We Tried And Ranked Every Flavor Of Tony's Chocolonely Chocolate Bars

Beyond the colorful, eye-catching wrappers and whimsical, Willy Wonka styling, and mouth-watering flavors of these Big-Chungus-sized chocolate bars, Tony's Chocolonely is a brand with heart, doing more than just filling our bellies with tasty treats.

Founded in 2005 in the Netherlands by Dutch investigative reporter Teun (a.k.a., Tony) van de Keuken, Tony's was built on the belief that it was possible to create a brand that was not only delicious but also committed to ethical and fair-trade practices. When Van de Keuken discovered the widespread use of illegal child labor and exploitation in chocolate production, he launched a chocolate company that would serve as a model for fair and equitable practices in chocolate production.

Tony's Chocolonely's mission to support ethical chocolate is through a direct trade model, ensuring fair prices and better conditions for cocoa farmers, and this mission is reinforced every step of the way, from production to design. Its signature uneven bar shaping is meant to symbolize wealth inequality in the chocolate industry, sparking consumer awareness. Vibrant packaging combines playful branding with a serious mission, engaging customers in the fight for a fairer and more transparent chocolate supply chain.

Ranking every flavor of Tony's Chocolonely was not only an exercise in deliciousness, but also an education on what it means to be a brand with purpose. To tackle the assignment, I enlisted my two sons, James (age 10) and Luke (age 8), who were eager to plow through a whopping 12 bars of chocolate with me, rating each one on flavor composition, taste, and texture. In the process, they got a lesson in ethical business practices—a way of learning they both agreed was far tastier than what they experienced in their day-to-day elementary school life. 

Each full-sized chocolate bar retails for $5.95 on the Tony's Chocolonely website. Here's how things shook out in our rankings. 

This flavor is the result of a collaboration between Tony's and cause-driven ice cream company Ben & Jerry's. In the Summer of 2022, Ben & Jerry's began sourcing the cocoa for its products through Tony's Open Chain in an effort to help end the 30,000 cases of exploitation and 1.56 million cases of child labor in the chocolate industry. Inspired by Ben & Jerry's classic ice cream flavor, Strawberry Cheesecake, this pink-hued bar is made from white chocolate with pieces of sweet-tart dehydrated strawberries, crumbly cookies, and cheese power to mirror the creamy, tangy zip of a vanilla cheesecake.

The white chocolate is particularly silky, with the strawberry pieces providing a nice, fruity kick, and slightly chewy texture against the creaminess of the white chocolate. I would have liked the cookie pieces to be a bit more prominent and kind of wished there were more strawberries — I wanted this bar packed with them! — but we all loved the similarity to a white-chocolate-dipped strawberry, like a fresh but still indulgent snack.

Fans of a simple square of dark chocolate as a post-meal treat will love the taste and texture of Tony's dark chocolate bar. Containing at least 70% cacao, this is a rich, well-made take on a classic. Plus it's got that heavenly, snappy-yet-velvety texture that the finest examples in the dark chocolate category are known for.

Add on a brand that promises 100% traceable fair trade cocoa and sugar, a higher price for cocoa farmers, no palm oil, recycled Forest Stewardship Council-certified (FSC) paper, and 100% recyclable packaging and you have yourself an elegant chocolate bar that you can feel good about. I personally love this chocolate bar with a sip of a heady after-dinner fortified wine, like a vintage Port or a luscious Madeira, as the sweetness of these drinks offsets the bitterness of the dark chocolate for a super sophisticated flavor combo. I imagine it's also a great option for a wide range of cooking and baking needs. 

I have to come clean on one key point: I am not generally a fan of hazelnuts in chocolate, possibly stemming from a general dislike of Nutella. It could also be the trauma of once ordering what I thought was just a plain chocolate gelato in Italy and getting a cup of the virtually identical Gianduja, the traditional Piedmontese gelato flavor made from local hazelnuts with milk chocolate. However, I pride myself on still being able to maintain total objectivity when tasting, and certainly feel equipped to assess the quality of this particular chocolate-hazelnut combination against others out there. Plus, I had the input from my kids to back me up.

