Aero Instant Bubbly Hot Chocolate Drink

Brand: Nestle Aero

Name: Instant Bubbly Hot Chocolate Drink

Tagline: Chocolatey

Origin: UK

Servings: 4

Weight: 4 x 24g

Price: RM14

Availability: Village Grocer, Bangsar Village I

Ingredients: Fat reduced drinking chocolate 42.9% (Sugar, Fat-reduced cocoa powder), Skimmed milk powder, Sugar, Hydrogenated vegetable oil, Lactose, Dried glucose syrup, Thickeners (E415, E466), Salt, Milk proteins, Flavouring, Stabilisers (E331, E340, E452).

Nutritional information: Energy 99kcal; Protein 2.1g; Sugars 14.3g; Fibre 1.2g

Instructions: Empty sachet into a cup or mug, add 200ml of hot water (not boiling). Stir well to release the bubbles and enjoy your deliciously bubbly hot chocolate drink.

Review:

• Taste: I'll be honest; I judged the drink before tasting it. Yes, drink. Drinks are usually full of fake stuff (compare fruit juice with fruit drink) so I wasn't surprised that it had little cocoa taste but it should have not tasted like water with hints of chocolate (hmmm, where have I heard this before?). On first sip, it does remind you of a bar of chocolate but that taste quickly dissipated into blandness. Personally, I've never liked Aero but those who do would appreciate it, albeit for a short while. 5/10
  


• Smoothness: Quite smooth with no powdery taste. Somehow, the cheaper ones usually get this right. Oh, and they weren't kidding about the bubbles. The bubbles are really, really fine but it does make you wonder, did they put SLS in this stuff??4/5
  
  


• Meltiness: Easy to dissolve with very minimal residue. I didn't even have to make a paste. 4/5
  


• Thickness: Average. At least the thickening agent did its job. 3/5
  


• Worthiness: RM3.50 per cup for something that tastes like chocolate-flavoured water is not good value in my books. What's more, it's usually less than RM1/packet in the UK so that's a markup of 350%! 1.5/5
  


• Others: It's funny how I was never attracted to it when it was easily available (and super cheap to boot) but here I am, forking out RM14 to review this. No matter, one of the gripes I have with this is the instructions. If you look at the instructions on the box, it doesn't indicate the amount of water you need but the nutritional blurb on the front does say 'per serving with 200ml water contains...' so if you're one of those people who doesn't bother reading every single word written on packagings, you're not gonna find it. It does say 200ml on the single-serve packets but with all the writings (and brown-ness), there's a fair chance you'll miss it. The chemical-laden ingredients is also quite scary but then again, it is a drink. 2.5/5

Final score: 57.1%



In a nutshell: If you love Aero chocolate bar but can't find it anywhere, try this. But then again, if the shop has Aero hot chocolate drink, it probably has Aero chocolate bar too.