Five Magic Mushroom 🍄 Chocolate Bars You Need to Know

⚡️ Don’t sleep on any of these brands. ⚡️

It’s March 2024. Days are getting longer. The weather is getting warmer. Spring Break and Easter are around the corner. That means more time outside and doing mushrooms in the sunshine!

And if you’re into magic mushrooms like me, you’re probably a connoisseur of mushroom chocolate bars, and with every day that passes, there’s a new brand or product on the market. However, since the economy for psychedelic mushroom bars in the US is ‘grey market’ at best, it’s hard to know what’s available. Here are the five magic mushroom chocolate bar brands you should know about.

PolkaDot

1 — PolkaDot

Website — www.polkadotmushroomchocolate.com

IG — @realpolkadotcompany

Critique:

• Time in Market. PolkaDot is the OG mushroom chocolate bar. I have no idea how long PolkaDot has been in-market, but it’s clearly a product of years of work, distribution, and refinement. If you’re into mushroom chocolate bars, chances are you’ve had a PolkaDot bar and enjoyed it. No bar is fully ubiquitous in the market, but PolkaDot is the closest thing to it.

• Brand. PolkaDot’s brand is mushrooms+chocolate+ubiquity. It’s mass-market and the standard-bearer.

• Quality. With PolkaDot, you’re getting a commoditized but high-quality product (but that comes with a major caveat, which we’ll revisit below). The chocolate is delicious and well-tempered, and the chocolate bar itself is about the size of a standard Hershey’s bar.

• Mushroom Content. Depending upon the chocolate bar you purchase, the mushroom content per bar can vary from 4–10 grams. Potency by bar is generally consistent as advertised.

• Trust. There are three important things you need to keep in mind when purchasing mushroom chocolate bars: 1) that you’re getting a product that’s safe and 2) that you’re getting a product that’s authentic and the same as the one advertised to you. Counterfeiting is a huge problem for PolkaDot, given the brand’s popularity and near ubiquity, but the company has taken big steps to protect its customers and brand value. PolkaDot today uses holographic NFC tags on most, if not all, of its chocolate bars. And many of those bars, via their holographic NFC tags, can now be scanned with your phone to certify the authenticity of the product cryptographically using blockchain technology. (Btw, this is a MASSIVE step forward in product safety and authentication technology. Expect to see this technology being rolled-out across the entire consumer product industry in the near future.)

Verdict:

• It’s never wrong to give PolkaDot a whirl, but be 100% sure that you’re getting a REAL PolkaDot bar, not a knock-off, camouflaged in a fake, PolkaDot branded box.

• Secondly, don’t overlook the other great brands and products in the market that are making waves, too!

NeauTropics

2 — NeauTropics

Website — n/a

IG — @neautropics

Critique:

• Time in Market. I discovered NeauTropics in 2023, and the brand has achieved success by offering highly artisanal chocolate bar flavor variations.

• Brand. When you see and pick up a NeauTropics bar, you know you’re holding something special and substantial in your hand.

• Quality. I’ve tried their Hawaiian taro cookie and milk chocolate crunch bars. Both bars tasted great, but neither were as well tempered as the PolkaDot bars I tried. (Achieving peak chocolate tempering is difficult outside of a more controlled, mechanical, commercial production environment. If you’re producing bars by hand, even the best chefs will have some inconsistency in their product tempering.)

• Mushroom Content. NeauTropics bars clock in at 6 grams of mushrooms, which is higher than the industry standard of 4–5 grams per bar. However, neither bar seemed to pack a 6 gram potency punch, which left me wanting more!

• Trust. NeauTropics has struggled a bit with marketplace counterfeiting, too. The problem for NeauTropics isn’t as pervasive as for PolkaDot, but you’ll regularly see knock-off websites claiming to sell NeauTropics products. But to be fair, I’ve never seen a knock-off NeauTropics product in the wild.

Verdict:

• NeauTropics is a great brand with a delicious product, and their products are clearly made with love.

• But, if you’re looking for a chocolate bar with a kick — despite NeauTropics bars being advertised as being made with 6 grams of mushroom bodies — you’d be better served by another brand.

Mindwave

3 — Mindwave

Website — www.mindwavelifestyle.com

IG — @mindwavelifestyle

Critique:

• Time in Market. Mindwave is a ‘new kid on the block.’ I discovered Mindwave in early-2024, and I’m pretty certain the brand launched in 2023.

• Brand. I love Mindwave’s SoCal lifestyle vibes. The brand is reminiscent of the 90’s and X Games-culture, with a ‘spirit animal-like’ focus on skater, surfer, snowboarder lifestyle. It’s super dope.

• Quality. My Mindwave bar I tried was well-tempered and tasted great. No frills or fancy flavors here — just great chocolate packed with magic mushrooms. And let’s be honest, we eat mushroom chocolate bars for the mushrooms, not for the Fruit Loops, Captain Crunch, or Fruity Pebbles mixed with them — so some might argue we really only need three varieties of bars in the market: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and vegan. Also, the Mindwave bar is a standard sized bar, very similar in size to the PolkaDot bar (roughly the size of a Hershey’s bar).

