The 51 Lost Chocolate Flavors of Quality Street, Celebrations, Heroes and Roses

Anyone who’s been to a supermarket lately will not have missed the masses of chocolate boxes and tin cans piled up in the aisles before the Christmas rush.

Roses and Quality Street, along with the new varieties Heroes and Celebration, make up the ‘Big 4’ and the huge selection of goodies has left many families wondering which is the best chocolate in each box.

However, that doesn’t mean they’ve all stayed the same.

With the time to indulge ourselves here, we decided to take a trip back in time and remember all the abandoned chocolates that once sat under the lids of these festive favorites, as Surrey Live reports.

There may be one of your choices from the past included below which you would happily swap with one of the current confectionery choices that have stood the test of time or were introduced more recently.

So without further ado, let’s treat ourselves to these lost, but not forgotten chocolates.

Quality street

We start with Quality Street, which was founded in 1936 and is named after JM Barrie’s play of the same name.

At the time of its inception, only the wealthy could afford boxed chocolates made from exotic ingredients from around the world with elaborate packaging that often cost as much as the chocolates themselves.

Harold Mackintosh, the inventor, set out to produce boxes of chocolates which could be sold at a reasonable price and would therefore be available to working class families.

His idea was to cover the different caramels with chocolate and present them in inexpensive but attractive boxes.

Rather than separate each piece in the box, which would require more expensive packaging, Mackintosh decided to wrap each piece individually in colored paper and put it in a decorative box.

He also introduced new technology, the world’s first twist wrapping machine, to wrap each chocolate in a distinctive packaging.

By using a box instead of a cardboard box, Mackintosh made the aroma of the chocolate burst upon opening and the different textures, colors, shapes and sizes of the candies made the box open and of consuming its content a noisy and vibrant experience. that the whole family can enjoy.

The brand was acquired by Nestlé when they purchased Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988.

If you bought a box this year, the chocolates you will find are:

Purple; the green triangle; Caramel finger; Strawberry delight; Caramel swirl; Block of milk chocolate; Orange chocolate crunch; orange cream; Fake; Coconut eclair; Caramel Penny and Caramel Chocolate Brownie.

Unsurprisingly, given that the brand has been around for almost 85 years, many flavors had to be sacrificed to make room for the current harvest.

It should be noted that many of them have undergone minor modifications while others have been completely abandoned.

These include:

• Purple (the original ‘Purple One’ with Brazil nuts, replaced by the hazelnut version)

• Strawberry Chocolate Cream (now replaced by Strawberry Delight)

• Cup of chocolate caramel (now replaced by Caramel Swirl)

• Hazelnut Cracknell (red paper)

• Hazelnut Eclair

• Honeycomb crunch (discontinued in 2018 to reintroduce Toffee Deluxe)

• Chocolate and nut caramel cream

• Malt Caramel (replaced by Toffee Deluxe as a “new” flavor)

• Round Milk Chocolate (now replaced by Milk Choc Block in green packaging)

• Peanut Cracknell (blue paper)

• Almond Octagon (purple packaging, replaced by Vanilla Octagon, but the latter is now also discontinued)

• Redcurrant cream (green capsule, light green fondant with a touch of redcurrant jam coated in milk chocolate)

• Fantasy Fig (light brown paper)

• Apricot delight (blue capsule, square piece, apricot flavored jelly coated with milk chocolate)

• Caramel square (metallic pink paper, a small square of very hard caramel)

• Chocolate truffle (brown square piece, a soft truffle filling covered with milk chocolate)

• Nougat from Montélimar

• Caramel Harrogate

• Forest Fruit Cream (pale purple envelope)

• Smarties (Regular Smarties Carton, Class of 2004 only)

• Coffee cream (brown pope, same size and shape as the strawberry cream)

• Mint fondant (pale green envelope, identical to the strawberry cream but filled with mint cream)

• Caramel Deluxe (replaced by Honeycomb Crunch, reintroduced then replaced by Chocolate Caramel Brownie)

• Crispy truffle bite (John Lewis stores only, black and gold recyclable sheet)

Hero

The heroes, of course, haven’t been around as long as Cadbury’s other selection, although now they feel like they’ve been around for a long, long time.

