Contents:
Mielodie - A salty sweet praliné enrobed in white chocolate.
Nocturne - A 72% cocoa dark chocolate ganache.
V.S. Comtesse - Dark chocolate ganache with a hint of brandy.
Iconique - Praliné with bits of hazelnut enrobed in milk chocolate.
Razabelle - Raspberry and vanilla caramel in dark chocolate.
Cœur - Praliné in milk chocolate.
Mokalata - A milk chocolate and cappuccino mousse.
Cherié - A dark chocolate covered cherry.

Appearance:
The pieces are all beautiful. They are using transfer sheets to put graphics on some of the pieces and the others have an amazing gloss finish and trim to them. I recently read that people are more apt to buy 'pretty' chocolates and these are pieces that play off of that predisposition. They are pieces that catch the eye and make their truffles look sad and bland by comparison. Take a look through the pieces in the collection and you can see what I'm talking about.

Taste:
I didn't know what to expect from the pieces in this box. Nocturne was much like their standard dark chocolate ganache. The shell is overly thick and the ganache itself isn't as smooth as I would like but the intense dark chocolate flavor is wonderful. A piece that could be so much more than it is. The other ganache, the V.S. Comtesse, suffered from the same failings but had a very nice flavor, the brandy being very subtle but a nice addition. The mousse of the box, the Mokalata, was nice, but nothing I would consider terribly special. The Cherié was little more than advertised - a nice dark chocolate covered cherry. Very good, but not exceptional.

The rest of the box is caramel or praliné pieces and these are where the collection shines. At the opposite end of the scale from the fruit and ganache pieces we find the Razabelle. I would never have thought to put raspberry and caramel together but the combination is heavenly. This is my second favorite piece from the box and it actually deserves the 'Platinum' designation. Among the pralinés Cœur was very good but Iconique and Mielodie were exceptional. The hazelnut bits in the Iconique were very nice but it was the sweet and salty praliné in the Mielodie that stole the show. It was a perfect compliment to the white chocolate and it made Mielodie the best piece of the box in my opinion.

As far as individual scores go - ignoring price - I find Nocturne, Mokalata, and V.S. Comtesse to be a solid 8. Cherié sits alone at 8.5. Cœur and Iconique deserve a 9 and I'll go out on a limb and give the Mielodie and Razabelle a 9.5.

Overall Impression:
With a name like 'Platinum Collection' I had high expectations for this box and about half of it let me down. They were all very good pieces, but about half of the box didn't seem much better than the normal Godiva fare. Some of the standard fare is much better than the low end of this box (like the marzipan heart that has shown up in stores for Valentine's Day - that I'll recommend with no hesitation) and if you are going to bill the collection as something special then I think it needs to be a bit more special than some of the pieces here. At the same time half of the box was just shy of amazing and the pieces where they were truly creative were the best of the bunch.

So, the big question is this: in the end, is it really worth $65 a pound? If they kicked out five of the eight pieces I might grudgingly say yes. As it is I have to say no. The chocolates were all at least very good, but a lot of them just weren't $65 a pound good. I'll score the box at a 7 due to the fact that some of the pieces are pretty pedestrian (for Godiva) and the normal price is just pain high. If you can score the box for $7.50 like I did and it sounds like the standout pieces are the sort of thing you like then I would say it's worth a try. Otherwise I would say that unless you can score individual pieces - and I believe that the Platinum Collection is boxes only - I would have to say you should give it a pass. I got the box for $7.50 and that was at 50% off so the retail for it was $15. This is not $15 worth of chocolate. At least by my reckoning. Nowhere near. It isn't really even $7.50 worth of chocolate but there are a few pieces that border on art and make it - maybe - worth a shot.

The worst thing about this box is that now I'm curious about the rest of the collection and not sure I really want to pay the price necessary to find out how the rest of it stacks up, even at 50% off.