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 |
Keith Andrews
Wagon Wheel Review |
From the dim & distant, cobweb-cluttered cavern of my creaking, tattered mamory comes the following:
Wagon Wheels, they're a treat for me [wagon wheels!]
They're the biggest biscuit, you ever did see! [wagon wheels!]
... .... ..... .... ... ... .... .... .
The biscuit thrill to beat the band!
..Can't remember the third line, but it came flooding back to me as I read your review!
Some thirty-five years have passed since I first stared, awestruck in wonderment at the sheer 'big-as-the-sun' experience... I remember them tasting better then they did when -a few short years ago- I decided to indulge a childhood memory and have another... I was struck by how fake the "chocolate-like food substance" coating was, I wondered about the freshness when my teeth finally met what passed off as "biscuit", and the whole experience reminded me of revisiting Santa's Grotto as a teenager and thinking "surely they made more effort in those days?" or "It can't have looked that fake can it?"
And yet, and yet, I stil find myself -having moved to the USA several years ago- longing to tear open the mylar packaging and to know that feeling again... Wagon wheels are really an experience... somehow much more than 'just a biscuit' despite being made from obviously lesser-quality components. -It's a conundr... a connunndrru... -It's a puzzle to me.. Could even the Masters at Burtons ever "improve" this? If changing even just one ingredient for a higher-quality version might break the spell somehow, then it must be magic!
The Wagon wheel is the best example that I can recall, where something is so obviously more then the sum of its parts.
...That said, the HobNob (sans chocolate, avec PG Tips!) is -for me- the pinnacle of Biscuit enjoyment.
Yours, sitting down,
Keith Andrews
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Felix
Wagon Wheel Review |
Yo,
I am writing to express my disappointment about Jammie Dodgers, made by Burton's Foods. Though heavily advertised using the gimmick of jam wrestling, involving TV adverts, top trumps cards, and flash games on a website, the actual bisuits are vile. Some ingredient has the effect of drying out my mouth while leaving a horrible aftertaste reminiscent of the morning after excessive drink and drugs.
One biscuit was enough to ruin the taste of a pint of tea.
Interestingly, Wagon Wheels are made by the same company and have the same unpleasent effect, so they must share the foul ingredient, whatever it is. I suspect it might be a presevative since the effect is rather like that of eating a lump of salt or possibly sulphur.
Thanks,
_Felix |
Nicey replies: Felix,
Sort it out, these are classic biscuits, perhaps something else has shot away your taste buds over the festive season, or in the run up to it (excessive drink and drugs?). |
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Sergio Fernandes
Wagon Wheel Review |
Many thanks to Biscuit Man for his exhaustive answer. I have since also received the following e-mail from Burtons Consumer Services department...
"We can now confirm that Wagon Wheels packs did at one time have the illustration you describe. It also had a save the coupon sheriff's badge on the back on special promotions.
Hope this helps with your dispute.
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to contact us it is always good to hear from our customers and we learn something new as well." |
Nicey replies: Yay, for Burton's Customer Services!
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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!
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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! |
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