One of my earliest memories as a kid is going to my uncles massive cottage (we're not that posh of a family really, my Aunt and Uncle were just renting it as they were employed as caretakers to the next door stately home for a little while) and being offered these... and pulling out a peanut one, a nut I despised as a child in all forms and despise now in any kind of chocolate.

Gone now from the selection bag of Revels, I no longer live in fear of eating my mortal enemy the peanut when I dip into the bag (No, I'm not allergic, I just really hate them). The original bag of Mars Revels had orange creme, coconut (this one I don't remember), toffee or peanut centres coated in Mars chocolate. Later on, Mars realised that not many people like coconuts in their sweet bags and replaced them with raisins, and presumably in a bid for the allergic population, later again replaced the peanuts with a coffee coating. The addition of the fake 'Minstrel' sweet missing it's sugary shell called a 'counter' brings us to the current day and a long way from the terror I experienced as a child. There's also now Malteasers in the bag which my boyfriend hates but I find tolerable so I get to nom on those.

The modern Revels are packaged in an eyecatching stripy orange, yellow and brown bag. I really dislike the look of the packaging if I'm honest, it just screams 70s chic to me. As well as this, a lot of the advertising for Revels centres around the fact that most people don't like the coffee or orange flavours, which begs the question as to why they even bother to make them. I don't really get half of the things that Revels do or stand for. They're a bit weird in my eyes.

Enough about my hatred for 70s decour. Inside the bag you get about 10 - 15 chocolates, in all the different flavours noted above. I seem to remember there was a lot of advertising around 'which one will you get?' and some mystery about not knowing what chocolate you've got until you bite into it (my idea of hell to be perfectly frank) but it seems irrelevant when you consider that each individual variety - apart from maybe the orange and coffee ones - have their own distinctive shape and smell. The counters are Minstrel shaped, the malteasers are giant balls next to the smaller coffee and orange cremes, the raisins are oddly shaped. It is really impossible to not know which chocolate you're eating unless you're blindfolded and it's being fed to you I guess.

The biggest gripe I have with these is that even the counters and malteasers taste weird. Why? Because of those sneaky little coffee and orange cremes. Both of them 'leak' their scent and taste into the other chocolates and you can't escape it. It's not very nice. It also again leaves me a little confused until I realise that the malteaser I'm eating tastes like my morning brew because of the blighters.

Nutrition wise, a 35g bag of these about 168 calories. It's not too bad considering that a Mars bar is nearly double that, that they take about the same time to eat. They'll cost you around 50p (56p in Tesco) for a small bag, or about £2 for a bigger 'sharing' pack. Though I don't know anyone who actually shares those bags... Overall, these are not a chocolate I instinctively reach for or even find myself craving, and if they went off the shelf I would not be fussed at all.