't like it?
Well, DARS has three more different flavours to choose from, from the Original Milk Chocolate in the red box, White Chocolate, and the green tea one.
20 points out of 25 (Cut 5 out because the price is a little bit too much, but the taste was worth it)
[Total Point & Sum UP]
With all the points combined, the total score of this DARS Dark Chocolate was 90 points out of the full 100 points.
To sum it up, DARS is one of the best things that I put in my mouth and it tastes good, but there are definitely more brands that will have something to fight (maybe a comparison series) to see if it is really unique as its own?
But for now, DARS is darling for me, although it will rip my pocket off if I try one.
[Where To Find 'Em]
Well, I found DARS in my local Lotus shop, but it has only the dark chocolate one, but some branches of Lotus will have more than the Dark Chocolate.