I want Hershey bars to taste the way they used to taste. I’ll pay more. Whatever they’ve changed has diluted the rich flavor and texture.
Although their milk chocolate bars have gone the way of others, I still find Hershey’s dark chocolate quite enjoyable. Everbody’s milk chocolate is now so bad I have to spit it out, as well as many dark chocolate bars.
What has changed is that Hershey’s no longer uses cocoa butter in their chocolate. Cocoa butter is the fat extracted from the processing of the cacao bean. It’s common knowledge in the food world that “fat equals flavor”, and cocoa butter provides that. However, it’s expensive. SO...in order to cut costs, Hershey’s stopped using it and replaced it with some sort of compound (I have no idea what) in their chocolate.
If you sample a bar of Hershey’s and then a bar of Nestle’s, you can taste the difference. Nestle’s still uses cocoa butter.
(Granted, they’re run by a huge euro-weenie corporation based in Switzerland, but it’s good chocolate.)