The Mars Bar mystery

I was in the airport coming home from Jamaica. After waiting in a long line at the airport and getting there two hours too early, I got hungry and wanted a snack. Of course I went for something chocolaty. I saw a bar I had never tried before called a Bounty bar. I bit in thinking that this might be something really new with chocolate and a coconut filling... but no it was exactly like a Mounds bar. At first I thought Bounty was just a different name for the Mounds bar in countries other than the US...as it turns out the two candies are not even made by the same company. Bounty is by Mars and is only sold outside of the US market, and Mounds are made by Hershey. But you could have had me fooled.

Which leads me to the slightly confusing difference between the European Mars bar and the US Mars Bar and Milky Way bars. Ok so according to Wikipedia the original Mars bar was a European invention, designed to be a sweeter version of the American Milky Way bar. Ok so far so good. Yet somewhere along the line we get the American Mars bar (discontinued in 2002!) Which is slightly different than the European one. And apparently what goes for a Milky Way here in the States is called a 3 Musketeer over there.

I'm not even sure I was able to decipher all or any of that, but needless to say the chocolate world is full of things that get lost in the cross-cultural translation.

-Chocolette