Used to be best, now the worst

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Thorntons Chocolates
★★☆☆☆
2.1
22.0% of users recommend this

Geoff Lidster's review of Thorntons Chocolates

“Used to be best, now the worst”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Geoff Lidster on 25/11/2012

Every Christmas I used to buy my elderly aunt a 1kg Box of Thornton's Continental for a little less than £30.00
She loved them, they were special, they were of high quality and everyone was happy.

Over the last few years Thorntons have been appearing on supermarket shelves practically everywhere, and the shops have been disappearing from the high street.

For the last couple of years the chocolates have been 'discounted' (or that's what we've been led to believe) and they are now typically 50% off absolutely EVERYWHERE.

Last Christmas I bought her what was intended to be the same box but it was smaller and much much cheaper. The selection of chocolates was awful and the quality wasn't a patch on previous years.

Whilst shopping in a supermarket recently I saw the big green box of Thornton's Mints that's everywhere at 50% off. Liking chocolate, and liking Elizabeth Shaw, or better still Bendicks, I made the mistake of buying myself a box.
The selection was dire and the so called fondant ones were as hard as bricks. I even checked they were in date.....there was no 'bloom' on the chocolates caused by overheated storage or age and they were well within date but they were awful and I threw most of them away.

Mercifully my aunt died last month aged 92 and I don't have to buy her a box of ghastly Thornton's chocolates this Christmas, a treat she really used to enjoy.

Thornton's should just cease trading now, they have managed to ruin a wonderful business with high quality products. The next failure on the horizon should be Lily O'Brien who similarly produced wonderful chocolates, albeit for a much shorter period than the 100 years of Thorntons, but they are now just as awful and very obviously mass produced for the supermarkets.

They're all now down in the gutter along with Cadbury and the like. I for one will stick with Green & Black or J D Gross from Lidl which is absolutely fantastic.

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Bookitty's Response to Geoff Lidster's Review

Written on: 12/12/2012

Whew, so it's not just me. A friend brought me a box from her London trip, and I was excited to get some "good, English chocolate." Until I tried to eat them...not very good. And like you said--I checked the date and they were nowhere near expired, but some tasted old.

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Hyperconformist's Response to Geoff Lidster's Review

Written on: 08/02/2014

Completely agree. The fillings are like sugary shaving-foam and the chocolate tastes very cheap. You can only sacrifice quality for price so much before people realise you're not selling a product half as good as you used to sell.
On the other hand, I actually like Cadbury Dairy Milk, it may be cheap and ubiquitous but it still tastes 100% better quality than Thorntons.

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