Dove Chocolate Bar: History, Flavors & Varieties

Snack History Nostalgia Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

The Dove Chocolate Bar is a range of candy bars under the name Dove. The Dove candy Bar first started off as an ice-cream bar called DOVEBAR, and over time evolved into a range of chocolate bar products. Dove now comes as an ice-cream bar, milk chocolate bar, dark chocolate bar, and many more forms as well. This product first was created in Chicago and has grown to be a product sold in many different countries all over the world. The Dove Chocolate Bar is also called the Galaxy bar in many other countries, with the brand name “Dove” being more popular in the U.S, where the candy was first created.

History

The Dove brand chocolate bar first started off as an ice cream bar in the year 1939 and has evolved over time to include a range of chocolate bar products. The Dove chocolate bar was introduced around 1986 and the Dove chocolate brand comes in a wide range of variants to choose from. These variations essentially include different kinds of chocolate or added flavors like dark chocolate, milk, caramel, fruit and nut varieties, and truffle.

Dove chocolate bar, which is currently manufactured and marketed by the Mars Company, has its roots back in 1939 Chicago. A Greek-American named Leo Stefanos owned sweet shops in Chicago back in the day which was called Dove Candies & Ice Cream. He was the person who first created the Dove brand of ice cream bars. The creator himself had his own story. Stefanos was concerned about his son because he would always run after ice cream trucks the moment he would spot one. Out of his worries for his son, he created his own brand called DOVEBAR. Even Stefanos’s son continued the marketing of the Dove brand after his father died in 1977. The Dove bar quickly became popular in the country with over one million bars being sold in a single year in the 1970s.

The Dove chocolate bar is not known by this name all around the globe. The chocolate was first produced in the United Kingdom under the name of Galaxy in 1960 and still retains that name in the UK, Ireland, Australia, the Middle East, and India as of 2019. The Galaxy brand had been named the second best-selling chocolate bar in the UK in 2014. Dove became known nationwide mainly when the Mars Company bought the brand in 1986. The Mars Company then produced the chocolate bar at a large scale and distributed it throughout the country, making Dove a household name. Following the acquisition of the Dove brand, various flavors and ingredients were introduced by the new manufacturer. Dove Promises Milk Chocolate and Dove Promises Dark Chocolate were launched in 1991. One unique thing about these varieties was that they contained an inspirational message on the inside of their wrappers. Since then, a huge range of varieties of the chocolate bar has been launched. These include Dove Milk Chocolate Miniatures, Dove Caramel Liaison, Dove Dark Chocolate Singles Bar, and Dove Truffle to name a few.

The company has also experimented with fruit and nuts in its chocolate bars. In 2015, the brand launched Dove Fruit which had whole ripe cherries, blueberries, and cranberries coated in dark chocolate. Two years later, the company introduced a variety that was exclusively available online for its customers: Dove Signature. This premium line chocolate bar could be purchased online and be used to say ‘I love you’ to the receiver. One of the most recent flavors introduced by the Dove brand reflects the latest trends in the market. Back in 2018, Dove introduced six bold flavors which include Bourbon Vanilla Dark Chocolate, Salted Caramel Blonde Chocolate, Raspberry Rose Dark Chocolate, and Almond Brittle Milk Chocolate. 

The Dove brand has also collaborated with various organizations in various capacities. For instance, it partnered with the CARE organization to provide financial support and field training to female farmers in Cote d’Ivoire. The chocolate uses cocoa which the company gets from the farmers. In the process employment is generated, and hence financial support, for the communities in which the organization helps. The Dove chocolate brand offers products that are manufactured in facilities that do not use peanuts or tree nuts. Tree nuts include almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts (filberts), Macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts. Some Dove Chocolate Bar products may still contain peanuts or tree nuts however and the brand warned consumers that they should remember to read the label first for the most up-to-date and accurate information.

The Dove brand has been successful in the American market. In 2017, it was one of the leading chocolate candy brands in the United States. Dove Promises fetched $147.8 million for the manufacturer in that year. The Dove Chocolate Bar has made numerous commercials promoting its brand, mostly aimed at middle-aged women. After Mars gained ownership of the Dove Bar they assigned a $10 million account for Dove Bar and Rondos to Grey Advertising, New York.

The Person Who inspired The Dove Bar

The Dove candy bar is an evolution of DOVEBAR, an ice cream bar invented by a man named Leo Stefano. He was worried about his son running after ice cream trucks, and to help resolve the problem he went ahead and made his own ice cream bar and established his own sweet shop called Dove Candies & Ice Cream. After Mars take ownership of the brand new Dove candy products began to appear and the Dove chocolate bar was born.

The Year the Dove Chocolate Bar Was Invented

The Dove Chocolate Bar was invented around 1986 after Mars acquired the brand. The original DOVEBAR ice cream that the chocolate bar line of today evolved from was introduced in the year 1939 in Chicago.

