Bendicks Mingles

Well, alright, perhaps it is a bit daft to presume that Bendick’s Mingles are actually connected with Ciao in any way, but the analogy can be stretched. The contents/members can be easily identified by their colour coding, with green the common-or-garden stuff, blue and yellow fair enough, red of course the best by far (until theediscerning garners another 20,000 points at least), and brown very much on the seek-and-you-*might* find tack.

Also, to go topical (for this week at least), there might well be a lot less variety than one would have normally expected in times past.

Mingles are chocolates with “a hint of mint”, and come in a surprisingly decent range, considering that tight limit. The box theediscerning is nearly through emptying (a nice, pale green one, with brown swirl blazon on the front, Mingles in bright white, and a tumble of chocolates down the left side) contained 30 individually wrapped little sweets. So now you’re going to get the regular spread of flavour analogies, a count of how many of each type you might expect, and an explanation of what theediscerning was doing with a £2.99 box of chocs in the first place.

All the little sweets, good for one gulp or for biting in half, are wrapped in green sheathes, with the twists at the end providing the colour coding involved.

The BROWN is officially “dark chocolate with a fondant mint centre”. This might just seem like a chunk of After 8 substitute to you, but it seems more than that to theed’. The chunk is a lot more chocolate than fondant, and deservedly so. The dark chocolate is not bitter, and not too strong, but is actually really just about right, and great stuff. It’s a lot more flavoursome than After 8s chocolate (as if anyone ever bought them for the brown stuff alone…) for one, and is rated really highly. The fondant is fine enough, practically the same thickness as that in After 8s, and provides the appropriate “hint of chocolate”.
Theediscerning found a piffling 4 brown ones in his box.

The YELLOW is officially “solid milk and white layered chocolate with a hint of mint”. The chocolate here is perfectly satisfactory, too, and the chunks are split equally, horizontally, into a base of milk and a top half of white chocolate. The relevant hint here is almost a spearmint flavour, unless that reminds you of eating toothpaste and has put you off, in which case it’s a great mint flavour that is not quite the taste you might have expected. However it’s just a bit of chocolate, with flavouring, and as a result won’t set the world on fire. The layering is probably more of visual effect than concerning flavour.
Theediscerning found a brown-scaring 9 yellows.

The GREEN is officially “milk chocolate mint crisp”, and is like a chunk of a mint crisp Matchmaker (yum yum, now you’re talking…). As a result it’s got to be good, but who needed a box-shaped Matchmaker anyway, when you can do that party trick with the real thing (or is that only theed?…). It’s perfectly edible as it is, with some decent small bits of crackly sugary stuff inside, but again is no great shakes.
Theediscerning found a yellow-following 9 green ones.

The RED is officially “marbled dark and white chocolate with light mint truffle centre”. This needs breaking down. The ‘marbled’ means it’s dark for the majority, but the top surface corners are white chocolate. The ‘light mint truffle’ means a very nice fondant creamy gooey bit, which provides a very decent, strong hint of mint. The rest means what it should, and you should have worked that out for yourselves. The outer chocolate is fine too, and the fact that theediscerning is a sucker for a soft centre makes him think these are the best of the bunch. It has nothing to do with his current Ciao colour at all, honest.
Theediscerning found a satisfying 8 red ones.

The BLUE is officially “marbled milk and white chocolate with dark mint truffle centre”. This needs breaking down ~ of course it doesn’t, as this is just the “opposite” of the red. So why is it so, so much inferior? The truffly bit seems to be the same for one, which should make this just as good as red, but the chocolate is all wrong. It has that Cadbury’s Flake stick-to-the-top-of-the-tongue-and-not-g​o-away syndrome, which theediscerning has been told is the result of containing too much sugar. But this problem is unique to the blue ones. This is most odd, but inexplicable as it is, it makes the blue ones the worst.
Theediscerning found a “oi, what about the reds then? And the browns?”-inspiring 10 blue ones.

So there you go, a bit hit and miss, as per most selections of chocolates of course, with some successes and new favourites, and some to be deemed a failure by private opinion. Much the same as most chocolates, “you can’t eat a single Mingle”, which is as it should be, surely? While not a very strong-smelling bunch of goodies, they are easily grabbed, untwisted and gulped down by the handful.

If you’re expecting a very wide spread of flavours, you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely. But if you are, or know of, a fan of minty chocolates, or chocolatey mints of course, then these could well be right up your (Quality) Street. It doesn't seem that a few years ago the market would have held with a box of chocs all of "the same" flavour, but instead there is a sort of connoisseur feel resulting from the varieties given on the basic theme that will attract at first, as well as curiosity.

But it is easy to see that a repeat purchase will be very quickly following, as the quality of these is on the whole really rather nice. Yes, there should be an equal amount of all types (it’s lucky to find so many reds, but the browns are almost equally first, and hence so damnably rare ~ dare say you’ll find the greens, for example, your pick of the crop and get three, or something), and yes, someone should explain how red and blue are so similar in form yet so different in effect, but a four star rating for these Mingles is well come by.

Theediscerning would definitely recommend these, and would be hunting down the pennies for one of the larger boxes that are also available on his local JS shelves. But he has to close by revealing the answer to the conundrum above first.

Obvious, really ~ he didn’t pay for them. They were free with the local paper this summer. At £3 they’re reasonable value for money, and no dearer than any other first class selection one might find. At 30p they were a steal.

What’s that? You’re jealous now? Here have a Mingle ~ not green to match your eyes, as they’re all gone. Blue to match your mood? There’s still several of those going…

Going…

Gone.