Rowntrees Fruits Bottles review

OK, have a look at this and see if you can guess what it is. One of those bottle carriers that the milkmen used to use to bring the bottles of milk to your front doorstep ? A carry pack of new kids' drinks ? Ten green bottles sitting on a wall ?! Well no, believe it or not, it is a funkily packaged delivery of new sweets from Rowntrees !

 Each of the little bottles has not only a pair of beady eyes, it also has a packet of Rowntrees Fruit Bottles sweets pushed inside. How's that for a cool marketing strategy ? Oh, and the one in the front contained a message in a bottle, with some information about the sweets and a USB key.

Sophie set to work extracting the packets of sweets and decided that we could keep the bottles in the box and use them as a skittles set. How's that for some nifty upcycling ?!

So, on to the sweets themselves. The brand new Fruit Bottles are designed as a retro throw-back to the cola bottles of old - can you believe that Rowntrees have been in business for 150 years this year?! Some of my favourite sweets are actually the really early inventions - Fruit Pastilles ("the only thing you can really do with a Rowntrees Fruit Pastille is chew uh-huh-huh!") were created in 1881, Fruit Gums in 1893, Tooty Frooties (which I loved as a kid) in 1963 and Jelly Tots (which I still love, as a real nostalgic blast from the past) in 1967. 

The cute smiley Fruit Bottles are guaranteed to appeal to the modern market though because they contain 25% fruit juice (ooh imagine if you could get sweets that counted towards your five-a-day !). They're fruity and natural tasting and everyone, kids and adults alike, loved them. They're lovely and squishy and contain no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. I did a bit of a double take when I read the ingredients list - black carrot, nettle, carrot, hibiscus, pepper and spinach concentratesare not things that I would have expected to find in sweets recipes ! But they taste delicious so don't tell the kids about these added ingredients until they've tried them !

In honour of the 150th anniversary, Rowntrees are celebrating everything retro on their facebook page. You can take a nostalgic trip through the decades with the special Bottle Goggles app and there is also a great selection of themed prizes and sweets to be won. What are you waiting for ?! Head on over to www.facebook.com/rowntrees. While you're there, if you see my entry in the competition, feel free to give me a like - I went for Sweet Caroline by Status Quo as the ultimate boogying song of the 70's. Remember that weird knee up, knee up, ankle back, ankle back, turn and jump dance ?!!

star rating : 5/5

RRP : £1.48 for 150g

for more information : www.facebook.com/rowntrees

 Disclosure : I received some Fruit Bottles sweets in order to write an honest review.

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