Bertie Bassett has it all sorted (Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts)

Member Name: Chelle1969

Product:	Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts
Date:	02/07/09 (193 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The coconut wheels are nice

Disadvantages: The liquorice!

As someone who doesn't like the taste of Liquorice, I was pleasantly surprised when I bought a couple of bags of Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts for my partner recently and discovered that, in fact, I do quite like some of these sweets - much to the dismay of said partner!

History
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George Bassett created his sweetie company in 1842 in Sheffield and the story goes that Liquorice Allsorts were created by accident in 1899. A salesman talking to a prospective customer apparently tripped up and dropped his sweet samples all over the floor; the customer took an interest in the assortment and placed an order for a mixture - voila - Liquorice Allsorts were born. Bassetts is now a Cadbury company.

Packaging
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Not too much top say about the packaging, they come in a matt black bag with the colourful shiny logo and an illustration of the 'Bertie Bassett' mascot figure on the front. The back has a little blurb about the history of the sweet, a picture of the contents, nutrition info, and ingredients. Quite attractive and stands out on the shelf due to the dominate black colouring of the packet.

What's In Them?
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Per 100g (about half a bag) contains:

380 calories
5.6g protein
77.8g carbohydrate (62.2g of which sugars)
4.9g fat
3.5g saturates
1.2g fibre
0.1g salt

Ingredients:

Sugar, molasses, glucose syrup, wheat flour, desiccated coconut, gelatine (bovine), maize starch, caramel, modified maize starch, fat-reduced cocoa, liquorice extract, flavourings, vegetable oil, vegetable extract (beetroot juice), caramel sugar syrup, colours (paprika extract, vegetable carbon, curcumin, anthocyanins, lutein), glazing agent (carnauba wax)

Allergy Info: Contains cereal (wheat), sulphites. May contain milk

Not suitable for vegetarians

Made with natural colours and flavours

The Look and Taste
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A 215g bag of Allsorts contain approximately 36 sweets of which there is a mixture of types. Most are a combination of sweet candy paste and black liquorice, they make for a very pretty and colourful looking collection, but it's the taste that counts.

My favourite are the coconut wheels, they come in pink or yellow and as far as I can tell there is no difference in flavour between the colours. They're made from a small circular piece of liquorice surrounded by a very coconut-y candy paste. Very sweet, nice firm texture, strong taste of coconut, which on the whole, overpowers the liquorice taste (good thing in my opinion)

Next faves are the double-layered liquorice sandwich blocks, basically two squares of soft sweet candy with a square of liquorice in between. Pink and orange taste exactly the same to me while the brown ones do faintly taste of chocolate, but mixed with the liquorice it's not chocolate as you'd know it to taste! There's also a triple layered version of these in just white or white and yellow - 3 layers of the candy with 2 layers of liquorice in. A similar sweet is the chequered log in white or pink candy - think miniature battenburg cake. Apart from the brown double-layered sweet, all the rest taste exactly the same to me i.e. very sweet and sugary followed by a hit of liquorice which sneaks up behind the sugar

The rest of the pack is made up of the sweets that I still won't eat, although I did try them all for the purpose of this review (see how I suffer for you!). The only sweet in the bag not to contain any liquorice is in my opinion the work of the devil; I am of course talking about the bobbly aniseed jelly sweet. In pink or blue it's worse than anything else you're ever likely to encounter in a bag of sweets (unless you like aniseed I suppose...) A nasty piece of jelly from the depths of hell cunningly disguised in a pretty coloured coating to snare the unsuspecting. Beware! Closely followed in nastiness by the solid lump of liquorice, the liquorice coated roll of white candy and the soft rubbery liquorice Bertie shaped figure. I'm reliably informed that there is a Bertie in every bag, but the quantities of all the other sweets will vary from bag to bag.

Overall these sweets are very very sweet and the lingering aftertaste is of sugar and liquorice. They're all reasonably soft so you're unlikely to break a tooth on them, but eat too many and your teeth may just rot away, what with them being 62% sugar!

Verdict
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Although I said at the beginning of this review that I quite liked them, they are certainly not my favourite sweet of choice. I just can't make myself get to like the liquorice taste, and they're only bearable because the intense sweetness disguises the taste of the black stuff. They're certainly not very healthy and with each sweet being quite a hefty size I suppose it would be easy to consume quite a considerable amount of sugar and calories without realising. I picked up a couple of the 215g bags in Tesco on a BOGOF offer for £1.26, but when not on offer you can usually find them in the 99p stores and Poundland. Many other brands and supermarket own label versions can be found in stores but according to my partner you can't beat the taste of the Bassets Allsorts.
They also now make a non-liquorice fruit version, which I'm eager to try next - hopefully they will be more to my liking.

Summary: A classic sweet, but not my choice