I’m still shuddering.
Recently I contacted Aunty Nellie’s Sweet Shop in Ireland to get my hands on some more of those blackcurrant hard candies I’m nuts for (turns out they’re actually aniseed candies.) Â The extremely helpful person who worked there offered to make a grab bag for me of other black currant and aniseed/licorice treats. Â While most everything she selected was wonderful, the Spogs….well….they’re Spogs.
Pretty, right? Â Pretty for things not found in nature, perhaps. Â “Jelly Spogs” as they’re commonly called are an aniseed jelly treat coated in those little non-pareil thingies. Â They’re definitely NOT pareils. Â Usually, these come included in traditional licorice “allsorts” collections, which are more or less a bunch of different kinds of licorice in a sampler.
Conceptually, I’ve got no beef with these (despite the fact that there’s WAY too much beef in them:
Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Water, Beef Gelatine, Modified Maize Starch, Cornflour, Beef Gelatine, Flavouring, Wheat Flour, Colours (Indigo Carmine, Carmine)
Really, twice?
But still, the ingredients didn’t put me off. Â It’s the damn taste. Â WOW. Â Talk about intense. Â From someone like me who adores licorice-the more intense the better, usually-I couldn’t take these. Â The non-pareils are a nothingburger. Â But the jelly is a noxious, powerful, sharp, heady attack of aniseed intensity. Â It’s very rare that something from the licorice family turns out to be a spitter for me, but…these are.
I appreciate that these are a classic European candy, that’s all fine and dandy. Â But I defy any of you to tell me that you actually enjoy these. Â In fact, I don’t believe that ANYONE actually likes these, because that just doesn’t seem possible. Â However, if you wanna prove me wrong, please do-leave a comment and explain to me what I’m missing.
Until then however, I feel safe condemning these into the deepest chambers of hell for all of eternity.
But…hey, click the link to buy them here:
I just got done asking my colleague in the UK to send ne some of these because the two bags of allsorts she got ne contained exactly one, and they’re my favorite. She told me what theyre called, though, so now I can buy my own!
Been buying Spogs regularly for years. I love them, ok addicted. Licorice Allsorts, keep the Spogs, throw away the rest. However, the other day my most recent purchase arrived, via Amazon, and looked and tasted somewhat different than usual – spogs slightly smaller in size, pareills much smaller and not adhering to the jelly properly, pink looked almost red and the clouring on all was not even, jelly yellowish rather than clear, jelly texture tougher and chalky. But worst of all the taste has lost its intense aniseed flavour and has become like bland licorice. Yuck ! Always same source, same product. Supplier, Monmore, says normal production variations. BS I say. Went to another supplier, Krazy Kandi Liverpool, got a 3 kg bag branded Barrat, same problem. What is going on ? I have contacted the maker, Barrat, with the batch number on bag to see if there is some clarification from them. Is the more than one source/maker ? I am bereft…….and in need of a life. I want my aniseed Spogs back.
Max, I applaud your tenacity, your gumption, and your dedication. While (obviously) I hate Spogs, I hate more when candy changes.
Hopefully it’s a supply chain issue for one common ingredient that all makers use?
So glad to find I’m not the only one who doesn’t like them … I just tossed more than half a dozen of them which SOMEHOW got into my package of liquorice allsorts (okay, I know they’re supposed to be there, but WHY??)
If you follow the link to Amazon provided above you will see that many many people, including me, LOVE spogs!
Well I should hope so, or why do they exist?! 🙂
We fully understand that we don’t have the same taste as everyone, that’s what makes a candy store the most amazing thing in the world.
Are you based in the UK?
When I was a kid I called these “hydrangeas”, because every garden in our town had a few bushes in pink or blue, the exact same shades as what I now know are called spogs!
Yes, I adore them. They were always my favourite one in a box of All sorts; me and my sister would fight over them. We also loved aniseed balls – little hard, oxblood coloured gobstoppers of hot aniseed flavour – only partly cos they were a halfpenny each, much like Black Jacks, an aniseed chew that turns your entire mouth black.
I buy a kilo bag of spogs every “months”, but the months seem to get shorter each time… I add a handful to every bag of Panda brand black liquorice I eat (far too many.. but it is the very best liquorice imho).
I remember a brand of popular liquorice sweets called Imps that came in a little metal tin – they were really powerful.
Actually, these cannot be licorice but, gummy. Licorice has no gelatine in it unless it’s filled. In any case beef gelatine makes gummy less chewy and hard rather than the pork gelatine. Europen style gummies should also have pork gelatine in them because, it’s less expensive than beef gelatine. Therefore I’m guessing that these should have come from somewhere else originally and they also are halal. They must have been imported from Turkey or Malesia or some other Halal manufacturing country.
You might be right about all of that (smarty pants!), but these were made and purchased in Ireland. So there! 🙂