11 Hershey's Chocolate Bar Flavors, Ranked

For over a century, the Hershey company has been a juggernaut in the candy world, cranking out hundreds of millions of chocolate bars each year, along with other sweet treats. The Hershey's name is not just emblazoned on its wrappers and imprinted on its candy — it's also the name of the Pennsylvania town where the chocolate bars were first, and still are, produced. In that town, there's a Hershey hotel, amusement park, theater, stadium, arena, museum, and zoo, all named after the man who started a chocolate empire, Milton Hershey.

While a simple, humble milk chocolate bar is what kicked things off, over the years, Hershey's has spun off all kinds of different varieties of that classic, crafted in the company's secret chocolate laboratory. I'm all for experimentation and innovation, especially when it comes to food, but I became curious — when stacked against one another, could any of the variants top the beautiful simplicity of the original Hershey's milk chocolate? I went on a mission to track down every type of Hershey's chocolate bar out there to discover just that.

When I was a kid, I loved Hershey's Special Dark bar. I thought it tasted better than the milk version, and dark chocolate had an air of sophistication that made me feel more grown-up. Since those days, I've learned to appreciate milk and other types of chocolate more, but my heart is still drawn to the dark side. While I do think there's a place in this world for Hershey's special dark bar, if you're a true dark chocolate lover, it just doesn't deliver the goods.

Hershey's Special Dark chocolate is only 45% cocoa, quite low for a dark chocolate, meaning that over half of the bar is made of other ingredients, including sugar and milk fat. It can be considered something of a gateway into the world of dark chocolate, giving you a hint of what happens to chocolate as cocoa percentages rise and creamy sweetness lessens, but there's no real intensity or bitterness here. It's a dark chocolate bar for people who don't really like dark chocolate.

Eating this Hershey's milk chocolate bar with whole almonds was a baffling experience. The typical Hershey's bar format consists of rectangles (officially known as pips) that you can break apart, but this is a thick, solid hunk of chocolate. That makes sense, since there has to be enough room for whole almonds inside the bar. The problem is, at least with the bar I got, the almonds are few and far between.

It's a little bit jarring to get some bites that are basically all crunchy almond, and some that have no almond representation whatsoever. I found myself cracking the bar into smaller and smaller pieces as I searched for the nuts, and found them clumped in clusters rather than distributed throughout the chocolate. Because there's no consistent taste or texture, this bar was more confusing than enjoyable. Of course, it's Hershey's milk chocolate and almonds, which are both delicious, so its low ranking doesn't mean it's not tasty. There are just lots of other Hershey's bars that are better executed.

While I found the regular Special Dark bar to be underwhelming, the version with almonds fared a little better. The crushed pieces of almond brought out some nuttier and more complex flavors in the chocolate, giving the whole experience more dimension. This bar still didn't give me the intense dark chocolate depth that I crave as a fan of the style, but I'd take this over the plain special dark bar any day.

The addition of texture kicks it up another notch. Unlike the bar with whole almonds, this bar gives you a satisfying crunch in each bite, as the almond pieces are small and well-distributed throughout the bar. There wasn't a single piece that didn't include plenty of nutty flavor and texture. While there's nothing obviously wrong to point out with this bar, it feels fairly humdrum compared to many of the other Hershey's offerings.

I will say, Hershey's definitely knew what it was doing when it made its Milk Chocolate with Caramel bars small in size. These are less like a candy bar and more like a fancy truffle that you might find in a Valentine's Day chocolate box. Hershey's rich milk chocolate surrounds a core of gooey, intensely sweet caramel. Tasting this bar took me on a journey, but it's not one that I'd jump on board to go on again.

One bite, about ⅛ of a full-size bar, was so shockingly sugary that I had to sit down and guzzle a gallon of water. It's certainly a flavor explosion, but once the chocolate and caramel coat your palate, there's nothing more to experience. It's just sweet, sweet, and more sweet. If the chocolate were a bit darker or had a hint of bitterness, or if there was a salty element, I could see this being a hit. As it is, it's rather one-note. The packaging recommends using these square bars for s'mores, which seems like something they'd be suited for. Adding a fresh element like fruit to s'mores made with these bars would help balance them out even more.

Hershey's milk chocolate bar with waffle cone pieces was a tough one to track down, so I'm not certain how widely available this flavor is, but it's definitely worth searching for, especially if you're a fan of bars like Nestlé Crunch. In fact, I think this bar might even eclipse that classic, because the waffle cone bits have a little bit more going on than puffed rice while offering a similar texture.

The waffle cone pieces aren't quite as crunchy as other chocolate bar fillings like the aforementioned rice or nuts like almonds, but I didn't find that to be a detriment. Some of the cone crumbles were on the chewier side, in a pleasant way, like a waffle cone that's been in contact with ice cream, while others were crisp and crackly. They brought a caramelly, almost honeyed flavor to the bar, which brought out the lighter, more buttery flavors in the milk chocolate. Even though this bar sits in the middle of the pack, it's definitely one that I'll be on the lookout for.

This is the bar that started it all. The classic, original Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar. The first Hershey's bars were sold in 1900 for 5 cents each — a price that stayed the same for 69 years. While it's not a nickel anymore, the bar really hasn't changed all that much in the century-plus era of its existence, including the iconic dark brown background and blocky silver text on its packaging, which has remained its signature visual style since 1912. As for its flavor, what set Hershey's milk chocolate apart when it debuted and what still makes it unique today is its tanginess due to the way the milk is processed.

What Milton Hershey discovered was that butyric acid keeps milk chocolate stable longer, allowing Hershey's to mass-produce its bars and offer them to a wider area. This acid also adds a distinctive piquancy that some chocolate fans love, and others despise (it's been compared to vomit, which makes sense as butyric acid is present in both substances). 

