My youngest daughter loves ice lollipops all year round so they are a regular item on my shopping list. Recently she has had a yearning for lemon or lemonade lollipops but when I received my latest shopping order from Tesco groceries online we found that they had substituted the cheaper lemonade lollies I'd ordered with Del Monte Mango Smoothie lollies. At time of writing these are available at Tesco on a two for the price of one offer for £2.49 which is quite expensive for 3 lollies I think (good for the 6 you will get until the 2.7.12 though). If you think of it as £2.49 for 3 90ml smoothies, which is what they are to all intents and purposes perhaps not so bad? Although we like mangoes as a family none of us likes smoothies very much, but as this is a nice healthy lolly we kept them to try. I've had to rewrite some of this review as my opinion on them has changed fairly dramatically since first trying one.

I was a bit dubious as to whether my daughter would like these as she doesn't like ice cream lollies and the texture of this is more akin to ice cream than a liquid iced lolly. When we opened the box and got one out of the wrapper we liked the shape, rounded a little like a Solero or Magnum without the chocolate on, and it looks nice and solid on the stick.

I'm aware these are a very good product, fat free and packed with all the goodness of the fruit packed into a cool relatively healthy snack on a stick with only 98 calories per lolly, and suitable for vegetarians. However they are not pure fruit, they contain 30% fruit puree. I feel the sugar content is quite high (22%) and that is without the glucose syrup which is just another type of sugar, there are also other ingredients which act as stabilisers etc.

These are a popular lolly so please forgive me for what I'm about to say. Initially we all hated them; in fact revulsion is quite an accurate word. My daughter took one look at the unwrapped product and refused to touch it as she didn't like the look of the sticky strings which seemed to stretch between lolly and wrapper as it was peeled off. Frustratingly if she doesn't like the look of something nothing on earth will get her to try it. So I began touting them to the rest of the family and tried the opened one myself. Words are not enough to describe how disgusting I thought this lolly was. It was slimy, slippery and sticky in texture; these are qualities of which I'm not overly fond in any aspect of my life but particularly food. The flavour was of course of mangoes and cannot be faulted in that repect. However I felt it was very sugary and acidic at the same time, and although mango is quite a sweet fruit I don't find the raw fruit over sugary or sickly.

The husband at first refused to take a bite of the lolly as he didn't like the look of it either. However when I knelt on his chest, pushed the lolly towards his lips and said 'go on bite it I want your opinion' he seemed to relent. He didn't like it and refused another bite 'just to make sure' even with the addition of the other knee. I noticed that my eldest daughter who is a very healthy eater had taken one, but I found the stick surrounded by what looked like pretty much the whole melted smoothy pooled in a sticky mess in her bin, thank goodness for bin liners.

Here comes the opinion change. The box contained 3 lollies so there was still one left, I thought I'd give it another shot before writing the review just to refresh my memory and not to waste the entire thing by throwing it out. This time the lolly had spent a little longer in the freezer between shop and mouth (the others were tried not long after delivery). Although the wrapper still stuck a little to the lolly it came away fairly cleanly. The lolly looked much more appetising and firm with no trace of slime. When I bit into it I found the texture smooth and more ice cream like than the initial sampling, and the over sweetness and any acidity were moderated by the correct cold temperature. I found that the lolly softened more quickly than a juice lolly and towards the end the texture I disliked had reasserted itself somewhat (I'm a slow eater). I quite enjoyed this second bash at the product.

In the end these got resounding thumbs down from my whole family even though I'm sure most people wouldn't mind the softer texture when not straight from the fridge. However when eaten at the right temperature and not slightly defrosted as they seem to have been when they arrived in my Tesco order they are a delicious fairly healthy (not totally because of the high sugar content) and low calorie snack they just don't seem to suit me and my family.

Even though my review is fairly negative this is a nice product and healthier than many as real fruit puree is used, hence the 4 stars despite the fact that I won't buy them, or even accept them as a substitute again.