Made from 32% fair trade milk chocolate and a minimum of 10% hazelnuts, this bar will be an instant hit with anyone who loves that classic flavor combination. According to Tony's, there is a map of Western Africa hidden in the unequally divided chocolate bar. Since the goal for this bar was to fit whole hazelnuts, the Tony's team decided to combine the countries of Togo and Benin into one bigger piece so that they could use whole hazelnuts.

My lack of enthusiasm for the hazelnut-chocolate combination aside, this was a really delicious chocolate bar. But, ironically, my kids and I all agreed — we actually wanted more crunchier hazelnuts packed in there. 

This was easily the bar I was most excited to try, as were my kids. I may be well into adulthood, but, to this day, I still love the festive whimsy of popping candy, and feel it makes such a fun textural addition to chocolate.

Similar to the White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake bar, the base of this is also that same creamy white chocolate, mixed with freeze-dried raspberries, and punctuated with a smattering of popping candy. We unwrapped the pale pink bar with a mix of wonder and anticipation, mouths already reacting in anticipation to the snap, crackle, pop of the candies inside.

While the bar was perfectly tasty, like a vanilla ice cream sundae with raspberry compote, we found ourselves searching for the popping candy. We would squeal with delight when we'd land a big one, laughing and holding our mouths open so we could each hear the cacophony of sizzling. Since the popping candy was clearly one of the selling points of this bar for us, we, selfishly, just wanted more of it.

I was admittedly not hugely excited to try this bar because I will always select milk or dark chocolate over white chocolate when selecting a treat for myself. I appreciate white chocolate when combined with other things, but have never really gravitated to it on its own.

With that said, I was very pleasantly surprised by this selection. Somehow, Tony's has managed to take something so simple and elevate it ever so slightly to make it stand out in the crowd. With a silky, melt-in-your-mouth texture and an indulgent creaminess, this bar is a home run for white chocolate lovers. I can also imagine it being the perfect selection for just about any baking project that calls for white chocolate. Like all of Tony's products, the cocoa butter used here is ethically sourced and made from 100% traceable cocoa beans, making it a win-win for enthusiasts and pastry chefs alike.

Another from the Ben & Jerry's collaboration collection, this bar was inspired by Ben & Jerry's popular ice cream flavor Chocolate Fudge Brownie. It's packed with chunks of crunchy brownie pieces tucked into a bar of what Tony's refers to as "dark milk chocolate"—described as having the creaminess of milk chocolate with that distinct bite of dark.

This bar was decadent indeed, a small piece enough to sate any chocoholic's craving. My son, James, commented that he thought the brownie pieces would be softer and truer to what one might expect texture-wise from a brownie. I shared his expectation, but found the crunchiness of the brownie pieces to be immensely satisfying, almost like the chocolatiest little pure cacao nibs were embedded in there. This was perhaps the richest and most decadent of all the bars we tried, akin to the fudgiest of chocolate brownie sundaes. Take it from someone who perhaps indulged a little too enthusiastically on this bar — a little goes a long way here.

I threw all my reservations about hazelnut and chocolate aside on this one as it emerged as one of my favorites. It's made up of Tony's signature ultra-creamy milk chocolate, finely chopped hazelnuts, and crunchy wafer cookies. The texture is perfect, and the flavor combination reminiscent of those iconic gold-foil-wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolate confections. Even my fussy, non-hazelnut-eating kiddo enjoyed this one.

The Milk Hazelnut Cookie bar was part of the original Sweet Solutions collection, created in 2021 to inspire some of the world's biggest chocolate brands to reject illegal child labor and exploitation in the chocolate industry. The collection featured four bars that looked and tasted like some of those brands' signature creations but were produced using Tony's 5 Sourcing Principles. Consumers loved the products but unfortunately the big brands didn't act in response, so Tony's converted the Sweet Solutions to their classic Tony's branding, and, thankfully, made them a permanent part of its collection.

There's a reason this is Tony's best-selling chocolate bar worldwide — it's absolutely delicious. What's not to love? Creamy milk chocolate is studded with pieces of crunchy caramel and flakes of sea salt for the perfect salty-sweet combo. My son, James, gave this a perfect score in all categories — composition, taste, and texture, and kept trying to sneak more pieces of it while we were tasting through the others.

