I recently bought a bumper bag of sweets for £1, and included in the bag was a packet of these sweets. Swizzels Matlow probably isn't a name that a lot of people would recognise, but they are basically the main company for sweets such as these, as well as the parma violets and other similar sweets.

The Love Hearts are a gimmicky sweet, essentially a kind of mild, hard sherbert. In essence, there shouldn't really be anything special about them, but each individual disc shaped sweet is emblazened with a slightly ridged heart. The disc itself is white, and the hearts are various colours, pale but visible, and within each heart is a message, one or two words, such as 'Love you' or 'Be Mine'.

Naturally, these are not likely to be the first sweet of choice for those of you looking to maintain a certain amount of machismo - they're more for the romantics among you, and no doubt aimed at the teenager who likes sweets and is just finding their emtions.

They taste quite nice, quite sugary and solid enough that you can break them by biting. They take a while to dissolve if you just suck them, and the sugary taste is accompanied by a bit of sherbert effect on the tongue.

You can also get your own personalised Love Hearts, if you really want to, and get your own small message written on the packet. This is another clever gimmick from Swizzels, and one that no doubt boosts their sales.

Love Hearts usually come in an 18g roll, with a dozen or so discs/tablets per roll. This will give you 63 calories and a whole bunch of E numbers, so it's probably not the best thing to give your hyperactive kids. We let our son have one every time we have a packet, and usually just the one is enough to have a noticeable change in energy levels! The sweets do have slight individual flavours, with orange, lime and cherry included in amongst the various different ones there are. Most of them are nice, none of them are overpowering in their taste.

I recommend these sweets. They are nice to have, a bit soppy maybe, but it's a quirky thing to read your sweet before you eat it, and I always give my wife the one that says ' I heart you'. Sickening, isn't it!!! I don't know how much they cost individually, but Swizzels do a brilliant bumper selection of sweets including the drumstick sweets, refreshers, love hearts, and other sweets in the selection, and these are quite nice to get on occasion.