Kodiak Chewy S’mores Granola Bars

The experience

When confronting the waving bear on the wrapper, you know that you’re going to be in a flavorful—and perhaps dangerous—adventure.

He’s holding a scoop of marshmallows, so it’s probably worth the risk.

Similar in spirit to the Quaker alternative, you get a chewy granola bar containing bits of the s’more:

• Globs of marshmallow
• Chocolate chips
• Bits of graham cracker

After eating a couple boxes of Kodiak s’mores bars, I find them to be remarkably similar to the Quaker ones. I now spend a few moments of each afternoon searching for marshmallow flavor within each chomp.

Strengths: chocolate chips, marshmallow

Like any good granola bar snack, Kodiak loads these bars with chocolate chips. The chips contribute just the right amount of chocolate to each bite and are by far the biggest strength.

The whole grain mixture tastes good and is a good base for the s’mores experience. It’s what you would expect from a mass-produced granola bar.

Weakness: no graham, inconsistent texture, sometimes like sandpaper

The biggest flop is no graham. Kodiak doesn’t even try from what I can tell. Maybe you’d get something graham-like if you grounded up the whole grains into a dust and mixed in some honey and cinnamon.

When looking at the granola bars, you can see some marshmallow globs mixed in with the whole grains, kind of like spots of Rice Krispie Treat marshmallow. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really taste the marshmallow all that much.

Another big weakness that I experienced with Kodiak s’mores granola bars was inconsistent quality. Here’s what I found in the first box that I tried:

• one was dried out
• another had some dry bites that reminded me of chalky Quest bars*
• the remaining 4 were pretty good

* I initially thought that these were graham bits, but that element was missing from the bars that I tried later.

Bottom line: a great s’mores snack

Overall, Kodiak s’mores granola bars taste really good for a whole grain, protein-packed treat dressed up as a campfire snack.

Despite the occasional quality quack, I have adopted these bars as a part of my daily afternoon snack. I recommend that you try them for yourself. Let me know what you think.