To bring that lovely piece down to hard commercialism, Quality Street is also the world’s biggest-selling brand of boxed chocolates, according to the Nestlé website. Nestlé, which owns the brand, says it sells about GBP 87 million-worth ($130 million) of Quality Street chocolates each year, equating to four million individual sweets per day. Within the UK, Quality Street is the ninth-most valuable chocolate brand, much of it eaten around Christmas.
The brand was launched in 1936, and was named after a 1901 play by Sir James Matthew Barrie (who also wrote Peter Pan). The play was later turned into films (1927, 1937, with Katharine Hepburn), but is rarely performed nowadays, though the script is still in print (ISBN: 1589630025). It is a comedy in which a shop window acts as the door to a special place, called Quality Street, in which residents have a strange confidence and know all about Whimsy cake. The two main characters in the play are depicted on the packaging of the chocolates.
Back to the chocolates. Quality Street is a variety pack. There are 12 different types of chocolate in each pack, and everyone has their favourite. For me, it is the green triangles, and the purple 'Brazil' nuts. Others, however, prefer the hard, buttery toffees (gold shiny wrappers), or the fudge, which comes in red wrapping.
The full listing:
There used to be a nougat, which came in orange foil, and was one of my favourites, but that one appears to have been dropped. Presumably it was unpopular.
The ingredients listed in the side of the pack include:
Any more info on the J M Barrie play gratefully received