A huge package, 49 grams! Four flavours! Four colours! Not a "mint" in sight! It's a Fruit FESTIVAL!
Lime, cherry, orange and passionfruit. By themselves not amazing, but presented randomly in the chaos of the shake they're a glorious discovery of texture and flavour.
I believe cherry and passionfruit have not been available in any other way in America. The passionfruit Tic Tacs are a darker yellow compared to the lemon in Citrus Twist. The cherry Tic Tacs are lovely and are nothing like the cherry flavour attached to Cherry Coke. I wonder if the South American Cherry flavour in the lost Summer Fruits range was like this. Such a huge loss.
I now lust even more for Grapefruit.
Presented next to my scan of a normal sized packet for comparison. It's worth noting also that UK lime and orange are actually lighter than the US versions, it's not just the scanner struggling through the ticker plastic of the larger package:
With an orange that is similar but different to the Australian orange Tic Tacs, and a Lime that reminds me of the lime in Citrus Twist, Lime & Orange is a good combination.
Unlike the Lemon and Lime in Citrus Twist, the lime and orange compliment each other pretty well. I still find it hard to identify the Lime as lime, it's just citrus to me.
Orange Tic Tacs in the UK appear to be flavoured with "Powdered Orange Juice" while in Australia they're "artificially flavoured" which I suppose accounts for the slight difference. I prefer the Australian orange.
I very much approve of the idea of multiple flavours in the one packet, but the idea wouldn't work at all in Australia where all Tic Tacs are white regardless of the flavour.
Pity.
I agree with the wording and ideals behind such laws. I agree racist jokes are wrong, that speeding is dangerous, that smoking in covered areas is unhealthy.
But more often than not, such "minor" laws are ignored. Mostly because the police are never around and security guards have no interest in enforcing such minor problems.
So do we need more police "on the beat?"
Perhaps.
I've always privately thought that the problem isn't a lack of police, but a lack of courage for "the public" to speak up against what they don't like. As a society we're taught directly and indirectly to avoid confrontation.
When I see a smoker smoking under a no-smoking sign, or a roadrager screaming racist abuse at a fellow driver, I want to tell them off for it, politely.
But I don't.
It's not just the (paranoid) fear of being violently attacked for my request, but the knowledge that if I was, no-one would jump in to help, no police would be around to respond to a call, and even if they were, I don't trust they would or could do anything about it except to stop the immediate violence.
The creation of the laws at least solidify the wrong, elevating any request from personal opinion to governmental decree. So the law itself is helpful. But without enforcement by either the police or the public, the law is almost pointless. The more unenforced laws, the more "nannied" the public will feel.
Whether this problem is one that could be fixed in schools, teaching children to speak up when they see something wrong, or simply by providing the visible back-up of frequent police patrols, I don't know.
Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck with the memory of instances when something has been said and violence has ensued. It's hard to ignore that and hard to risk it over something so small as another's pride or some second hand smoke...
They were:
- Lime & Orange (UK)
- Fruit Festival (USA limited edition)
I also just noticed that Amazon sells the old "Silvers" packages, huge Tic Tac packets with larger than life individually packaged Tic Tacs. Again, they won't send them overseas. Sad panda.