Christmas is nearly here, the perfect time to indulge in our favourite sweet treats. Supermarket shelves are once again laden with large tubs of delicious chocolates on offer. And for Brits, there are two major contenders; Roses and Quality Street.
Chances are, you have never really paid much attention to which is better - Birmingham Live reporter Kirsty Bosley certainly hadn't. But with the cost of everything so high, she wanted to be a bit more mindful and smarter when it comes to shopping this festive season. So she decided, once and for all, to pit Nestle Quality Street against Cadbury Roses, to see which is best.
Both tubs are a fiver each now in Sainsbury's, 600g plastic tubs filled with individually wrapped chocolates. Kirsty got one of each and in the interests of consumer research, set about researching. Here's what she found.
Packaging
Both tubs are iconic and recognisable, though I do miss the embossed tins of my childhood. The blue plastic Roses tub, illustrated with pretty glowers, bears the Cadbury logo in the classic purple and gold colour scheme.
"A bright bunch of delicious chocolates", the label reads, a nod to Dorothy Cadbury, who grew up in the gardens of the Bournville factory. Though I'm trying not to give Cadbury a home advantage, it's hard not to when you're a Brummie.
Each of the individual chocolates is wrapped in plasticky, foiled wrappers, different colours but not in the same charming way that Quality Street sweets are wrapped. There's just something special about their rich, jewel-toned soft cellophane wrappers that is just so pleasing to me, nestled inside a royal, eight-sided purple tub.
As packaging goes, Quality Street wins it every time for me.
Options
There are nine options inside a tub of Cadbury Roses: Hazel Whirl, Caramel, Hazel in Caramel, Golden Barrel, Signature Truffle, Dairy Milk, Tangy Orange Creme, Strawberry Dream and Country Fudge.
For me, that number is made up of five icons, two boring options (I don't much care for Country Fudge and Signature Truffle) and a pair of sweets that I could give or take, the orange and strawberry options.
In a tub of Quality Street you have 11 options, which to me comprises three bangers (Green Triangles, Purple Ones and Caramel Swirls) and maybe just one boring one - the Coconut Eclair.
With that in mind, I have to admit that Roses wins it in terms of options. Sure, Quality Street has more variety, but Roses has a greater number of unmissable morsels.
Volume
Now we're down to the nitty gritty. We know how many options there are in each tub, but how many sweeties are there overall. Here's a full breakdown of what we get in a tub of Roses:
And here's what we get in Quality Street:
With this in mind, we have to give this category to Quality Street, just for the fact that we get more sweeties for our money and, when you're sharing, that matters.
Conclusion
So when all is said and done, Quality Street won two of our three categories. And yet, I cannot give the win to them, despite this.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is how many of the sweets inside each tub you're going to smash in one sitting. And for me, Roses has the edge every time. In the time it's taken to write this up, there are more empty Roses packets sitting on my desk than Quality Street ones, and so if I could only choose one to buy this Christmas, the Roses have it.
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I tried the Good Pair Days wine advent calendar and think it's the best on the market