Vegan Rowntrees Fruit Gums
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Discussion

Composer62

Original Poster:

2,231 posts

107 months

Thursday 3rd March 2022
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I know this is fairly trivial but I've really liked Rowntrees Fruit Gums for many, many years,

I was unfortunate enough to have tried their new (now standard) vegan version which I found to be soft, sticky and tasteless.

I suggested on the Rowntrees website that they might consider making a range of sweets specifically for vegans rather then foisting tasteless stuff on the vast majority of people who have loved them for decades and I saw many similar comments with the same sentiment.

I've just seen they declined to publish my comment.

As I said, very trivial in the grand scheme of things but pretty disappointing to see

Any thoughts ?

Has anyone else tried them ?




dapprman

2,683 posts

288 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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I tried the fruit cocktail pastels and they were poor.

The vegan flag is just riding the present food fad band wagon as they've been vegan for as long as I can remember (some jelly type sweets have beef or pork gelatine in them).

I would suggest they've done something to the flavour balance and that is the reason behind the poor sweets.

Composer62

Original Poster:

2,231 posts

107 months

Friday 4th March 2022
quotequote all
dapprman said:
I tried the fruit cocktail ones and they were poor.

The vegan flag is just riding the present food fad band wagon as they've been vegan for as long as I can remember (some jelly type sweets have beef or pork gelatine in them)
That may well be the case but they've done something now to make them terrible from what I can see and are marketing them now as "vegan friendly with a softer chew".

Nothing like what they were like even a month or two ago.

dapprman

2,683 posts

288 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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Wonder if they've reduced the amount of sugar in their sweets, that would cause the change in flavour

sherman

14,794 posts

236 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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Fruit gums give me the sts

Fruit pastilles dont however.

rodericb

8,416 posts

147 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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dapprman said:
Wonder if they've reduced the amount of sugar in their sweets, that would cause the change in flavour
Yeah, that was my thought and this might be confirmed in this wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowntree%27s_Fruit_G... - stating that they were going to reduce the sugar in 2017 by 30%. Also, the vegan gums would have agar agar instead of gelatin although I don't think there's much flavour in agar agar.

dapprman

2,683 posts

288 months

Friday 4th March 2022
quotequote all
rodericb said:
Yeah, that was my thought and this might be confirmed in this wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowntree%27s_Fruit_G... - stating that they were going to reduce the sugar in 2017 by 30%. Also, the vegan gums would have agar agar instead of gelatin although I don't think there's much flavour in agar agar.
Agar agar used to be listed as vegetable gelatin in the pre E number days.

55palfers

6,224 posts

185 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
Wine Gums have gone all soft and unpleasant too.

Why can't they leave stuff alone!

Composer62

Original Poster:

2,231 posts

107 months

Friday 4th March 2022
quotequote all
55palfers said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Wine Gums have gone all soft and unpleasant too.

Why can't they leave stuff alone!
Yes indeed they have.

Rowntrees Fruit Gums were like my last refuge, now sadly gone it seems.

Don't get me started on "Sports Mixtures" rolleyes

Edited by Composer62 on Friday 4th March 12:43

FBR2020

1,290 posts

231 months

Friday 4th March 2022
quotequote all
Composer62 said:
Don't get me started on "Sports Mixtures" rolleyes
Tesco sell bags of Lion Football Gums, near as dammit identical to the original Sports Mixture

Raj28

147 posts

152 months

Friday 4th March 2022
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Fruit gums used to be rock hard in the early 90s. Loved those. The current ones are ok. Please let this be flavour talk be temporary, it's literally all I've got left too!

Composer62

Original Poster:

2,231 posts

107 months

Saturday 5th March 2022
quotequote all
FBR2020 said:
Composer62 said:
Don't get me started on "Sports Mixtures" rolleyes
Tesco sell bags of Lion Football Gums, near as dammit identical to the original Sports Mixture
Thanks, I'll see if I can track them down and give them a try.

LeadFarmer

7,411 posts

152 months

Saturday 5th March 2022
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This is perhaps the first time I've ever chosen to open a thread about vegan stuff, and I don't feel comfortable here so I am now immediately leaving!!! biggrin

DaveGrohl

993 posts

118 months

Saturday 5th March 2022
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Dunno if it’s anything to do with dropping sugar content, I don’t eat the things, but Ribena dropped the sugar content and replaced it with sweeteners. Tasted like toxic waste after. They already did a low sugar version, so to do that to their main product was bonkers. I used to take it really dilute so waaay under the mythical 5% sugar they were trying to get under to avoid the tax anyway. Rules and stupid marketing decisions are making the world an awful place. What ever happened to choice?

Composer62

Original Poster:

2,231 posts

107 months

Saturday 5th March 2022
quotequote all
FBR2020 said:
Composer62 said:
Don't get me started on "Sports Mixtures" rolleyes
Tesco sell bags of Lion Football Gums, near as dammit identical to the original Sports Mixture
PistonHeads comes good again.

Found some in my local Tesco Extra, though a little apart from similar products.

They are indeed very close to the original Sports Mixture so I'm delighted. Even the black ones are the original liquorice flavour.

Thanks very much for the tip.