There’s a lot of controversy about the marketing of this biscuit right now but it is, at the end of the day, an innocent biscuit. We’ve decided to review the Maliban White Chocolate Puff on its own merits.
Unboxing
The White Chocolate Puff (WCP) costs Rs. 100 for a 200g pack. This is pretty much inline with normal biscuit prices, as you can see in our earlier Biscuit Challenge. The packaging has ingredients listed in English, French, German and Arabic, so we assume they’re exporting this as well.
The Taste
The biscuit itself is dark on the outside and white on the inside. The wafer is thin and crispy, dusted with sugar and crumbles nicely in your mouth without getting all over your shirt.
The filling is where the white chocolate is at. If you have it on your own its very sweet and definitely white chocolatey. Have it with the biscuit and it balances quite nicely. It’s still really sweet, but the white chocolate taste is nice. I personally love white chocolate and this satisfies. Some people don’t but if you do (or if you just like sweetness) this is a good snack. Be warned, like seemingly all of these biscuits, they’re a bit addictive. We finished the whole thing and the person who ate the last one got yelled at (sorry).
We can’t recommend this as a healthy snack. The ingredients (in order of quantities we assume) are wheat flour, sugar, vegetable fat, glucose, milk powder, corn starch, white chocolate, sugar syrup, etc. It’s a lot of processed grain, sugar and fat. Health wise, these sort of things should be consumed rarely. We obviously don’t recommend having these as, say, a breakfast substitute, but we’re happy to put it in our guilty pleasure file.
For me, personally, this gets my preferential biscuit vote. My favorite biscuits are now 1) White Chocolate Puff 2) Lemon Puff 3) Chocolate Puff 4) Shortcake 5) Marie Biscuit. You can read a broader comparison in our Biscuit Challenge. Biscuit preferences are obviously quite personal and everyone has their own. If you like white chocolate, you’ll probably like this.
The Controversy
As of this publication date, there’s been a big controversy about an ad for this biscuit. Basically, the ad compared white chocolate to selecting a fair bride over a dark one. Color bias is all too prominent in Sri Lankan (and Indian, etc) society, but it’s not a good thing. Maliban has publicly apologized for the ad and pulled it from all media, which we think was good of them. Their agency TBWA is still defending the ad as showing ‘truth about our real lives’, but we think Maliban at least has done the right thing.
Conclusion
Maliban’s White Chocolate Puff is a tasty new addition to the Sri Lankan biscuit scene. Maliban has apologized for the controversy around the marketing and we think we can get back to what matters, which is that we have a new biscuit to try. It’s sweet and tasty and we like it (in moderation). We should also note that we really wish we had milk in the office right now.
