Playing God

September 21, 2018 3:02 AM

John Lewis are introducing a pick 'n' mix style display to allow you to select your own personalised tin of Quality Street. Meanwhile the 'controversial' Honeycomb Crunch is being dropped from ordinary tins after only being introduced a couple of years ago.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (29 comments total)

I'll buy a tin of Quality Street when they reinstate the brazil nut...
posted by pipeski at 3:09 AM on September 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have to say, if your idea of controversy is disagreeing over a Quality Street you really haven’t been paying attention, have you?

It’s important to have at least one Quality Street that no one likes, so that they’re still there on New Years Eve and someone can drunkenly shake the tin as an improvised percussion instrument.
posted by Grangousier at 3:21 AM on September 21, 2018 [20 favorites]

But you'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:32 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I thought the point of those tins was to learn how to discreetly rummage around for the ones you like while pretending to politely pick the ones on top.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:58 AM on September 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

As with any sweets in a tin, the real art is in palming 2 or 3 extra ones while appearing to politely pick out just one. It's how most of the Magic Circle got started.
posted by pipeski at 4:02 AM on September 21, 2018 [15 favorites]

I remember the heady Christmas a couple of decades ago when Quality Street sold toffee fingers IN A BOX ON THEIR OWN. They stopped quickly when realising this set a disturbing trend and they'd end up with a mountain of unsold purple and green ones.

Sadly, this pick and mix will not allow me to revisit that delight as "each tin has to have at least three varieties of the 12 sweets".
posted by humuhumu at 4:13 AM on September 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Ah yes, toffee fingers. It would be all toffee fingers in my house.
posted by h00py at 5:08 AM on September 21, 2018

Yesss here come the caramels! Now just do the same thing with Roses and we'll have no problems.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 5:43 AM on September 21, 2018

These are grammatical sentences, but it's not easy to discern their meaning.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:11 AM on September 21, 2018 [16 favorites]

Yes, I wondered when Rep. Lewis had got into the candy business, but everyone needs a side hustle these days.
posted by Flannery Culp at 6:37 AM on September 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

I don't think this is a good idea. Half the pleasure of Quality Street is making sure that you get the green triangles, gold toffee fingers and the purple hazelnut things and leave all the claggy, overly sweet fondant things to relatives you don't like.

Are there really people who DON'T like the purple and green ones? This has set my world further atilt. Why is life this way? Why does Mark Wahlberg have a career? Why Brexit? What even is all this?

:::manic overwrought laughter to fade:::
posted by finisterre at 7:47 AM on September 21, 2018 [7 favorites]

Near the end of the Quality Street Wikipedia article:

Contrary to popular belief, Coffee Cream flavour never actually existed. (brown wrapper, same size and shape as the strawberry cream)

A non-existent Quality Street flavour, with specific wrapper?

Is this Wikipedia trolling? A mistaken reference in pop culture? Mass hallucination caused by eating too many toffee fingers? More bleedthrough from the Berenstein Universe?
posted by zamboni at 7:53 AM on September 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

This isn't available online? You mean I have to go to the UK to do this? The Quality Street people are jerks.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:55 AM on September 21, 2018

Coconut éclair, though I wouldn't have called it an éclair up to looking up on the QS webpage. Purple would probably trail in about 5th on my list, ok but not a favourite. I think I grew out of the green ones for some reason.

A non-existent Quality Street flavour, with specific wrapper?

Look to your Roses.
posted by biffa at 7:56 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why was the Honeycomb Crunch controversial? If it's anything like the Crunchie bars, they'd be one of my favorites.
posted by PussKillian at 8:27 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Colleague has apparently done this in their Oxford Street store today. She claims to have bought three tins, each with the same three-flavour combination, and spent her lunchbreak organising the contents so she now has three tins, each full of just one flavour. I gather part of this is that she has a job interview next week and knows that one of the three flavours is the weak spot of two of the interviewees, so she reckons bringing that tin along, offering it around and implying that's what she does every day at work is a tactic as "anything to tilt the odds in my favour".
posted by Wordshore at 8:29 AM on September 21, 2018 [10 favorites]

Why was the Honeycomb Crunch controversial? If it's anything like the Crunchie bars,

I think it was more like one of those malteser offshoots with bits in a chunk of chocolate. Someone help me out with a name?
posted by biffa at 8:32 AM on September 21, 2018

I think it was more like one of those malteser offshoots with bits in a chunk of chocolate. Someone help me out with a name?

{grimace} Alsation-with-the-runs {/grimace}
posted by Wordshore at 8:34 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Isn't Nestle one of the unspeakablly evil mega corporations in the world? Fuck them and fuck their candy.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:37 AM on September 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, but the coconut ones are really good.
posted by biffa at 8:40 AM on September 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

There are no laws.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2018

I have heard of playing around with numbers, but one is all I need.
posted by rikschell at 9:38 AM on September 21, 2018

I think it was more like one of those malteser offshoots with bits in a chunk of chocolate. Someone help me out with a name?

Maltesers Teasers. I feel slightly ashamed that I knew that without needing to look it up.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:39 AM on September 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Must be nice to have sweets and treats made with real sugar.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:31 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

You can get whole tubs of Maltesers Teasers already. But they're Mars, not Nestlé, so different people.
posted by ambrosen at 11:36 AM on September 21, 2018

Still dwelling on the curious grammar. I now understand why the subject "John Lewis" takes a plural verb, but I much prefer to think that there is a collective of people named John Lewi.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:35 PM on September 21, 2018

American John Lewis > British John Lewis, but the pick 'n' mix certainly narrows the gap (because the freedom to pick 'n' mix is clearly a civil right that should be protected).
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:06 PM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'll just have a whole tin of the orange foil ones. It's like a Terry's Chocolate Orange but with crunchy bits.
posted by elsietheeel at 4:58 PM on September 21, 2018

The discussion moved on so we didn't get chance to discuss the potential benefits in training young shoplifters offered by a proper replacement for woolie's pick'n'mix.
posted by biffa at 1:59 PM on September 23, 2018