3 Musketeers Bars
© Denzil Green
Three (3) Musketeers is a candy bar sold in the United States and in Canada. It is whipped chocolate nougat coated with milk chocolate.
In America, the wrapper portrays the three musketeers: Athos, Porthos and D’Artagnan. Even though D’Artagnan was a johnny-come lately musketeer, a now-unknown marketer decided to choose D’Artagnan instead of the original musketeer, Aramis.
In Canada, the thorny literary problem is dodged by omitting the musketeers picture on the wrapper.
The Musketeers Bar is made from only two ingredients, chocolate nougat and chocolate coating. The nougat is chocolate flavoured, about the density of a marshmallow. Some people detect a slight taste difference between it and the nougat in a Mars Bar; others do not. The colour of the nougat is the same as the colour in a Mars Bar as well. The nougat is made in large slabs, cut down to bar-sized pieces.
The nougat pieces are conveyed on a mesh belt through a stream of milk chocolate. The mesh allows the bottoms of the bars to get coated by a chocolate covered wheel that rotates and brushes up against the mesh. Then the bars are cooled, inspected and packaged.
They are made in two cities in the United States — Chicago, Illinois and Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, US — and one city in Canada, Newmarket, Ontario.
Sorting out candy bars made by the Mars Company
| Mars Bar | Milky Way | Three Musketeers | Snickers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nougat | US / INT | US / INT | US | US / INT |
| Caramel | US / INT | US | US / INT | |
| Almond | US | |||
| Peanuts | US / INT |
(INT = International)
Cooking Tips
Some fans like eating their 3 Musketeers Bars frozen.
History Notes
3 Musketeers Bars
© Denzil Green
The 3 Musketeers Bars was the third product to be introduced by the Mars Company.
The “3” in the name will make more sense if you know that the bar was originally introduced in 1932 as 3 pieces of nougat, each a different flavour: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
In 1945, the nougat was made all chocolate. The company kept the bar’s name, even though the “3” no longer made sense. Presumably, renaming it to “The Lone Ranger” was ruled out.
The change also made it the same as what is sold outside the United States as a Milky Way bar, magnifying the confusion in the naming scheme for candy bars made by the Mars company.
See also: Mars Bars, Milky Way Bars, Snickers Bars