The Company That Makes The Dove Candy Bar

Dove is produced by the company Mars, Incorporated. Mars is an American worldwide producer of candy, and other food products and is also a provider of animal care services, and was reported to have $33 billion US dollars in annual sales in the year 2015. Mars owns candies such as Starburst, Twix, and Skittles. The company is also known for its name-sake candy bar, the Mars Bar.

Slogans

Slogans for the Dove chocolate include “Choose pleasure”. For the dark chocolate variety the slogan “It’s not just dark. It’s Dove” has been used.

Flavors And Varieties

Here is a list of the flavors and varieties you can find of the Dove candy bar:

• Milk Chocolate (Classic)
• Dark Chocolate (Classic)
• Almond Brittle Milk Chocolate (Introduced in 2018)
• Salted Caramel Blonde Chocolate (Introduced in 2018)
• Bourbon Vanilla Dark Chocolate (Introduced in 2018)

Tips On Buying

The Dove Chocolate Bar brand can be found for sale in many common stores at the time of this writing. You may be able to find Dove chocolate for sale at locations like CVS and Walmart. This means you can buy Dove Chocolate with a quick trip to many stores, and you can often find several flavors available. If no stores close to you sell them then you can also buy them online. You can check below for a list of stores that might have Dove candy bars in stock for sale, or check further below that for offers on buying the Dove Chocolate Bar online and having it sent to you. Buying them online can make it easier to find the flavor you want, and can be helpful for those who just don’t live by any locations that stock Dove chocolate.

Stores That Sell Dove Chocolate Bars

Here is a list of stores that may sell Dove Chocolate Bars

1. Walgreen’s
2. Family Dollar
3. Oak Spring Outdoors
4. Walmart
5. Staples
6. Office Depot
7. CVS
8. Target
9. Rite Aid
10. Dollar General Stores

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Dove Milk Chocolate Bar Review

The Dove milk chocolate bar is light, sweet, and delicious. It comes as a slab of milk chocolate perforated with rounded-edged square pieces that you can break off. Dove Chocolate has a unique taste, with a strong caramel flavor to it, though it has no caramel in its ingredients and none of the over-chewiness that caramel brings. The Dove Milk Chocolate bar gives us more of a scent than competing milk chocolate bars like Hershey’s, with the Dove bar giving off a very light and sweet milk scent. Overall, the Dove Milk Chocolate bar tastes great, is way a joy to eat, and was finished too soon. This is a delicious candy bar and deserves more attention than it tends to get.

Dove Dark Chocolate Bar Review

The Dove Dark Chocolate bar is very different from its milk chocolate counterpart. While the Milk Chocolate Dove Bar gave off a noticeable milky sweet scent, the Dark Chocolate Dove Bar gave off little in the way of smell during its review. Gone is the caramel taste that the milk chocolate version provided, wherever it came from; The dark chocolate variety has that slightly bitter taste that you have come to expect from dark chocolate. This product is smooth, sweet, with just a hint of bitterness. It does tend to melt fairly quickly in your hands in less than 70-degree weather, so it should be eaten swiftly. The candy bar is good, but, not nearly as good as its milk chocolate sister, in this reviewer’s opinion.

Advertising

Dove Chocolate products are heavily focused on adult women, usually around midlife. Commercial advertisements for the Dove Chocolate bar will often cover various aspects of life for women, such as dating, or simply having an interesting day and night out on the town. Other advertisements for the Dove chocolate brand include focusing on the brand’s involvement with women’s groups, such as helping women establish businesses that grow cocoa-related produce.

Packaging Style

The Dove Chocolate Bar favors a slightly slanted style for its name, “Dove”, on its packaging. The writing style for the name marked on the package always slants slightly upward, with the left end lower and the right end higher. The name of the product depicted on the packages for Dove chocolate is always brown and looks like it is made from chocolate. Usually, the logo is in the center of the package, but not always. Depending on the flavor of Dove, the packaging may be different colors. Milk chocolate Dove bars have blue packaging, and the dark chocolate flavor has red packaging, though both of these still have the name-sake “Dove” written in chocolate brown in the center of the package art. Raspberry Rose flavored dove bars have red and white packing, while the Almond Brittle variety has purple and white packaging, with both again having the name “Dove” printed on them near the center in chocolate brown colored writing.

Experiences With Dove Chocolate

I first tried Dove Chocolate when I was a teenager. I was looking for something that seemed a bit “lighter” than the Hershey Bar and the like. I ended up seeing the Dove bar and I knew it was gonna be my thing. I tried it and fell in love with it. I actually thought it tasted better than most other chocolate bars out there! From then on I was hooked and kept eating it after that. Honestly, it has become my favorite chocolate bar brand.

