As Forrest Gump once famously said, "Life is like a bag of Revels, you never know what you're gonna get."

Obviously, I'm referring to the Forrest Gump who drinks in my local pub and not his Hollywood namesake, who is in fact a fictional character.



* THE BAG *

I'm looking at a small bag which contains ? grams of sweets. Mars, the makers of these sweets, have omitted to let us in on the secret of what these bags weigh but, working it out from the nutritional information, there are 172kcal in a bag and 491kcal in 100g, that works out to.....35,042 gra...hang on, that's a decimal point. It should read 35g.
We are told on the bag that it's "new packaging but the same scrummy centres". I shudder to think what the old design must have been like because the 'new' one is a series of vertical (or horizontal - depending on which way you look at it) stripes in: bright orange, dark brown, an orangey-brown shade, a vaguely mustard colour, an even darker brown and a paler orange. It's as aesthetically pleasing as a gangrenous toad on acid - are they colour-blind?
One thing is for certain, the contents have got to be an improvement on the packaging.



* WHAT'S IN THE BAG? *

Sweets...DUH!


You want more?

* MALTESERS ---- As this isn't an op extolling the virtues of Maltesers, I shouldn't really be describing them, but what can I say? I've always been a bit of a revel (groan).

This is the largest of the sweets (and let's not kid ourselves, size most definitely DOES matter, eh girls?) although I'm not sure they're quite as big as regular Maltesers. Scrunchy honeycomb covered in tasty milk chocolate...these are lovely and I'm sure they aren't all that bad for your teeth (well maybe that's stretching it a little).
Maltesers are like plip-plops from a Crunchie bar if you think about
it, but then I'm sure you never have...until now.

* ORANGE ---- Slightly smaller balls (steady), these have an orange-flavoured, fondant filling - not surprising really, considering their name. Very tasty and packed full of vitamin C goodness, well, very tasty anyway. The orange flavour really comes through with these and "chocolate and orange always seem to compliment each other beautifully," says Terry.

* COFFEE ---- These are similar to the orange ones. Similar in the fact that they are chocolate balls, but not similar in taste because instead of orange, these are filled with coffee-flavoured fondant. These are quite possibly my favourite but then I adore the flavour of coffee whether it comes in the form of sweets, hot drinks, liqueurs or even the coffee nuances that you find in some malty beers. Mmmmm...beer....

* CARAMEL ---- Caramel my arse. These are toffee, and bloody rock hard toffee at that. They taste fine, but I find them too hard and they take far too long to get to that soft and chewy consistency that makes caramel/toffee pleasurable. Mr Mars, I spit on your so-called caramel Revels...actually, I spit them out.

* PEANUT ---- That's right, you've guessed it. These are chocolate covered peanuts. You know what peanuts taste like (unless you don't), so imagine the flavour of peanuts combined with chocolate and you've pretty much got this one in a nutshell (get it?). Some of you may be allergic to nuts, in which case avoid these like...erm...nuts. Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be any warning on the packet that "this product may contain traces of nuts".

* CHOCOLATE ---- These are different to all the rest in that they are not ball-shaped but rather more like a tiny discus. They also differ in the fact that they have no filling - that's not strictly true - they're filled with chocolate or, in other words, they're solid chocolate. They are very simila
r to the now sadly defunct Galaxy Counters (who remembers those) apart from the fact that taste-wise, the chocolate is not on the same planet as Galaxy - which is universally better.


* HOW TO EAT THEM *

I find that sticking them in my gob and chewing generally does the trick, although......
Some people may prefer to separate them and, by sight alone, indulge in a little guessing game before nibbling each individual ball/disc.
Or perhaps you like to eat them blindly and let your tongue decipher the differing flavour and texture sensations.
Me? I just whack half a bag in my facial orifice and happily munch away while absorbing the blended composition of all the varying revels in one go. See, that's the trouble with those caramel/toffee/rubber ones, they just don't mix with the other textures and after all the rest have been crunched, munched, sucked, chewed, swallowed and partly digested, you're still left with a little gloop of gristly stuff stuck to your gnashers.


So in conclusion, I'd say these were yummy. It's like having a box of choccies (variety-wise) but at around 30p for a little bag, they won't break the bank.



Thanks for reading



©proxam2003