What is “Balaton szelet” in Hungarian?

Balaton szelet is a chocolate-coated wafer bar launched in 1951 and named after Lake Balaton, the country’s beloved summer lake. Szelet means “slice” or “bar”, so the name is simply “Balaton bar”. For Hungarians it carries pure childhood nostalgia, which is why it works as a comic unit of cheapness: saying something costs about as much as a Balaton szelet means it is almost free. The bar is the punchline, not the product.

Szelet is a useful everyday word on its own: egy szelet torta is “a slice of cake”, egy szelet kenyér “a slice of bread”. The bar belongs to the same nostalgic shelf as Sport szelet and Túró Rudi. In the clip the narrator prices a cheap mini electric watercraft “almost like a Balaton szelet” — leaning on the bar’s reputation as the cheapest treat at any shop counter to say “this thing is shockingly affordable”.