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You’d be hard-pressed to find that information on a conventional chocolate bar. Who among us hasn’t broken into the emergency stash of baking chips once a chocolate craving hits? For that reason, I ate 26 chocolate bars on the hunt for the very best. (You’re welcome.) What makes for the best high-quality chocolate bar, however, depends on your preferences. There are milk chocolate lovers, extra dark chocolate purists, and fans of flavored chocolate.

The real Wonka Bar was a chocolate bar made to look like the ones from the book and movies. It was inspired by Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. On 9 August 2013, Nestle UK announced that the Wonka Bar was to return to the UK, after having not been sold since 2005. The new Wonka Bars are available in small individual bars and 100g big block bars.

However, these real Wonka Bars stopped being sold in January 2010 because they weren't selling very well. These include Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (from 1971) and Charlie and the Chocolate Candy Bars Factory (from 2005). There's even a play called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical (from 2013) where they appear. Each movie and play shows the Wonka Bar with different wrappers.

Most of the chocolate bars I reviewed have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving, with a standout exception being the Ritter Sport Alpine Milk Chocolate, with 17 grams. Although it’s not a requirement that chocolatiers name their cacao’s country of origin and sourcing details, many choose to. The Raaka Pink Sea Salt, for example, is entirely sourced from a cacao farm in a bird sanctuary in the Dominican Republic.

The best dark chocolate bar is the Beyond Good 70% Pure Dark. It’s complex but approachable and melts in your mouth beautifully. Milk chocolate lovers will swoon for the sweet and creamy Ritter Sport Alpine Milk Chocolate. These luscious chocolate bars are made with 100% cocoa butter and high quality non-GMO Fair Trade Certified coverture chocolate. Giant chocolatier Godiva leans into its nearly century-old Belgian roots to support an image of fancy chocolate.

This year I have been able to organise my materials and spend time on the design, and to enjoy the process lot more. Ten Golden Tickets were hidden in the bars and bags of Wonka Exceptionals. Later, more Exceptionals flavors were added, like Wonka Triple Dazzle Caramel and Wonka Fantabulous Fudge. A Nestlé factory in Europe started making Wonka Bars with the flavors and wrappers from the 2005 movie. These included Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, Nutty Crunch Surprise (which didn't actually have nuts), and Triple Dazzle Caramel. The company that made them was called the Willy Wonka Candy Company, which was part of Nestlé.

Like Toblerone, the crunchy bits can still get stuck in your teeth, but this was better distributed than the Swiss giant's sugar bomb. Sure, you're getting a lot of chocolate in one bar, but that just made it more affordable in my book. Though I'd avoided Tony's in the past, I'll be giving more of the brand's bars a try.

It took several years for the company to nail down a recipe for the Wonka Bar and they finally released one in 1975, per The Huffington Post. The company struggled to solidify their chocolate recipe (literally, as the bars kept melting), and didn't actually release the flagship Wonka Bar until 1975. For years, Wonka Bars were reintroduced and pulled from markets intermittently. In 1988, the Willy Wonka candy brand was sold to Nestlé, the company credited with inventing Premium Chocolate Bars chips ( who still sells some of the best grocery store chocolate chips). They went on to have greater success under the Willy Wonka name, but even they could not withstand the strain of declining sales.

The Golden Ticket that grants five "lucky" children the chance to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory is hidden inside the famous chocolate bars, with the candy serving as a catalyst for the whole story. Still, there were a few promising signs that the beloved candy bar could return. For one, Ferrero released a line of chocolate bars based on their beloved candies in 2022. And second, the release of the musical "Wonka" — starring Timothée Chalamet — could kick start another Wonka Bar campaign, as has been the case with previous movie adaptations. In 1971, a film production company teamed up with Quaker Oats to make a movie version of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book. Part of the problem with Quaker's Wonka Bar strategy was that the 1971 film simply wasn't very popular in its initial release.

Nestlé Japan also released a toy truck containing these bars. However, they have since been discontinued after the sale to Ferrero. The wrappers of the 1971 version are brown with an orange and pink border with a top hat over the "W" in Wonka, similar to the film's logo, and the chocolate bars resemble Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars.

What’s more, we can now get cool Wonka Candy to eat the treats mentioned in the book. The first step to making the bars was to find an inexpensive and widely available chocolate bar that was long and narrow, just as Wonka’s is in the movie. This also lent itself to fitting the long name of the chocolate bar on the wrappers I was making.