Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Biscuit Man
Wagon Wheel Review |
Your correspondent Sergio Fernandes is quite right about the Wagon Wheels packaging, there have been many changes over the years. The original design, which stayed in place for several decades, featured a vaguely Western gingham pattern with a gun-toting cowboy. The biscuits inside weren't individually wrapped then, and were the larger crickled edge model previously referred to. In the early 80's the product was re-launched with individually wrapped biscuits, and the old gingham design with the cowboy was dropped for a more graphical pack with concentric red and white circles. At the same time a malted milk variant called "Big Country" was launched in blue livery. A few years later the circles were changed to gold rays, then as successive brand managers got their hands on it the pack featured trains, cars and even American Footballers! Then Garry Weston, proud inventor of the product, called Burton's to heel and instructed them to put the cowboys back on. A new pack was hastily conceived featuring a wagon train for the Original flavour and a map of the American west for the Big Country flavour. Big Country was eventually replaced by Toffee, which was eventually discontinued, but the cowboys have remained.
Biscuit Man!
|
| |
kevmanwilly |
Hiya Nicey,
Well... Those delightfully sickening Fig Rolls from Happy Shopper (a 200g packet is a barftastic amount during a one cuppa tea dunking session as I've discovered) are arranged in vertical 'soldier' formation, which impresses as the syrupy fig paste remains stolidly, nay stubbornly in the pastry parcel and not splurted or strewn across the enclosing cardboard package. The cardboard package also appears to be fat absorbant, thus filling the purchaser with a keen sense that these biks really are 'the healthy option'. The fig to other ingredients quotient is 26%, so not such a bad tally and, at merely 59p, they are a threat to the commercial supremacy of the all-conquering Jacobs Fig Roll. Incidentally, I ate a 300g packet of McVities Milk Choc Homewheat on saturday with a cuppa tea. Needless to say I remained seated on saturday night and most of sunday, but not necessarily on a chair...
Vive la bikkies!
Kev
p.s. Not-so-impressive graphic attached. I've spent all morning at work doing this- I hate work, it gets in the way of my tea imbibing...
|
Nicey replies: Yep sounds like a Burtons's job, much like the Lyons, Sainsburys, Asda, Coop, Morrisons, Spar et al and a respectable 26% Fig content.
Nice diagram, Woo. |
| |
Sergio Fernandes
Wagon Wheel Review |
Hi,
Compliments on a fantastic website.
My girlfriend and I have had a long-running argument about Wagon Wheels. Not regarding the shrinkage issue, but the packaging. I maintain that when I was a young lad (late 70s, early 80s) the wrappers featured a cowboy taking cover behind a wagon wheel and firing a Winchester rifle. She reckons it has always featured the more PC, and some might say, less spectacular design of a wagon carreering across the praries that we see today.
Burton's website claimed that the package has always featured the wagon on the prarie design. This is, of course a blatant lie, as there was also a time when they came in gold wrappers with no picture on them.
I grew up in London, she grew up in Oxford, is it possible there were regional variations in the packaging? All my mates from London remember the shooting cowboy, but no one who grew up outside London can remember it. Maybe us Londoners were buying counterfeit Wagon Wheels, made in Peckham rather than Burton's factory? Maybe it was all a mass hallucination?
I would be extremely grateful if you, or any of your devotees, could shed any light on this subject.
Many thanks
Sergio |
Nicey replies: Not really thought about that one but I can picture he bloke with the gun. Now is that because I can remember it or because its a plausible suggestion, not sure? Light shedding required! |
| |
Joanna Taylor
Tesco's Finest Soft Eating Orange and Cranberry Cookies Review |
Dear Nicey
Now here's a very strange coincidence.... my boss returned from a trip to Cape Cod this weekend, and as is customary, he brought into the office for our delectation some of the local produce - in this instance, a box of Cape Cod Cranberry Cookies. I was just tucking into one of these when I thought I would check out your site to see what was on offer for "Biscuit of the Week" and was quite spookily surprised to see that you too had been reviewing cranberry cookies!
The Cape Cod variety, unfortunately, bore little resemblance to any cookie I have previously eaten and in fact bore a marked similarity in texture and flavour to over-sweetened sawdust - no attempt here to "balance out any potentially overly sweet taste" as Tesco's evidently achieved so successfully. In fact, there were no large pieces of anything, least of all cranberry, in the cookie at all to give any degree of interest whatsoever, despite the picture on the box, to which the cookies bear no resemblance... (in fact they looked like semi-digested dog biscuit... trust me on this!) The back of the box claims that "our cookies will carry you to the clear, sunny beaches of Cape Cod, giving your senses a long deserved vacation from the average fare..." Actually, this is curiously apt, given the fact that my poor boss endured a week of continuous rain during his stay in Cape Cod last week, so in both instances the promise did not live up to the reality!
However, despite my harsh words on the subject of these cookies, the 10 chaps with whom I work researched them so thoroughly that they soon put paid to the entire contents of the box, so sadly there are now none left for me to photograph for you - you will have to be content with a picture of the empty box! It just goes to show what people will eat when there is no other choice.... Unfortunately we don't have a Tesco on Guernsey, so we can't compare the two varieties; have to see if Safeway have anything similar to offer!
Regards
Joanna Taylor
|
| |
Brian Barratt |
Good morning Mr Nicey!
Here in Australia, we attach used tea-bags to the wide brims of our hats, as shown in your little Aussie logo. If they're dry, they dangle around and keep flies away. If they're still wet, they also act as personal air conditioning filters. If they're Twinings, we suck them for the residual flavour still in them.
Ever you 'umble
Brian Barratt
|
| |
|
|
|