While I’m extremely late to the party, I finally pulled the trigger and purchased some Outright bars over the black Friday weekend. With the freebies added in, this was my chance to get a variety of flavors at a reasonable price to give these a try.
I’m someone who is perfectly happy eating a Quest, One, MusclePharm or more often than not a Costco Kirkland knock-off Quest bar. I enjoy the texture and flavor of those and don’t get any stomach issues when eating one to three of them per day. As for the Outright bars that I had for this review, they were the S’mores, Chocolate Chip Almond Butter, White Chocolate Cranberry and Banana Walnut flavors.
When it comes to flavor, I was enormously disappointed in almost every one of them. The S’mores, CC Almond Butter and White Chocolate Cranberry all just tasted like the nut butter base throughout the entire bar with only brief appearances of the individual flavor add-ins that were advertised. The S’mores to me was the biggest disappointment because I got no marshmallow or graham cracker at any point through the entire bar and only a rare chocolate chip. It was just all peanut butter flavor. While not bad, it definitely did not live up to the hype from people like Marc and others on social media.
The CC Almond Butter flavor did provide a slight change in flavor whenever I would hit a chocolate chip but that was very rare. Again, I like almond butter so the taste of the bar wasn’t bad just lacking. The White Chocolate Cranberry would provide a slight taste difference when I would bite into a cranberry but again that’s it. Otherwise just straight peanut butter to me. The only flavor that somewhat impressed me was the Banana Walnut as that one had the flavor of banana throughout the entire bar with noticeable pieces of walnut in there. This is the one where the nut butter base was the least present and the advertised flavor add-ins were the most noticeable. Texture on all of them was nice. Soft, crumbly and easy to chew. No complaints in that department.
Outside of the flavors, I will say that you are not getting short-changed when it comes to the weight of these bars. Each one is supposed to be 60g and I weighed all four of the ones I received and they came in at anywhere from 62g to 67g. Unless you are seriously dieting and tracking macros to the gram, not many people are going to complain about free food.
Lastly, these bars caused some unwanted side effects each time I ate one. When I had these to try, nothing in my food selection changed except adding one bar per night. Each time after finishing the bar (like clock-work after 40-45 minutes) I was back on the toilet. I will spare everyone the details but needless to say, I will not be spending my money on these bars again no matter what new flavors Marc comes out with. I will stick with my Costco/Kirkland Quest knock-offs at a cheaper unit cost, more protein and less side effects.