• Mushroom Content. Mushroom content clocks in at 4 grams per bar, which is about the industry standard for this size bar. The shrooms were potent and worked as advertised.

• Trust. Mindwave, today, is a boutique brand. They’re new to market. With Mindwave, you’re getting product directly from the purveyors, and the brand isn’t so big that you need to worry about counterfeiters bootlegging their chocolate bars.

Verdict:

• I love the vibes — always immaculate.

• This is a great bar to eat in a single sitting. You’re gonna enjoy it, you’re gonna feel it, and you’re gonna want to share it — but you won’t want (or have) much to share!

• If you prefer a bar that you can share with a friend in order to match vibes AND have some left over…this isn’t the ideal bar for you. (Or just remember to bring bars for the homes!)

New Age Drip

4 — New Age Drip

Website — www.newagedrip.xyz

IG — @thatnewagedrip

Critique:

• Time in Market. New Age Drip is another new kid on the block, having launched in early-2024.

• Brand. The vibes are outstanding. The matte-black packaging with psychedelic oil stain and holographic embossing scream premium product. The brand is all about cultivating and mirroring your ‘inner’ drip with your crispy outer drip.

• Quality. Firstly, the New Age Drip bar is a BIG bar — just like the NeauTropics bar — but that’s where the comparisons stop. Like Mindwave, no frills or fancy flavors here — just great chocolate packed with magic mushrooms. The chocolate in the New Age Drip bar is the best of this entire bunch. The brand is artisanal, so the chocolate isn’t as well tempered as a fully-commercial chocolate bar, but the New Age Drip milk chocolate is exactly what I like — crisp, buttery, and zero indication that you’re eating a bar packed with mushrooms.

• Mushroom Content. The New Age Drip bar clocks in at a solid 10 grams of active mushrooms per bar. That’s easily double the industry standard, and the mushrooms are potent af. These bars pack a punch.

• Trust. Like Mindwave, New Age Drip is a boutique brand and new to market. You’re getting product directly from the purveyors — not a middle-man — and the brand isn’t so big that you have to worry about counterfeits. Also — like PolkaDot — New Age Drip is using holographic NFC tags to protect its customers and product brand; it gives you peace-of-mind knowing that your product is safe, authentic, and sold as-advertised.

Verdict:

• Spoiler alert: This is my favorite bar of all. The chocolate used in the bar is phenomenal, delicious, and packed with a potent blend of mushrooms.

• New Age Drip is a premium product and brand. In a single bar, you’re effectively getting two chocolate bars in one package. This bar is going to last.

• However, if you microdose using mushroom chocolate, then this likely isn’t the chocolate bar for you — you’ll have to nibble your way through the entire bar!

Rize

5 — Rize

Website — www.rizeofhope.com

IG — @rizeofhope

Critique:

• Time in Market. Rize, like Mindwave and New Age Drip, is a newcomer to the market. Despite the newness of the brand, Rize has seemingly growing quickly — I’ve already seen their brand pop-up in wholesale settings and at tradeshows.

• Brand. With Rize, when it comes to brand, less is more. The brand is refined, but clearly, the product is intended to speak for itself.

• Quality. And when it comes to quality, Rize is very good. There’s clearly a ton of intention that goes into building this product and its commercial manufacturing. Two important things to note about Rize chocolate bars: 1 — Rize is available in about a half dozen flavor variations. 2 — Rize is available in two sizes (more on that to come). Lastly, tempering is good — Rize bars aren’t fully polished like a PolkaDot bar — but they’re solid nevertheless.

• Mushroom Content. Rize has this covered. Rize produces a “standard” bar with 5 grams of mushrooms and a “mega” bar with 12 grams of mushrooms. At 12 grams, the mega Rize bar clocks in at the largest of the bunch by mushroom volume. The mega bar sits right alongside New Age Drip when it comes to overall potency. And when you need just a little mushroom chocolate, Rize has you covered, too — cop the 5 gram bar.

• Trust. For Rize, like the other newb brands above, product trust is something that will need to be built over time. There are seemingly no issues with counterfeiting Rize bars today, which is a plus. Ultimately brand trust is simply built over time with authentic, consistent, reliable products.

Verdict:

• Rize doesn’t lean hard on product branding.

• However, you get a quality product — and a product for any occasion! …whether you need to just take the edge off or take a trip to the Moon.

Overall Feedback

Overall, each of these California brands is amazing, and they’re making ridiculously sophisticated products at a time when the market for them is often legally ambiguous — but during a time when the products are needed the most.

For this post, I didn’t do a proper treatment of product costs, but mushroom chocolate bars are a premium product category, and each of the bars above is priced competitively according to size and volume of mushrooms in each bar.

Our favorites: PolkaDot and New Age Drip