Beware of rogue Quality Street

Christmas is a wonderful time for those with a sweet tooth.  Not only can you hope for fantastic gifts like selection boxes or crates of retro goodies but you can bet that you’ll also encounter a tin of Roses or Quality Street on your travels. And it’s at the tin of Quality Street where it all goes horribly wrong…

Since a child, I’ve always preferred Quality Street to Roses (and don’t get me started on the filth that is Celebrations and Miniature Heroes).  I’m more of a toffee/caramel person and find that Roses tend to be a bit sickly, which is why I avoid the Quality Street “creams” offerings like the plague.

Picture the scene.  I had (unfortunately) easy access to a tin of QS and was plucking out what I thought to be the Caramel Deluxe.  It’s a fairly hard sweet, lozenge in stature and dressed in a delicate little brown plastic coat.  So I unwrapped it, shoved it in my gob and only then did I realise the horrible error of my ways.

It wasn’t a Caramel Deluxe but an imposter.  An orange creme no less.  Sickly, soft and tasting like someone had synthesised Calpol medicine and covered it in chocolate.  I spat it out in disgust and referred to the “menu” that accompanies the chocolates to find out what had happened.

A who's who in the Quality Street world

As you can see from the photo (click to enlarge), the orange creme is described as more of a round shape with the toffee deluxe in it’s lozenge guise.  The orange creme also has an orange wrapper, toffee deluxe brown.  So far so good.  However, that’s just on the menu card.  In reality the differences aren’t so obvious…

Orange creme (left) vs toffee deluxe (right), with flash

Orange creme (left) vs toffee deluxe (right), sans flash

Now you’ll see what an easy mistake it was.  The Orange creme is the same shape as the toffee deluxe, just without the ridges (even though these are shown on the menu).  The wrapper colours are very similar, even more so when only illuminated by a bunch of flickering Christmas tree lights and the Queen’s speech on the TV.

Let this be a warning to all consumers of Quality Street!  Lessons have been learned.  Next year I’m sticking to Mingles.