Rhubarb and Custards

Brand: Morrison’s

Cost: £ 0.70

Brand: Morrison’s

This is a quality old lady purse candy. So much so, that it feels wrong just having the box sitting on my desk. It belongs in a carpetbag slung over a walker belonging to a white-haired Southern lady in a pillbox hat and gloves. The kind of lady who gives you a nickel to go to the double feature. Even my grandparents are too hip for this candy. If you can’t remember WWI, these are not the sweets for you.

The candies themselves have that classic lozenge look and a taste that says: only God knows how long I have been in this handbag. Even fresh, it tastes as if it’s been left a little too long. It’s sweet, but also … salty? Tart … but not fruity? Who bites into a rhubarb stem and thinks to themselves: candy? It tastes vaguely like a strawberry in the same way that Sofia the robot looks vaguely like a human being – but in both cases, something just seems off. It just doesn’t feel right eating candy made from a stem.

But I get it: these candies are cultivating a vintage aesthetic, and I can admire that in a candy company. Retro-chic is all the rage, after all. But like Highlander, there can only be one old lady purse candy in my heart: and it’s called Werther’s Original.