What have you done to my sweets

Every year I ask the same question, and every year I get more and more annoyed. Tonight, I put three boxes into the dock. Three boxes with serious questions to answer.

Box #1 Roses.

Or as the elders might call them….”Irish Roses”. Cadburys really don’t know what to do with roses. They continue to make an absolute balls of it. So much so that the National Lottery have gotten pissed off with them and ditched from the Hampers and Roses scratch card. Seriously…why can they not leave well enough alone?

There was a time when you could find some wonderous treats in a box of roses. There were unique, fun shapes, and there were undeniable morsels of confectionary heaven. There was also a family unity. A box of sweets working together to make a very special Christmas for one and all. Now all we have is a tin of sweets that barely acknowledge each other anymore. Probably because they don’t recognise each other. The strawberry one (my favourite) used to be in a strawberry shape…a nice touch I thought. The barrel was in a barrel (stood to reason)…the dairy mik and bournville were in mini bar form (you felt like a giant eating those ones). But nowadays the boys from Cadburys don’t know whether they’re coming or going. They bring in new sweets and take them out before we have time to decide if they’re worthy of a munch in front of our favourite Christmas Special. Two recent exampes include a little wine sweet that was just a bar with glassy crispy bits. I believe it had an orange flavoured twin as well. Both were sacked before they had a chance to shine. The bournville and coffee ones, otherwise known as “the unpopular two”, were booted out after years of loyal service. They may not have been everyone’s cup of tea but they were dedicated and dependable. The barrel is now no shape at all…people barely know that it’s there anymore. The dairy milk is now just two segments of a normal dairy milk. Where’s the fun in that? The roses has been tainted and no longer has the confidence to carry an Irish Christmas.

Box#2 The celebrations

First off, bravo on the nicest sweet of all. The teaser. Mars took a successful product and gave it a little twist, and now it’s the king of the sweets. But Christ…what are you doing with the rest of em? I took the liberty, for this exercise, to divide the box of celebrations into little groups, to see how many of each sweet we actually get. (I must add that I sucked on a twix while doing this) (ok I sucked on a twix while my girlfriend did this..she’s more the OCD type than I am). Anyway…



You will see that they’re threading with caution on their new addition. There’s barely a twix in there at all. I don’t see the point of the mars mysef…the topic has been fired this year…but why so many Milky Ways? Did you have some kind of surplus? Were you falling over milky ways in Mars Towers? Rotten little things. And don’t think for a second that by plying us with milky ways that we’ll forget that you’ve sneakily taken the truffles out of there. The one bit of luxury that we have over Christmas and you take it away from us. I don’t know what you’re playing at. Just give me a box of teasers next year please.

And finally, we come to the last box

Box #3 Miniature Heroes

Cadburys really don’t know what they’re up to here. I didn’t like the concept from day one A box of mini versions of boring bars. Bars that were already released in “fun size” (who do they think they are telling us that they can measure fun btw), so they shrink them further and I’m supposed to be excited? I wasn’t. Until someone told me that they did something special with one of the bars. I tried it out of curiosity. And sure enough…yes..they had worked similar malteaser magic on the crunchie. A great concept became even better. Until they got rid of the fcuking thing.
You see, we used to have –

 Crunchie (The ace in the pack)
 Dairy Milk Whole Nut
 Dream (A great little addition)
 Flake
 Fuse
 Picnic (one of your 5 a day)
 Time Out (the 90s child)
 Bournville (good for ya!)

And now we’re stuck with

 Creme Egg Twisted (the crème egg only works as an egg)
 Dairy Milk (meh)
 Dairy Milk Caramel (the whole country already has a fridge full of fun sized caramels)
 Eclairs (meh)
 Fudge (who buys a fudge? People only eat them at Christmas in a selection box)
 Twirl (meh)

So yes, I’m a bit sad. But, is it too much to ask the companies to include a little survey in their boxes so they can let the public decide, once and for all, what we want in our box of chocolate Christmas treats?