Dear Sirs,I write with regards to your perpetually popular product, Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles.
It is true that it is a more than adequate sweet. One would even go so far as to place it in the same league as other triumphs of tubed sweets: Rolos, fruit Mentos (but not mint Mentos), and even the humble Mint Imperial.
That said, I feel there are some fundamental issues that are hampering the potential immortality of the fruit pastille.
First and foremost, let us discuss the ratio of flavours available in a packet. You probably know what’s coming, but hear me out. I am neither a blackcurrant devotee nor a member of the anti-lime brigade. Far from it. Truth be told, I am quite the citrus enthusiast.
Call me crazy, but I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, a person will open a packet of fruit pastilles and not fear that the blackcurrant pastille they are greeted with will be the only one they will encounter in the entire packet. I have a dream that should one discover a lime pastille, they will not expect it to be followed by eight more of the same flavour.
I note that you now offer bags of blackcurrant and strawberry pastilles, and entire tubes of blackcurrant pastilles. This is a grave mistake and a knee-jerk reaction to a much more complex problem. Why do you think consumers dislike lime pastilles with such passion? It is not the flavour that promotes such an aversion to a particular sweet. It is the quantity.
One mustn’t take data gleaned from marketing taste tests at face value. Of course people will tell you that blackcurrant is their favourite flavour. Say you gave someone nothing but chocolate milk for a week, and occasionally offered them a glass of water. Ask them which one they’d prefer. We both know chocolate milk is a far superior beverage, but there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing.
By offering entire packets of blackcurrant and strawberry, you devalue both flavours by flooding the market. At the same time, traditional pastille users are still faced with the same overabundance of lime in standard packets. This leaves you with only orange and lemon as alternatives, neither of which can be expected to support an entire brand of sweets.
You must resist the urge to capitulate to the whims of ill-informed consumers and the silver-tongued high-fiving hubris of the marketing department.
The public need balance and equality from their sweets, not some marginalised ghetto of downtrodden lime warring with the blackcurrant elite. If there cannot be harmony in a packet of fruit pastilles, then what hope is there for the Israel/Palestine conflict?
It is a simple concept. Equal parts lime, blackcurrant, strawberry, orange and lemon in each packet. Don’t tell me that you’re a slave to the random whims of your factory machinery, because we both know that’s a cop out. If robots can serve us drinks and perform any number of other menial tasks, you can get the balance right in a packet of pastilles.
Any increased manufacturing costs resulting from the inception of pastille harmony would be negated by the rise in sales once word gets around of your magnanimous shift in policy.
We are in the midst of a serious economical crisis, the likes of which most of us have never seen before. When so many things in this world are so uncertain, the public need a sweet to offer them solace and the promise of better things to come. Let Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles be that rock.
Yours sincerely,
Eoinin McAlpine
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