If you’ve been on the internet at all in the past decade, you know about MrBeast. Jimmy Donaldson and his band of cohorts have been making the highest-production videos on all of YouTube, pulling in hundreds of millions of views with high-octane explosions and an overabundance of jump cuts.
His empire has expanded far outside the platform, with his own Amazon reality show, line of action figures, and chocolate bars. Though he’s never outright said it, his content and the brands he produces have always seemed to be aimed at children.
Feastables launched in 2022 with the goal of “creating quality snacks with a focus on fun at a mass scale,” according to Donaldson in a press release. The chocolate brand is a featured player in nearly every video he produces, and he’s even gone so far as building a chocolate factory and giving it away for a video.
Donaldson’s goal when making anything, from videos to chocolate, is to be as big and bombastic as possible. He idolizes Steve Jobs and “his unrelenting drive to make the best product possible, no matter what,” according to a recent podcast interview.
That drive for success has led Donaldson into a few career-rocking controversies. Recently, the New York Times shared accusations that contestants were hurt while filming his Amazon reality show. Rolling Stone also reported that Donaldson’s former costar, Ava Tyson, was stepping down from the channel after accusations of sexual misconduct.
Donaldson’s ventures into the food space have also been a bit rocky. In 2020, Donaldson launched Beast Burger, which prepared fast food meals in ghost kitchens at 1,700 restaurants. The quality of the food on social media seemed subpar, and in 2023, Donaldson sued his partner Virtual Dining Concepts for producing “inedible” food. VDC sued Donaldson a week later for $100 million in damages. The legal battle is still ongoing.
That Steve Jobs, “no matter what” mentality might have hurt people and produced mediocre burgers, but does it make good chocolate?
To find out, I sucked up my pride and forked over around 15 dollars at a Target in Harlem to get three bars of Feastables, as well as a Hersheys and Cadbury for comparison.
From the untouched selection at the only store in upper Manhattan that sold the candy, I took three Feastables bars: milk chocolate, milk crunch, and peanut butter. I could not find the almond or dark chocolate flavors that Feastables offers. After braving the intense sidewalk and subway heat, I tasted the mostly unmelted chocolate and collected my deepest thoughts.
My simple review: It’s alright. Compared to other influencer brands, it doesn’t stand out. It’s not inedible sewage like Logan Paul’s Prime or a lovely experience like Jacksepticeye’s tea. It tastes like a much sweeter version of both the Hershey and Cadbury bars, which is odd because it actually has less sugar than both.
Take one bite of Feastables, and you have to take a break because all you taste is sugar with a hint of cacao. The dark chocolate might have been a bit closer to my palette.
The milk crunch was my favorite because it tasted like a Crunch bar covered in extra sugar, which my lizard brain was fond of. The peanut butter one made my teeth hurt after taking just one bite. In no world would I ever willingly get these over Hershey or Cadbury, but I’m not the target demographic.
Feastables’ flashy, multi-colored marketing isn’t designed to appease an elder millennial, but rather a small child combing the candy aisles at Walmart. The voice in their head wants them to join MrBeast, their favorite YouTuber. When they scan the QR code on the back of the package, they’ll be invited to take a survey and give their email to “join the crew” at MrBeast. All they have to do is offer their demographics, age, and purchase interest data to get into their “community panel.”
The MrBeast brand is designed to conquer and make you think it’s the best. In a video announcing a new formula for the chocolate bar, Donaldson claimed that individuals who tried both Hershey and Feastables picked the latter bar every time. When the Food Theorists tested out this experiment, they found that Donaldson had created a confirmation bias by putting Feastables as the last tested bar.
In my opinion, Feastables is not the best chocolate, but its popularity isn’t tied to how it tastes. The marketing and Donaldson’s ethos of success at any cost is what keeps consumers gobbling down mountains of processed sugar.
