Vanilla smile and a gorgeous strawberry kiss

[venta]

Yesterday, I invited people to play Be Surprised By The Price of Confectionery. And many of you did, thank you.

Anyway! In my head, I reckon that Cadbury's Fudge and Polos both cost about 10p, and Mars bars cost about 45p. I'm vaguely aware that those prices will be out of date, and I'm not even sure if they're necessarily from the same era as each other. So, on reflection, I'm not quite sure how much I expected things to cost today. Fudge and Polos are both "cheap", I reckon, and should cost about the same; Mars bars will be a bit pricier.

So, in my local garage, a standard-sized Mars will set you back 79p. Interestingly, there seems to be a two-tier pricing system with all those on the left (Mars, Marathon[*], Bounty) costing 79p and those on the right (Double Decker, Yorkie, Toffee Crisp) costing 75p. I didn't do an exhaustive search, but they all seem to be one price or the other.

Now, because I appear to have passed the age where I can seamlessly assimilate change[**], I'm surprised that a Mars bar is getting on for a quid. But rationally, I think that's probably more or less to be expected.

A finger of Fudge, however, will set you back 20p. It seems ridiculously cheap. And - here's the surprise - a packet of Polos has left Fudge trailing in its wake as it shoots up to 65p. I think jiggery_pokery's answers to the questions were probably most consistently in line with my particular set of "correct" data.

dr_doug made an interesting point in his comment on the original post, that the choccie bar market is now fragmented. Fudge is aimed at school children (so is cheap), and Mars and friends are aimed at older kids/adults. I can understand that as an idea, I just feel Polos have ended up in the wrong camp. I never buy Polos[***], but I'm pretty sure they should be with the cheap things (Fudge, Freddie Frogs, those weird-arsed Kinder hippo things that scare me, etc).

Various people commented on the range of prices in different emporia, and bopeepsheep specifically said that she's not aware of there being an RRP on chocolate bars these days. It is therefore possibly noteworthy that Fudge has "20p" printed in a little roundel on the packet, making it difficult for shops to slap their own mark-up on without exciting comment.

As many people rightly pointed out, a petrol station is rarely going to furnish me with bargain confectionery deals. I'm sticking to the purchase price of a single bar here, because it's all I ever do. Standard operating procedure for multipacks of chocolate bars in my house is to buy them, put them in the cupboard, and then completely forget about them until the eat-by date is a receding memory. So when I purchase such things, it's on a whim because I want one right now.

So, on the way to work I popped into the three relevant shops I pass between my house and the station. Let's have a table!

	Mars	Polos
Tesco Express	65p	65p
Select Express	75p	65p
Generic Corner Shop, other[****]	75p	50p

I appreciate that none of these constitues a "big supermarket", but I don't pass one of those on the way to work. Interestingly (or not) tesco.com will not sell you a single Mars, only a multipack (though I know our local big Tesco does sell the things individually).

So... Mars bars are approximately the same price, except in Tesco which will let you have them 10p cheaper. Polos were looking pretty consistent on 65p, but the GCS had a late-breaking low price going on. (Both of these were in Tesco's 3-for-£1.20 offer, by the way. I did think Tesco claimed not to put up prices in Metros, so logically the price should be the same in our local Tesco Gigantor or whatever it's called.)

None of the three shops I checked sold Fudge at all - I speculate wildly that this is due to the enforced low price. I apologise, by the way, if anyone else ended up absent-mindedly singing the bloody 1980s Finger of Fudge jingle all day yesterday.

If anyone would like to contribute data points from their local shops, they'd be most welcome :)

[*] Still not over that one.

[**] Due to, err, increased frequency of purchase I'm much more up on the changing price of a pint of bitter. However, if someone were to spring the question "How much is a pint?" on me unexpectedly, I'd probably answer "two quid". Beer wasn't £2 a pint when I started drinking, but apparently it was at the point when my brain froze.

[***] Not, as several other people remarked, because of a Nestlé boycott. But because my secret superpower is finding half-packets of Polos. I never buy the things, and when I find a packet I finish it, but I always manage to have a half-empty tube in a pocket or a bag somewhere. As superpowers go, I feel I could have rolled a better one.

[****] I have no idea what it's called. I think it has a name, but the only bit of the fascia I could see on approach was the yellow part advertising the Western Union services.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Whenever there's a snack gap... Twix fits! I don't remember the Marathon one, though. Though I do recall that someone, somewhere, is having a Toffee Crisp.

next I'm going to introduce her to The Hitman and Her.

I'm pretty sure workplaces are covered by the Geneva Convention, y'know.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

True, and I'm pretty sure showing people most of The Hitman & Her counts as sexual harassment too.