I especially loved the texture. The pieces of caramel had that same consistency you find in well-made nut brittle — perfectly crispy and almost buttery — the ultimate foil for the silkiness of the milk chocolate. I managed to squirrel away some of the chocolate so that my mom could use it for her decadent Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies, her adaptation of Alison Roman's classic. The result was an even better version of something that was already delicious and absolutely transcendental with a cup of afternoon tea.

Tony's answer to a Twix Bar — only ethically sourced and produced — this tasty concoction features pieces of crunchy cookie and chunks of chewy caramel covered in Tony's signature milk chocolate. Both of my kids gave this one perfect scores across the board, and I had to wrench it out of their hands at one point. I loved the flavor combination but prefer the crunchy style of caramel found in some of Tony's other chocolate bar selections.

The Caramel Cookie bar is also part of their Sweet Solution collection aimed at inspiring "Big Chocolate" to join Tony's in their quest to end exploitation in the chocolate industry and drive positive change for everyone along the supply chain. Those big brands may not have responded in kind, but we're glad to add this chocolate bar to our regular rotation of sweets we keep in stock at our house. This is an indulgence we can all feel good about.

I could not get enough of this chocolate bar. Silky 32% milk chocolate meets sticky, chewy nougat made from honey and almonds. While nibbling away, I found myself doing a deep dive on what makes nougat so special and why it's such a tasty addition to chocolate. The origins of this treat date back thousands of years, with different versions produced around the globe. The best versions are made with honey, egg whites, and nuts, and can be found both tucked into white, dark, and milk chocolate confections, or on their own.

The texture of this chocolate bar is absolutely heavenly, and reminiscent of the iconic triangle-shaped Swiss Toblerone bars that I always found in my Christmas stocking growing up. However, the honey and almond come through so clearly in Tony's version, resulting in an elegant and complex milk chocolate bar that easily topped my list. I'm tempted to try a chocolate fondue with this one.

Not to be confused with the "everything" of an everything bagel, this sensational mash-up doesn't feature dried onion, sesame, or poppy seed. Instead, it's made up of creamy milk chocolate bursting with chunks of salty pretzel, sweet, sticky nougat, caramel, crunchy almonds, and flaky sea salt. In other words, it's every ingredient you can think of that belongs in chocolate, all wrapped into one bar.

While my youngest, non-pretzel-loving son Luke felt the pretzel taste overwhelmed everything else, his brother and I found this to be one of the best things about this bar. The perfect balance of salty and sweet, crunchy and silky, Tony's Everything Bar represents everything a chocolatey treat should be in my book. I struggled to find a single fault, although I would invite the Tony's team to consider a version that also somehow incorporates peanut butter to an already-perfect combination.

"Have your cookies and eat them too," says Tony's about this insanely delicious chocolate bar, which doesn't even begin to do justice to the perfect execution of flavor and texture here. My kids and I unanimously agreed that this was the top choice among all Tony's Chocolonely bars (although the Everything Bar came dangerously close in my book). We fought for the last piece.

Again, the bar starts with Tony's signature fair trade milk chocolate, which is already as good as it gets on its own. It gets just the right amount of crunch — and surprising lift — from tender-crisp pieces of chocolate chip cookies. It's a bar you want to keep to yourself but also feel compelled to share with a loved one because it seems wrong not to point out that something so delicious exists in this universe. I love the idea of nibbling on this one slowly and deliberately and pairing it with an ice cold glass of milk for the ultimate throwback childhood indulgence.

I received a total of 12 full-sized chocolate bars from Tony's Chocolonley's PR team. We focused the ranking only on full-sized bars versus other seasonal and promotional products, bundles, and alternate sizes/packaging. Each full-sized chocolate bar retails for $5.95 on the Tony's Chocolonely website.

I tasted each bar with my two sons, James and Luke. We rated each for composition (e.g., how the combination of flavors sound and go together), taste, and texture on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best. We also discussed pros and cons of each, and I logged various comments about the bars where appropriate. The ranking reflects an actual tallying of all scores for one total out of 45 possible points (15 points total for each person rating). The highest score was a perfect 45 for the number one spot (Milk Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie) and the lowest score was 19 for the number 12 spot (White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake), with all others falling in between. Several tied with 34 points, and I used my personal ratings as the deciding factor.