Personally, I don't find that flavor off-putting. In fact, I think it helps to keep the chocolate from tasting too cloying or flat. If you're sensitive to it, though, or just not used to it, it's understandable that you'd find Hershey's milk chocolate unpleasant. I like the simplicity of Hershey's original bar — it's a perfectly fine milk chocolate treat. However, if it's next to one of the top five bars, I'm skipping right over it.

Now, if you're one of the people who doesn't enjoy a Hershey's milk chocolate bar because of its tangy flavor, the Symphony bar may be just what you're looking for. The ingredients are the same, and the bars look the same side-by-side, but the difference is in the ratio of ingredients. Symphony Creamy Milk Chocolate contains more cocoa butter than the original Hershey's bar, making it creamier, richer, and smoother.

Symphony definitely feels like a more luxurious, high-end milk chocolate bar compared to a regular Hershey's, which goes to show how much you can change a recipe just by slightly tweaking the amount of an ingredient or two. It's definitely a matter of personal preference as to which bar you're going to prefer: Symphony is more of a mellow European style compared to the sharper profile of a traditional Hershey's. While both certainly have their place, I have to give a slight edge to Symphony because it feels like a more sumptuous, decadent treat, and that's what I want from my chocolate.

As full disclosure here, I am not a fan of Oreos. Because of that, typically, I don't enjoy things that are cookies and cream flavored, either. That's why I was shocked by my reaction to Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme bar. Not only did I enjoy the heck out of it, but that fact made me reevaluate my opinions about everything regarding this flavor. This bar offers the perfect balance of creaminess, sweetness, and crunch.

What I realized as I ate this bar is that it takes an Oreo and flips its ratios around. Instead of dry, nearly flavorless cookies making up the bulk of the product (don't come at me, Oreo lovers, but those cookies taste like burnt dust to me), it's the cream that takes center stage here and lets the cookie portion act as an accent. And unlike the filling in Oreos, the cream here is actually made with dairy rather than oil and high fructose corn syrup. 

This white chocolate-esque bar isn't too sweet and has just a touch of Hershey's signature tang, which makes it almost too easy to eat. I didn't expect this concoction to be anywhere near the top of my ranking, and while I still prefer a more traditional chocolate bar, the Cookies 'n' Creme was a pleasant surprise.

There's a beautiful alchemy that takes place when you eat a Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Almonds bar. While I found the version with whole almonds to be a challenge to enjoy, this one with crushed bits of nuts gets everything right. Since I usually enjoy a darker chocolate, I was surprised that this bar easily outperformed the Special Dark version, but I think that when it comes to Hershey's, milk chocolate is generally the way to go.

The crushed almonds are plentiful throughout the bar, bringing just the right amount of nuttiness and crunch. The almonds create a mellow buttery texture as you chew them, which plays well with the creaminess of the chocolate and balances out its tang. This is a pretty simple bar, but everything is executed perfectly, from the thickness of the chocolate to the sizes of the almond pieces, so that it creates a harmonious whole. This is definitely the best of the bars that feature Hershey's traditional milk chocolate, but there are a few other varieties that outshine it.

Perhaps the most shocking surprise of them all was this, the second-place ranking of Hershey's Plant Based chocolate bar. As a dark chocolate lover and occasional flirter with veganism, I'm no stranger to dairy-free chocolates, and I've done plenty of cooking and baking with alternative milks, often with great success. Considering all of that, I guess I shouldn't have been so astonished by the undeniable deliciousness that this oat milk-based chocolate bar offered. I had to keep going back to this after tasting the dairy-based chocolate bars to convince myself that I wasn't imagining things.

I was not. First of all, this bar offers a much more satisfying dark chocolate-like experience than the Special Dark bars. There's a touch of bitter cocoa here that, along with a hint of sea salt, adds the depth and dimension that I found lacking in those other bars. Crushed almonds add crunch to a chocolate base that's so silky, rich, and creamy, it made me wonder why more chocolate isn't made with oat milk (side note, Hershey's also makes plant-based Reese's peanut butter cups). 

You don't need to be vegan or a dairy-free eater to enjoy this bar, but if you are, you're in for a treat. There's only one other Hershey's bar that I'd reach for over this one, and honestly, even then, I'll do so with hesitation.

It's fitting that the winner here carries the name Symphony, because this bar takes a selection of the successful elements from other Hershey's bars and weaves them together to create a beautiful, melodious entity. The chocolate base here is the same creamy, rich milk chocolate from the plain Symphony bar. The crushed almonds that I enjoyed texturally in some other bars are present here, and they're accompanied by crackly bits of toffee that give the bar a pop of caramelly crunch.

Both filling ingredients are mixed into the chocolate evenly, so you get the complexity of both flavor and texture in each bite. The interplay of creamy and crunchy, soft and firm, mellow and intense as you eat this chocolate bar is so intriguing and enjoyable that after one taste, I knew it was the hands-down victor. When it comes to Hershey's chocolate, the Symphony bar with almonds and toffee is an absolute delight in every way, truly a harmonious symphony of textures and flavors. 

I searched Hershey's online product locator to see which chocolate bar products were available near me. Once I'd tracked down and purchased the selection, I performed my test, breaking off a rectangle (also known as a pip) of each type and tasting it. Once I'd noted down the qualities of each bar, I went back again to my favorites and least favorites until I had them ranked in order from worst to best.

For each bar, I considered flavor, texture, sweetness level, balance, and perceived chocolate quality. In the end, I asked myself, the next time I'm in the candy aisle, which bar am I going to reach for first?