Small on price, big on taste! (Tesco Value Midget Gems)

Member Name: The Daz

Product:	Tesco Value Midget Gems
Date:	23/04/09 (148 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They could hardly be cheaper.

Disadvantages: They taste so good, you'll need willpower to refrain.

So there I was, pottering around town, slowly working my way through my list of errands (an essential part of a grown-up's Saturday routine) when I came over all peckish. Actually I'll be honest, I'm always hungry, but right at this moment the ravenous jaws of starvation threatened to overwhelm my sense of balance and I was in need of an urgent calorific transfusion. It's lucky that I'm a well honed urban survival expert, the Ray Mears of the North if you will (I'm still working on the belly, but I can light 3 different types of fire and generally know which mushrooms not to eat, despite what the supermarket tries to tell me...).

I hastened therefore to the nearest purveyor of sweetened offerings, and found a Tesco Metro. I usually avoid this store because it is frequented by the roving delinquents of the town, busy practising their shoplifting techniques, and because it's the sort of place where you get stuck in a queue behind someone who wants to pay for a handbasket of shopping with a cheque and they insist on using their pen which is somewhere in their bag, but always requires an aeon to find.

Quickly powermincing my way across the aisle ends (you can't run in stores really, and walking is too slow...seriously, they need to put lanes in) I located the Confectionery zone and scuttled to the middle where the bags of sweets hung. I should point out the logic here: Chocolate is too heavy and leaves your mouth all dry afterwards, which would necessitate an accompanying drink, but that would be a pain to carry about. Large bags are similarly difficult to transport, and would be too tempting not to entirely consume.

No, what was required was a small handy bag of sweeties that I could smuggle away in a coat pocket whilst completing my errands. Something multiple too - not one large sweet, but lots of little ones - allowing individual portion selections (average size, one handful), and possibly in colour options. I do like to have some interaction with my food after all.

And so it was that my eyes did espy the bag of Tesco Value Midget Gems. Or Budget...I forget the words. I was to hungry. From the same range as their other low cost items designed to make rich people feel better about buying the Extra Value products, and the poor people feel that Tesco cares about them, and to just confuse the majority of us who are somewhere in between, these sweets are packaged in the standard white bag, with blue lines and red logos. Simple, no fuss, cheap, Ronseal kind of products (If you're lost, ask...).

I picked up a bag - just one, I need to work at the belly slowly - and took my time sizing up the queues to make sure I got into the slowest one. 10 items or less usually does the trick. That way I get to complain about the grammatical idiocy of the sign, and the paucity of numerical skill of customers ahead of me who think that filling a handbasket with 37 items of 10 different products fulfils the critera as I watch the afternoon fritter away before me.

Finally free of the tyranny of consumerism I gained egress to the pavement and began my route to completing the next item on my list. I examined the bag of Midget Gems as I did so, pleased with myself at getting 200g of sweet goodness for the bargainous price of 28p. And you wonder why, with prices of about 65p per 100g, Woolworths went under...

I would tell you all about the calories per 100g, the amounts of fat and sugar and so on, but I'm a bloke, and ignored that bit completely. I know sugar is bad for my teeth, and that eating too much and exercising too little will make me fat, it's quite simple. I reckoned that at least one handful of the gems would be walked off in the completion of my tasks, so I was unduly worried about the prospect of waking up the next day and being unable to see my feet anymore.

I stole a glance at a handful of gems as I walked along the High Street, and finding myself satisfied with the profusion of colours therein, popped them into my mouth. Instant sugary wonderment flooded through my mouth and into the clever bit of my brain that makes me simultaneously pat my tummy and lick my lips in enjoyment (far cleverer than the bit that controls walking I'd say). Pleasantly firm on the outside, the individual gems yielded to toothy pressure and the magic of saliva, pouring forth their delicious combination of sugar and colourings. Just as tasty as far more expensive varieties, there really is little to tell apart for this brand when compared to the pricier names.

Having enjoyed a few mouthfuls of Midget Gems, and feeling suitably refuelled, I set about the rest of my afternoon, safe in the knowledge that I had a reserve of Gems in my coat pocket for later. It's the little things that matter sometimes, and it can be as small an item as a little bag of Midget Gems that makes your day. (I need to win the lottery, I can offer so much more than this....).

For the money these are unbeatable sweets. High on taste, low on price, and as long as you can avoid the strange sensation that its wrong to be buying budget sweets (if you are indeed silly enough to fall prey to that illness) then you can do no wrong with these lovely sweeties. Hasten forth to the evil Tesco (they do have their uses...) and purchase some forthwith.

Summary: Perfect treat for some mid-afternoon snacking, or mid-morning, midnight....