Costco's Worst Candy Is Made By An Iconic Cookie Brand

There's nothing like a Costco candy haul to put you in a good mood. However, when you're buying bonbons in bulk, they need to be on point. Anything less and you'll end up with a mega-sized bag of open caramels in the pantry that no one wants to dip their hand into. To avoid all that risky business, we taste tested a selection of Costco candies to figure out which ones deserve to be selected over others. The worst option in our list of 10 Costco candies you haven't tried yet, ranked? The dark chocolate and sea salt cookie bark made by iconic cookie brand Tate's Bake Shop. This lesser-known Costco candy offering was crisp and full of texture but the personality of the cookie was masked by the strength of the chocolate coating.

While there are some of us who simply can't get enough chocolate, we reckon Tate's cookie bark is simply overpowered by the intense flavor of the dark chocolate that's set on top of the jumbled pieces. And call us pernickety but we think that the biscuit-y character of a product labeled as a cookie should be pronounced. Inconsistently-sized, with some chunks drizzled in chocolate where as others were fully coated, the bark was appetizing but nothing to write home about. Plus the random variation in the way the bark was broken up seemed ill-considered. In fact, we're guessing the brand may have created this product as an inventive way to use up broken cookies.

The irregular sized nature of Tate's dark chocolate cookie bark also makes it tricky to eyeball how much one portion size is. While this is true of other varieties of bark, such as Costco's peppermint bark that's broken haphazardly into jagged shards, it does mean that you'd need to weigh the cookies out if you're watching your calorie intake (according to the nutritional info on the packet, 1 serving is 28.2 grams). Tate's Bake Shop also has a milk chocolate version of their cookie bark that's topped with white chocolate drizzle for those who prefer the creamier and milder flavor of milk chocolate versus the intense character of dark chocolate that can be too bitter for some tastes.

The best candy in our ranking, on the other hand, was Kirkland Belgian luxury chocolates. We loved that they were great value (there are 46 pieces in each box, which are a mix of white, milk, and dark chocolate!), beautifully packaged, and made with sustainably sourced cocoa. Moreover, they tasted awesome — particularly the Sanders chocolate caramels — and the range of flavors, from hazelnut cream, orange, and ganache, makes them great for laying out at parties; guests are bound to find one that suits their palate. While other assorted chocolate boxes are available, we found that they were more expensive and contained fewer chocolates.