Thorntons Fruit Cremes

The recent truffle kerfuffle reminded me that we’ve not looked at any Thorntons choccies in a while, and as I happened to pass one of their shops today, I picked up a couple of bags. This is the first.

The first thing you notice is the rather cheap, thin plastic packaging. Combined with the pastel colours, it reminds me of something you might have found in a sweet shop circa 1975.

As for the chocolates themselves, well as you can see, they look OK, if nothing special.

These chocolates are billed as a mixture of 30% milk chocolate and 60% dark chocolate, but looking at them it’s not immediately obvious which is which.

But having said all that, they’re really quite tasty. They’ve obviously been mass produced, but the chocolate is quite nice and the fillings are really quite fruity and refreshing. The lemon ones in particular have a distinct sherbety-taste that takes me straight back to my childhood.

But as with the last time I reviewed Thorntons chocolates, I can’t help thinking they’ve lost their sense of direction. The specialist chocolate market has changed beyond recognition in the last 5-10 years, but Thorntons don’t seem to have changed since the day I first walked into one of their shops in the early 80’s.

When I went into their shop today, there were a couple of nicely packaged items, but the majority of what was on offer just looked a bit cheap. I think that’s a bit sad, and it makes me wonder how much longer this British institution will survive in its current form.

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