Blogger Wonkette is so obsessed with Butterstick, as she calls the baby panda Tai Shin at the National Zoo in the Other Washington that the New York Times even ran a sober report about the phenomenon it calls The Cute Factor. Premise: we're hard-wired to adore helpless, big-eyed babies.
Someone ought to do a piece now about The Sweet Factor, explaining to Starbucks (among many others) that just making something sugary and chocolatey, like Chantico, isn't enough to make it yummy. (Granted, I've been spoiled by a transcendent cup of hot chocolate I had last month in Sicily.) Anyway, Chantico's already been fingered for extinction: there's not enough lush chocolate flavor, just annoying and cloying sweetness. Hopeless, not helpless. Sorry, Starbucks, saccharine ain't cute.
Missing the boat to Chantico
American chocolate creations, in general,(not those decadent-death-by-chocolate things in fine resturants) need to have more chocolate in them---Milk chocolate and chocolate milk express more about milk than chocolate... The things that pass as chocolate cake in most bakeries are only chocolate colored, and only barely chocolate flavored ...
As you know, sugar is cheaper than chocolate, and American tastes ( or what marketing people THINK American tastes are) they have in the past run to the sweet side...Today,though, more sophisticated palates will tell you otherwise...
Note the increased abundance in all manner of dark chocolate from 60% to as much as 85% chocolate solids that have appeared on GROCERY store shelves in the last few years... It used to be possible to find the real thing only from local bakery suppliers.
I recall buying 2.2 kilo blocks of Belgian chocolate from a local supplier , just for this reason... Not so any more!
Either the chocolate people are twisting arms to get the rich dark real thing out there, or tastes have changed... I think the latter. (visit Trader Joes)
Trends are such that less sugary and fatty items DO sell, and the Starbuckians could have atleast tried a more actual chocolate version (ie do it right) first...
Too bad for the big latte company AND the big chocolate lovers. They missed the tasty (and probably very profitable) Italian boat to Chantico...
Perhaps someone else will set sail for some real chocolate islands and succeed?