Yummy or Cheap?

I have this vivid memory from my childhood of Midget Gems and Sports Mixture. Lovely jelly sweets in a multitude of flavours: rasberryish, pineapplyish, orange, lime, peary and licorice. As a kid, these are more often categorised as red, yellow, orange, green, white and black.

The licorice flavour seems a little strange amongst the fruitiness of the others, but it was viewed either as a delight (that was me) or was loathed. It bursted with character regardless. The original makers of these sweets, Lion's of Cleckheaton all of a sudden decided to change a century of tradition with the ousting of licorice as the black flavour for insipid, cat pee scented blackcurrant.

It might be a good idea at this point to indicate that I do have a life and that this isn't my life's work now, but I wrote to Lion's to ask them the reason for this decision. I was informed that they'd carried out a survey, and that the result was that people had agreed overwhelmingly that the new blackcurrant flavour was superior to the old licorice. I've asked dozens of people (honestly, I'm not mad or bitter and twisted), and the only overwhelming decision was that the blackcurrant smelled bad ("like cat pee" to quote more than one) and had a poor taste. They didn't ask me or my survey sample!!

Is it me or when a producer quotes "new improved flavour" it usually means that they've sourced cheaper ingredients?

Anyway, please feel free to take part in the online survey below.

There's also good news for the licorice jelly sorts amongst us. Look down under the survey :o)