A thankyou letter and a history

Different countries and peoples have different tastes and requirements when it comes to sweeties, and several weeks ago I had the wonderful privalege of recieving a bumper pack of sweeties from my friends' mum and dad visiting for a holiday from Finland. Here's a copy of my thankyou letter, which includes a brief history of my association with nicely-packaged-sweets-that-don't-taste-very-nice.


Hello there,

I just wanted to write to say thank you so much for humouring my rather surreal request to enhance my sweetie tin collection with a veritable smorgasbord of Finnish treats. I guess Juha's explained a little about it, but you may be interested in the history of said collection. A year or more ago I wrote to the manufacturers of Fishermans Friends sweets to say how revolting I found them, yet couldn't help but enjoy them non the less, and as a result had become quite partial to them. They wrote back to say thank you for my letter and the positive feedback, and applauded my efforts at trying to convert various friends and family members to the alleged enjoyment of their lozenges. Accompanying their letter they sent a packet of Fishermans Friends, and a decorative tin within which to keep them, and thus was started a frankly bizarre collection that has enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom. There's a couple of rules that I adhere to, firstly the sweets must be in nice packaging (prefereably a small box or tin), secondly they've got to taste bad (relative to nice tasting things), and thirdly even if you don't like them when you try them you're not permitted to chew them up and swallow them quickly, or spit them out. One must by stringent and diligent in the adherence of these rules, and I'm pleased to say that I haven't yet reneged on any of "Big Three" as of yet.

A while back Juha returned from Finland - I believe he'd been to visit - and brought back a packet of Lijones (not sure of spelling) sweets. He then promptly palmed liberal quantities off on me knowing that I'd find them pretty foul, yet wonderfully pleasing as well. This opened all manner of proverbial doors for me, and whilst I have brought back horrible sweeties in nice tins from various places in the world on my travels I'd not yet had the honour of visiting Finland. Well! This was fixed by your timely visit, and ABUNDANCE of sweeties! Thank you so much, you've no idea how pleased and happy you've made me by humouring my ridiculous collection. Prior to the inclusion of the Finnish sweets I had around 60 different tins, but now have around 90! This is bonkers!

Thank you again.

Kind regards

Rory Walker

Fazer - Salmiakki Pastilleya

"Fazer - Salmiakki Pastilleya" - Very smart 50's style mixed with early 80's van's BMX shoe black and white halequin package design. Chic sophisticated, the kind of packet you could leave lying around to let people know that you're a person of taste and smooth character, the kind of person THEY'D like to know, if only they could get past the entourage of admirers, papperatzi, journalists, photographers etc etc. This is a design that means business, and you're the executive. After a tricky opening, i'm greeted with the smell of the sea and a view of what looks like the leftover swarf from a plastic injection moulding machine. Diamond shaped licorice (hence the packaging design), soft and slimey when in the mouth, a peppered taste, deep dark and heavy, the strength of sampson prior to haircut, and ioronically strong enough tasting to suggest that i'm either going to loose my hair, or the roof of mouth, i can't tell which, but they do provide a slap in the sinus's and a sweated dampening under the eyes. Vicious, truely vicious, headache inducing horrors. Like metephorical flavouresques stone cladding on your epiglotis, god these are hideous - 10 points!

Terva Leijona Lakritsi

"Terva Leijona Lakritsi" - Similar beautiful packaging as before, however, this time round it's a sandy orange rather than a british racing green colour. Same shape and look of pastilles, in fact they smell very alike, however, that's where the similarities end. The taste starts off as a mix between old reindeer leather and the inside of a coal chimney, smokey and dense, slowly giving way to the same fresh cool air sensation that one would get from a strong peppermint, only without the mint flavour. A tickle on the tongue, a choir boy whisper becoming a requieme of flavour. Again, supremely revolting and all the better for it.

Terva Leijona Salmiak

Ok - First things first -
"Terva Leijona Salmiak" - Beautiful packaging - leijona being "lion" in Finnish, nice graphic on cardboard box. Small dark flat sugar coated pastilles, slightly springy, very dense. Taste of burnt juniper, salmon, and licorice with the occasional undertone of orange. Take quite a while to disolve, unleashing a magmaesque flow of crawling saliva trickling down ones throat. Quite revolting, but superbly addictive. If only the box was made of tin, it'd be in the top 5 sweeties thus discovered on planet earth.