Popularity

Dove Chocolate Bars have clawed their way to becoming a common sight in candy sections in stores. How has this candy achieved such good results? Dove Chocolate generates millions of dollars and competes with the likes of Hershey’s bar, Mar’s bar, and other well-known candy bars. Perhaps the answer is in its marketing? The Dove Chocolate brand goes after its niche and markets products to them in ways other candy bars do not. Taste is another factor, the Dove candy bar has its own unique taste and flavor. You get to be the ultimate judge of why this candy bar really managed to garner its respectable market share and achieve the popularity it has reached.

Competition

The Dove candy bar has some heavy competition, being a chocolate bar and considering the market is filled with them already. The Dove Chocolate Bar hit stores shelves around the 1980s and has had to play catch-up with many more well-established chocolate bars. The DOVEBAR ice cream did have a bit of a foot in the door since the ’30s, but Dove Chocolate does not seem to be as revered or established as some candy bars that have been around longer, such as the Hershey Bar. The Hershey Bar does it thing similar to the Dove Chocolate Bar, they both have their milk chocolate varieties and their dark chocolate varieties, but there is no doubt that the Dove Chocolate Bar is outclassed in the sheer perseverance and variety that the Hershey Bar can dish out. What one of these candy bars tastes better is a matter of personal taste, and they do taste different, even if they are somewhat similar. Both candy bars do look somewhat different, with the Dove Chocolate Bar going for a rounded edge look, and Hershey’s going for a more square edge looked. It is easy to them apart even with some similarities between them, after all, they are both still chocolate bars, and differentiation can be a tough thing to do in such an occupied area of the candy market.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of Dove Chocolate Bars!

Commercials

Here are some Dove Chocolate Bar commercials for you to watch

Ingredients

This information is for the Milk Chocolate Dove Bar 1.44 OZ

Ingredients:

• Milk Chocolate
• Sugar
• Cocoa Butter
• Skim Milk
• Chocolate
• Lactose
• Soy Lecithin
• Artificial Flavor

Allergy Information: Contains Milk and Soy.

Nutrition

Serving Size:	1 Bar	% Daily Value *
Calories per serving	230
Total Fat	13g	17%
Saturated Fat	8g	40%
Trans Fat	0g	0%
Cholesterol	10mg	3%
Sodium	30mg	1%
Total Carbohydrate	24g	9%
Dietary Fiber	<1g	0%
Sugars	23g
Added Sugars	20g	40%
Protein	2g
Vitamin D		0 %
Vitamin C		0 %
Calcium		6%
Iron		2%
Potassium		2%

• Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

(Information taken from the back of Dove Milk Chocolate Bar 1.44 OZ in the year 2019)

Ingredients And Nutrition Information

This information is for the Dark Chocolate Dove Bar 1.44 OZ

Ingredients:

• Semisweet Chocolate (Sugar, Chocolate, Chocolate Processed with Alkali, Cocoa Butter, MilkFat, Natural, And Artificial Flavors).

Allergy Information: Contains Milk and Soy.

Nutrition Facts:

Serving Size:	1 Bar	% Daily Value *
Calories per serving	220
Fat Calories	120
Total Fat	13g	20%
Saturated Fat	8g	40%
Trans Fat	0g	0%
Cholesterol	5mg	2%
Sodium	0mg	0%
Total Carbohydrate	24g	8%
Dietary Fiber	3g	12%
Sugars	19g
Protein	2g
Vitamin A		0 %
Vitamin C		0%
Calcium		0%
Iron		6%

• Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

(Information taken from the back of Dove Dark Chocolate Bar 1.44 OZ in the year 2019)

Recalls

In December 2015, the FDA announced that Mars Chocolate North America had issued a voluntary recall on 24 oz. bags of Dove Chocolate Assortment Snowflakes due to the risk of it containing unlisted ingredients such as peanuts, wheat, and egg. The recalled bags were suspected to have accidentally included pieces of Snickers, Milky Way, and Twix candies, which could put people with allergies at risk. Dove Chocolate Assortment Snowflakes contained 3 flavors of chocolate that are individually wrapped inside of a larger bag. The recall affected about 6,700 sold bags of Dove Chocolate in the United States, and the stores that sold them spanned 35 states.

Trademark Information

Several trademark filings have been made for Dove Chocolate that we could find. One of those includes a trademark filing for a wordmark that consists of a configuration of a candy bar that is comprised of 20 equally sized raised and wavy geometric shapes, each with the word DOVE imprinted in stylized lettering. The aforementioned trademark was filed 2010-07-27 and is currently showing as “Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response”, with no listed registrant other than a named Ann Chen.

Another trademark, a live one, is a wordmark for Dove Chocolate and is described as consisting of the words “DOVE CHOCOLATE” in brown, stylized lettering with a curved line beginning with two dots between the two words. The aforementioned words are on a beige oval, all on a brown background. This trademark was filed 2013-03-06 and shows Mars, Incorporated as the current owner and original registrant. The first use anywhere dates for the trademark is shown as being 2004-12-31, although this does not mean it was the first time Dove Chocolate was sold, and may just refer to the first type this specific design of the word was used.

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