Intro

The 1990s called, they want their visual design aesthetics back!  It’s Squid Pants here checking out another edible product and off the bat this one at minimum has some nice (if quite retro) visuals.  Let’s see if it holds up in other metrics too.

Producer

The brand this was produced for is Blessed, named after the founder.  It’s a legacy to legal brand under the umbrella of Gallery Brands who are setting themselves up to be curators of several legacy to legal brands and products.  This particular brand implies this is a good product for recovery from training.  Well, I trained pretty hard last night and am sore today so let’s check back in the conclusions to see if I feel less sore and aching after an hour or two.

Packaging

Can you say mylar bag?  The only thing you can complain about here is the packaging doesn’t protect the bar from breaking too well.  That’s why there are two pieces missing from the photos that go with this review.  The bar had broken at some point and two pieces were still in the bag.  This was packaged March 11th, 2022 and I opened it 95 days later.

Looks

It looks like a small bar of dark chocolate with coloured streaks and splashes.  Those coloured markings are apparently hand done, I guess by applying the coloured cocoa butter mentioned in the ingredients to the mould before the rest of the chocolate is poured.  As I said it’s pretty 90s in aesthetic, but I like how it looks.  The bar is scored into ten pieces, each of which should contain approximately 1mg of THC and 10mg of CBD.

Feel

Firm dark chocolate with a nice snap.  When consuming the cocoa nibs (which I had to look up, those are dried cocoa beans) are nice and crunchy while being a bit less decadent than crumbled cookies which give a similar feel.

Scent & Taste

Smells like dark chocolate with a really faint hint of mint.

Taste begins with the unmistakable bitterness of dark chocolate, very quickly followed by saltiness.  Mint is fainter than I hoped but is present throughout the experience.  I’m not a chocolate fan (yes, there are people who don’t love chocolate) but this was nice.

No cannabis scent or taste, but this was made with distillate so no surprise there.

Price and Value

I got this from the same place as the last edible I reviewed, Edition X in Toronto.  I paid . . . wait; $12.00 before tax?  I didn’t want to prejudice myself so I had intentionally ignored price right up until I was done sampling the entire bar so that was a bit of a shock.  In fact it seems I got a good price on it too and in general it sells for a bit more.  This pricing puts it in the gift for special occasion realm only for me.  I use lower dose edibles nightly for insomnia and related sleep issues, this falls completely outside the price range for that.  Then again I’ll just eat a bit of ABV from the volcano for sleep, so I’m not exactly a discerning foodie who demands the best at all times.

Conclusions

Yes, there’s an elephant in the room and I will address it but let’s pretend it’s not there for just a few sentences longer.  This was pretty good.  I agree it’s a premium product even though the price was a bit of a shock.  It’s a treat for special occasions and I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing else in the legal market is as nice.  Did it help my post training ache?  No, and I knew it wouldn’t.  I have never experienced any pain relief from any cannabinoids through any route of administration but that’s just me, a sample of one is statistically meaningless.

Ok, here’s where things get a bit uncomfortable.  Chocolate is a bit of a nasty business in some regions.  This is a very complicated subject, with many subtleties and other considerations that vary from country to country that factor in.  All of this is obviously far beyond the scope of an edibles review.  I did look to see if they say how they source their cocoa products but didn’t find anything and admittedly did not email them to enquire further.  It’s important to know that not declaring the source does not at all mean that they haven’t done a great job at ethically sourcing their chocolate (but bluntly an assurance that the sources were ethical producers and marketers is worth a premium on price to me).  Canada has some weird labelling laws when it comes to cannabis so for all I know they aren’t allowed to label it as (e.g.) fair trade or the like.  Also, a label saying all cocoa products were ethically sourced doesn’t mean that it’s actually the case either as lying on labels happens sometimes in general.  The ubiquity of chocolate and related products mean these issues seem really abstract to us who were lucky enough to find ourselves in more prosperous situations but for some children, that life is the only experience of childhood and life they know.  Caveat emptor, as best we can.