It Was Popular In The '70s — Now It's The Defunct Chocolate Bar Boomers Miss Dearly

When one is young and in love with a favorite sweet, it's easy to believe that it will be around forever. But for every enduring Hershey bar, there are several more candies destined to be forgotten. The British brand Cadbury got its start all the way back in 1824, so it has had a lot of time to add and subtract all manner of confections to and from its lineup. The company's Bar Six, for example, is unlikely to be familiar to folks under a certain age, but many among generations of a more distant vintage recall it fondly.

Redditors and denizens of nostalgic internet pages where people gather to reminisce about old products such as this seem to place Bar Six's peak right around the halcyon 1970s, when many boomers might have been riding their bikes to the chocolate shop. Or, being that it seems to have been more broadly available in the U.K. than the U.S. (with some circulation in Canada), the chocolate shops. Some have likened the Bar Six to a KitKat in composition, pining for the days they might have snapped its chocolate-encased wafers apart. A very swinging '70s ad on YouTube depicts the confection similarly, just with shorter pieces in a long row that broke off lengthwise, rather than widthwise. There are fans in the comments there, too, naming the Bar Six as a long-gone "favorite." But there might be an even more suitable Bar Six dupe now than there was all those decades ago.

Cadbury's TikTok account includes a glimpse of a Bar Six in a brief clip from its archives. That quick frame is stamped with the year 1964, which, given most of the internet rumbling around the erstwhile dessert, seems to have been a likely launch time. There is no mention of an end date on the company website, and it's hard to find mentions elsewhere online that pin the thing as late as the 1990s.

Some old Bar Six wrappers for sale on eBay, if you can believe it, list hazelnut cream among its crispy wafers and Cadbury chocolate. That nutty spread would have been where KitKat similarities ended. At least for a while. Sweet teeth are likely aware that contemporary KitKats come in a ton of different flavors. Those include, much like the Bar Six of yore, KitKat flavors that you might not see stateside. But you can actually nab hazelnut flavored KitKats at some major online retailers, with a little poking around. You can also try specialty shops like NYC's Economy Candy, which has also been known to stock hazelnut KitKats. Given the comparisons from the people who were actually around to sample a Bar Six, this KitKat zag is probably about as close as anyone is going to get.