Wait, what?

[yendi]

I'm about halfway through Marcia Muller's excellent (so far) 1982 detective novel Ask the Cards a Question, and hit this passage:


". . . the chocolate bar she had eaten had been Hershey's, an excellent brand. As far as serious chocolate lovers were concerned, the best thing about Ghirardelli was the wrapper."

What?

Don't get me wrong -- Muller (well, technically her detective, Sharon McCone, but this seems like a pretty clear example of the author speaking through the character here) is correct about Ghirardelli, especially since this was during the period when it was owned by Rice-a-Roni. But has Hershey ever in my lifetime been "an excellent brand?" I mean, sure, when I was ten (as I was when the book was released), I loved their stuff, but even by the time I got to high school, I knew that the best thing that could be said for Hershey bars is that they weren't Nestle bars. Now, it's not that Hershey's sucks, per se -- they have Special Dark, and Reese's, and a few other things I'll eat. But since the late '80s, I can't remember anyone ever really regretting not eating a Hershey's bar unless they were making s'mores.

So for folks slightly (or significantly) older than me, or who have access to that information (including via articles of the time), was Hershey's actually the sort of chocolate that a "serious chocolate lover" would ever actually crave?

Comments

[mycroftca]

Considering that until after that date, chocolate bars from overseas of much higher quality were as rare as hen's teeth, maybe so. In fact, even Hershey's Special bars were rare in certain parts of the country, because who needed 'em (or so the store owners thought). I was never impressed with Ghirardelli, myself; I always thought that they were too sweet.

Some regional bars or chips were available, though hard to find, like the Ambrosia chocolates from Wisconsin...

[yendi]

That makes a lot of sense -- if the choices were Underwhelming Local Brand and Hershey's, I could see that changing the curve.