Superb tongue soothers, not so good for the throat (Halls Soothers Throat Tablets)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Halls Soothers Throat Tablets
Date:	14/05/09 (166 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pleasant sweet

Disadvantages: Don't do the job they're made to do

Its that time of year when the cold bugs are out in force, and we are suffering badly in this house. The kids are too young for the likes of Lemsip or Beechams, so I thought I'd try them with Halls Soothers to try and eae the symptoms a little bit.

Basically they are medicated sweets in the same style are Lockets, except they come in variety of flavours. So far we've gone through cherry, strawberry, blackcurrant and peach and raspberry. The ingredients for each flavour are fairly similar, each contains the equivalent to 3% fruit juice and menthol, some of them also contain eucalyptus as well (I've actually thrown some of the empty packets out, but the blackcurrant has eucalyptus, whereas the peach and raspberry doesn't.

For people with allergies there are warnings that the product could contain traces of sesame seeds, nuts and soya. For the calorie concious amongst you there are 165 calories per rollpack, which I presume means per pack.

So to the taste test, well the taste is not overwhelming, the peach and raspberry is particularly underwhelming, in fact I would say there was no taste of either fruit in the sweet, and it tasted quite chemical in comparison to the others. The others were about as fruity as any average boiled sweet, but they didn't taste anywhere near as sweet.

Each sweet has a small amount of liquid gloop in the centre, this is the bit that's supposed to sooth your throat and which give the product its name. Unfortunately there is the tiniest amount of liquid and most of this coats your tongue, rather than your throat, so the whole point of the exercise is lost in that moment. The liquid doesn't taste bad, it doesn't really have an awful lot of flavour at all, either that or the flavour is virtually identical to the flavour of the outer shell. So your tastebud have got used to the flavour and it doesn't register as anything new.

Having been a user of Lockets since my childhood, I don't expect miracles from these little sweets, in fact I know that the liquid centre never ever reaches your throat, so they do nothing to ease any tickles you might have. But with Lockets I used to find the menthol effect very, well effective!
With the Soothers the menthol was barely even noticeable and there was certainly no easing of my blocked nose. So really I would be just as well eating a packet of pear drops as these sweets.

So why, I hear you ask, have you had so many, and are still eating them? Well I bought a couple of multipacks because they were on special offer at £1 for 3 packs at Asda, and being far too tight to let them go to waste, I (with the help of my kids) will eat them until they've all gone. And then it'll be back to Lockets again, because the honey and lemon is my favourite by far.

Summary: Not recommended