This boxed candy was originally marketed as Miniature Heroes and was introduced in September 1999 in response to rival March celebrations (more on that later). The box, of course, contains tiny versions of various Cadbury chocolate bars.

The chocolates currently chosen to represent Cadbury in their selection box are:

Fake; Dairy milk caramel; Dairy milk; Wispa (added in 2015); Spinning; Twisted Egg Creme (added in 2009); Eclair (added in 2008); Double Decker (known as “Dinky Decker”, added in 2019) and Crunchie (originally as Crunchie Bite, discontinued in 2008 but added in 2019 as Crunchie Bits).

As for the lost brands, there are a surprising number given that the selection has only existed for a little over 20 years.

• Bournville (added in 2008, deleted in 2013)

• Dairy Milk Whole nuts (added in 2002, deleted in 2008)

• Dream (deleted in 2008)

• Fuse (deleted mid-2000s)

• Picnic (deleted in 2007)

• Free time (deleted in 2007)

• Toblerone (added for Christmas 2013, 2014 and 2015)

• Nuts on caramel (Cadbury’s Caramel with added hazelnut in the center, retired mid-2000s)

Celebrations

On the box that led to the development of Heroes – Celebrations launched two years before the Cadbury equivalent.

Like Heroes, they include miniature versions of the chocolate brands owned by the manufacturer – Mars.

The celebrations are slogan ‘Share the Joy’ and were one of the first boxes of mixed chocolates in the UK to bring together sweets that had previously come out in a box or box instead of introducing new specially created treats. and designed exclusively for the UK market, by a major producer.

This is perhaps the selection that provides the most arguments among families with the inclusions of Bounty and Snickers often debated among chocolate lovers.

The complete list of chocolates offered is:

Maltesers trailer; March; Premium; Milky Way; sneers; Galaxy; Galaxy Caramel and Twix (1997-2006, 2011-).

The list of discontinued brands is much shorter than that of its three competitors, only two having lost their place over the years.

Roses

We end with one of the “original two,” Roses, which was launched in 1938 – two years after entering the Quality Street market.

There are two possible origin stories regarding the brand name; Initially, they were believed to be named after the English packaging equipment company “Rose Brothers” based in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which manufactured and supplied the machines that wrapped the chocolates.

However, in 2020, an alternate origin was shown in a text panel printed on the side of the bins; he says they were named after the favorite flowers of Dorothy Cadbury, company director and renowned botanist, which grew in the gardens of the original plant in Bournville.

To illustrate the differences between the two eras of selection boxes, Roses, like Quality Street, had their flavors specially made and wrapped in colored foil compared to Celebrations and Heroes later using brands that already existed.

They currently contain nine different varieties of chocolate which are:

Golden Barrel (gold wrapper, formerly named Caramel Keg); Caramel (blue envelope); Country Fudge (light brown packaging); Caramel Hazelnut (purple envelope); Hazel Whirl (purple envelope with orange edges); Strawberry Dream (pink envelope); Sour orange cream (orange envelope); Signature Truffle (red packaging with blue edges) and Cadbury Dairy Milk (the only chocolate in the selection where the packaging does not bear the ‘Cadbury Roses’ logo, it returned to the box in 2020 after being initially discontinued following its switch to Heroes).

Again, like Quality Street, due to the blank canvas available to Cadbury when it came to making the flavors, coupled with its sourcing for nearly a century, there has been a lot to let down:

• Brazilian darkness (a square of soft caramel coated with dark chocolate, red wrapper with golden edges)

• Praline Moment (money envelope)

• Chunky Truffle (blue paper)

• Bournville (brand move to Heroes)

• Almond Charm (blue paper)

• Coffee cream

• Montelimar (soft nougat coated with milk chocolate, twisted green packaging)

• Marzipan (twisted red capsule)

• Turkish delight (dark purple envelope)

• Hazelnut truffle log (emerald green capsule)

• Orange crumble (orange paper)

• Chocolate bite (pink paper)

• Hazelnut swirl (green and transparent packaging)

• Lime barrel (green envelope)

• Dark Cherry Cream (pink / purple envelope)

• Caramel Velvet (green envelope)

• Almond Caramel Bite (light brown pope with purple twists)