s...s....s....scoff a penguin (McVities Penguin)

Member Name: hypno06

Product:	McVities Penguin
Date:	27/06/09 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ideal for lunchboxes

Disadvantages: If they last that long......

I don't tend to buy packs of biscuit bars, such as Penguins, or Viscount for packed lunches, for the simple fact that they don't tend to get as far as the lunchboxes.....my chocolate demons kick in and take over, and a multipack of penguins becomes an empty multipack of brightly coloured wrappers quicker than you can say "pass me the biscuits".....

However, for the next few weeks we are playing host to a language student over in England for a summer school, and we are required to provide them with a packed lunch each day that, among other things, includes a chocolate biscuit....therefore I bought a pack of 9 penguin bars in Tesco yesterday for the bargain offer price of just 50p.

Sadly, trying to hide these from my inner demons is proving as hard as ever, and I have currently got just four left.......the chances of their being a penguin bar in the boy's packed lunch on Monday morning are slim to nil.....

So.....in order to make me feel as though my penguin eating splurge is not wasted, I will share with you the delights of these old favourites!

Made by McVities, penguin bars have been around as long as I can remember, and they have changed very little, both in content, and in design of the wrappers. In fact, Penguin bars have been around since 1932!!Brightly coloured, individually wrapped chocolate biscuits, with chocolate flavoured cream in the middle, and covered in more milk chocolate - these are ideal for packed lunches (if your children don't have a chocoholic mother, like my two do, obviously!).

Penguins are fun - the catchphrase p...p...p...pick up a penguin, instantly brings back those comical tv adverts of my youth with penguins sliding all over the ice......nowadays, these clips would be the stuff of "funniest animals on camera" or something similar - back then, it was advertising that sunk in, and was never forgotten!

To add to the fun, each wrapper has a joke. The jokes are as old as the hills, but of course children won't have heard them before. Imagine Christmas Cracker jokes, and these are in the same league really, but it is nice to have for a bit of a laugh, and to get kids actually speaking to each other!

Once you have opened the wrapper, you instantly notice how chocolatey these things are - chocolate, filled with chocolate, and coated with chocolate.....and unsurprisingly they taste quite chocolatey.

Penguin bars contain no artificial colours or flavours, no hydrogenated vegetable oil and have added calcium. In fact, the packet says that they are a good source of calcium, with one penguin bar containing 25% of a child's(under the age of 10) daily required calcium intake. Great, you can give little Harry 4 penguin bars instead of a glass of milk......hmmm......no wonder we are becoming a nation of fatties.....

Anyway....my only gripe about penguin bars is, that along with many other old favourites, these seem to be smaller than I remember.........

..........no wonder I need to eat another one!

Each bar contains 113 calories and 3.4 grammes of saturated fat.....and are suitable for vegetarians.

Summary: Britain eats 430 million of these a year, apparently!