16 July 2009

Sherbet Fountain [Now in a Plastic Tube] (Home Bargains)


Okay this isn’t a new product, in fact it is such an old product it deserves to be recognised as one of Britain’s traditional sweets and given some sort of an iconic status. I am writing about it then because it has had new packaging consisting of a plastic tube. Gone is the old paper wrapper with the liquorice sticking out. I find it an odd choice to move to plastic from an environmental perspective. It does say it is recyclable on the base, but not all councils collect plastic, and not everyone will think to put sweet packaging in the correct bin. Also over the plastic tube, is another layer of plastic outer packing. The packet says “twist to open” in order to tear the outer plastic wrapper – I did this, but felt that it was tougher to open than I was expecting, and actually hurt my fingers a little. Once I’d torn the wrapper, I was left with a lid rotating, but still not an open pack. I had to give the lid quite a hefty pull to finally open it; it was so hefty in fact I wasn’t quite sure if I was supposed to pull it in that way to open it.
Thankfully inside the tube I found the expected sherbet and liquorice. The sherbet was sweet and zingy and as I remembered from when I was little, and goes lovely with the rich treacle tasting liquorice. The flavours are as I remember them, but there are no longer any artificial flavours/colours in the recipe. In conclusion I really liked the items inside the packaging. One positive to the new plastic pack is that you can seal the sweet half way in and come back to it later. Another is that it is more hygienic for the liquorice to be covered up. But on a negative, I did find a tiny bit of torn plastic wrapper inside my sherbet, which I assume made its way there from the outer plastic coating when I struggled to ‘twist to open’ the lid. The sherbet had also got mostly stuck at the bottom of the tube and was quite hard to eat, and the tube is too long to get a finger in, to entice the sherbet out. I do really miss the paper wrapper though, as attempting to get that last bit of sherbet out of a dampened paper packet would have filled me with nostalgia! Lovely contents, but I remain unconvinced by the new packaging.

3 comments:

Derval said...

Maybe the makers have been hitting the other sherbert like stuff!

Daft to move to plastic, and it sounds like there's no way a kid would be able to open it either.

NLi10 said...

Guess it's easier to ship & store.

Would only buy one that came with NON BLACK licorice though. RED would be perfect.

Thanks Bertie!

cinabar said...

NLi10 - I dare say that the plastic contains offer more protection from the damp, but I still miss the paper wrappers.
Now a red licorice stick would be cool - they could bring that out as a special edition!