Jakemans Extra Strong Menthol & Eucalyptus

I bought a packet of these Jakemans Menthol and Eucalyptus from Manchester airport on Tuesday, and I was excited as I had only ever tried this flavour once before, and it was a while ago - it seems to be the hardest flavour to find in shops.

I absolutely love Jakemans cough sweets, and I have tried all of the available flavours from the range, but tend to usually buy the original throat and chest cough sweets,purely because they seem to often be the only available flavour in most of the shops, garages or chemists that I use.

My Dad first introduced me to Jakemans original Throat and Chest sweets a few years back when I was suffering from a bit of the old 'man flu', and being somewhat of an expert on sweets in general, my dad turned up with a bag of these for me during a visit to see me.

The Jakemans brand has been in existence since 1907, and so they have a fully tried and tested track record, and the brand does seem to be getting more and more popular over the last few years since I have heard of them.

The extra strong Menthol and Eucalyptus sweets are basically a hard boiled sweet, which are blue in colour, and probably just a bit larger in size than a locket or tune. They come in a bright light blue coloured plastic bag, with a see-through patch at the front of the bag which exposes a few of the sweets contained within the bag. Each bag contains 100 grams of individually wrapped sweets inside it, and while I was a little bored sitting on the plane I counted the sweets out, and there were 16 in total (sad I know!)

As with all the others in the Jakemans range, there is an instant strong smell of menthol, as the bag is opened up, and as the sweets themselves are unwrapped, this scent intensifies.

As mentioned above, the sweets are boiled, and very hard, with no soft centre, and the idea is to suck them in your mouth, until the sweet has dissolved. I usually find a sweet will last the best part of an hour before it has completely dissolved in my mouth, if I just suck it, and don't bite into it.

I would describe the flavour as a combination of Menthol and eucalyptus which tastes great, and gets to work on clearing a blocked nose, or a sore throat very quickly. There is also a gentle hint of lemon / lime in the background which adds to the flavour, and gives it a real feel of a sweet, as opposed to a purely medicinal product. They do have a strong, but inviting kick to them, which provides a soothing vapour to the throat, and helps to clear the airways. They also leave the mouth feeling fresh fruity after the sweet has fully dissolved, and can leave you with a bit of a blue tongue!

They have the feel of a very good quality product, from the design on the bag, the wrappers, the taste, and the effects that the sweets have. For anyone interested they do not contain any artificial colours, and they are suitable for vegetarians!

The price of these bags of Jakemans cough sweets varies a huge amount depending on where you buy them from, for example I often pay around 70p a bag from my local Morrison's supermarket, but on Tuesday I had to suffer the robbing prices of an airport, where everything seems to be marked up massively, due to the constraints and lack of other options. I paid £1:39 for my pack, which is a lot to pay, but bearing in mind that a packet of extra strong mints were priced at about 80p, then these didn't seem to bad.

I find them a really tasty alternative to mints, and so I probably get through a packet of these most weeks. These are a medicinal sweet though, and so it is sensible to restrict consumption to just a few a day, or one every few hours if being taken as a one-off to help cure a cough and sore throat.

For information, Jakemans do produce 5 different flavours of menthol cough sweets, all coming in very similar looking packaging, just differing in terms of name, and the colouring of the packaging designed to match the colour of the cough sweets inside the bag as follows:

Throat and Chest - Black Bag / sweets
Menthol and Eucalyptus - Blue Bag / sweets
Cheery Menthol - Red Bag / sweets
Honey and Lemon Menthol - Yellow Bag / sweets
Blueberry Menthol - Purple Bag / sweets

Overall they are a fantastic addition to the Jakemans range of boiled sweets. It is great from my point of view to see the range of sweets becoming more and more popular in the UK, as they are obviously becoming more widely available in shops, supermarkets, chemists, garages, and even airports. I even managed to buy a packet of the original throat and chest cough sweets from a bar at a theatre a few weeks ago!
Well done to Soadfan for getting the Jakemans brand onto Dooyoo!

Thanks for reading.

© L500589 2011