40 Fun Facts About Quality Street

Which world leader reportedly offered Quality Street to visiting British MP George Galloway in 2002?

Saddam Hussein had a tin brought out during their talks, by Galloway's account, though neither man ate one. The brand's owner first welcomed the publicity, then played it down.

Which Quality Street sweet, a hazelnut in caramel, topped the brand's 2016 Nation's Favourite survey?

The Purple One was the first choice of about one in five people surveyed. A bar made of four of them joined together marked the brand's 75th birthday in 2011.

What originally filled Quality Street's favourite caramel sweet before post-war shortages brought in the hazelnut?

Brazil nut was the first centre, and the chocolate still keeps the long shape made to hold one. Supplies ran short after the Second World War, so a nut that grows in Britain took over.

Which Quality Street sweet is the only one in the tin with no chocolate coating at all?

Toffee Penny is a plain disc of toffee, a homage to the sweets that built the company. Its creator knew his toffee, so he put two kinds in every tin.

Quality Street takes its name from a 1901 stage comedy by which Scottish writer?

J. M. Barrie wrote the play Quality Street a few years before Peter Pan. Its romantic leads inspired the soldier and lady who decorated the tins for decades.

In western Norway, Quality Street is nicknamed after which Scottish islands where fishermen used to buy it?

Shetland gave the tins their local name, Shetlandsgodt, after crews fishing near the islands kept bringing them home. Some families there never bought one in a shop.

Which foil-wrapped Quality Street sweet hides smooth hazelnut praline inside a chocolate shell?

Green Triangle is the only three-cornered sweet in the tin, and it finished third in the brand's 2016 favourites poll. It was once sold as the Noisette Triangle.

In 2022 Quality Street began swapping its foil-and-plastic wrappers for which recyclable material?

Coated paper replaced the old wrappers on most of the sweets, with the aim of keeping two billion wrappers a year out of landfill. The first tins of 1936 also used paper.

Which Cadbury assortment of wrapped chocolates launched in 1938 as a direct rival to Quality Street?

Roses arrived two years after the Mackintosh's tin and has competed with it at Christmas ever since. Cadbury's Heroes followed only in 1999.

Which multinational has owned Quality Street since its 1988 takeover of the brand's British parent?

Nestlé bought the parent firm outright, picking up Aero and Smarties in the same deal. The sweets are still made in Yorkshire.

Which fruit-flavoured Quality Street sweet finished runner-up in the brand's 2016 Nation's Favourite survey?

Strawberry Delight took 12% of the vote, finishing ahead of both orange sweets. Its red wrapper hides a soft fruit centre under chocolate.

Which West Yorkshire town has been home to the Quality Street factory since the sweets launched in 1936?

Halifax is where John and Violet Mackintosh began selling toffee in 1890, and the factory there now turns out millions of the sweets every day.

What colour is the wrapper on the Fudge in a Quality Street tin, a shade no other sweet there shares?

Pink has long marked out the Fudge, one of the tin's great survivors. It has stayed in the assortment for decades while trendier sweets came and went.

What colour is the wrapper on Quality Street's Milk Choc Block, a solid piece of chocolate with no filling?

Green wraps the Milk Choc Block, the simplest sweet in the tin. Its maker pitches it at people who like their chocolate in its purest form, with nothing added.

What colour wrapper marks out the Coconut Eclair among the sweets in a Quality Street tin?

Blue wraps the Coconut Eclair, a soft coconut centre under chocolate that its maker sells as a taste of the tropics for the cold festive season.

The soldier pictured beside Miss Sweetly on classic Quality Street tins carried which military rank in his name?

Major Quality and Miss Sweetly were modelled on the romantic leads of the play behind the brand's name. The first models for the pair were the children of the man who designed the launch advert.

Which sweet did Quality Street drop in 2016 to make room for Honeycomb Crunch, before complaints won its return?

Toffee Deluxe came back after a wave of complaints, briefly taking the assortment to 13 sweets. Its replacement was then dropped after only two years.

Quality Street's maker Mackintosh's merged in 1969 with which York confectioner known for Fruit Pastilles?

Rowntree's and its Yorkshire rival became Rowntree Mackintosh, putting Kit Kat and Quality Street under one roof for the next two decades.

Which company makes Celebrations, the tub of miniature chocolate bars that rivals Quality Street every Christmas?

Mars launched Celebrations in 1997, shrinking its own famous bars instead of inventing new sweets. Cadbury answered two years later with a miniature tub of its own.

Which member of the Mackintosh family created Quality Street in 1936 after inheriting his father's toffee business?

Harold Mackintosh wanted working families to afford the boxed chocolates only the wealthy then bought, so he wrapped each sweet and sold them loose in a tin.

Which round Quality Street sweet in a yellow wrapper joins Toffee Finger in a sharing bag for toffee lovers?

Caramel Swirl is a pool of soft caramel under chocolate, and it made the top five when the brand polled the nation's favourites in 2016.

What soft, creamy sugar filling sits under the chocolate of Quality Street's Orange Creme?

Fondant flavoured with orange fills the Creme, one of two orange sweets in the tin. The other swaps the soft centre for crunchy orange crystals.

Which long-lost Quality Street flavour returned for Christmas 2023, covered in dark chocolate, after fan requests?

Coffee Creme came back as a limited edition sold only in selected shops, not in the standard tin. The brand said fans had been asking after it for years.

Which national newspaper carried Quality Street's launch advertisement across its front page on 2 May 1936?

Daily Mail readers saw the new assortment fill the front page. Mackintosh's had been advertising its toffee in the same paper since early in the century.

Which caramel-filled chocolate did Quality Street's maker Mackintosh's launch in the late 1930s, soon after the tin?

Rolo drew on the chocolate know-how Mackintosh's had bought earlier in the decade. In the United States it has long been made under licence by Hershey.

Which brand of thin, brittle chocolate sticks, launched in 1968, now carries the Quality Street name on its boxes?

Matchmakers are sold today as Quality Street Matchmakers, though they began as a brand of their own. Mint and orange are the best-known flavours.

Which department store chain launched personalised Quality Street tins that shoppers fill with their own mix?

John Lewis has hosted pick-and-mix counters where shoppers choose their sweets and have a name printed on the lid. Tins from earlier years can be brought back for a refill.

The two costumed figures on old Quality Street tins wear the fashions of which period of British history?

Regency dress suited the tin because the play behind the name is set during the wars with Napoleon. The nostalgia was deliberate: the sweets launched in the hard 1930s.

Quality Street's 1936 production line used what was billed as the world's first machine for doing what to sweets?

Twist-wrapping them by machine kept costs low enough for working families to afford a tin. Workers on the production line helped to develop the device.

Quality Street's creator chaired National Savings when it launched which savings scheme in 1956?

Premium Bonds arrived while Viscount Mackintosh led the National Savings Committee, a post the toffee maker had taken on in the middle of the war.

Which tart berry gave its name to a discontinued Quality Street cream filled with fruit preserve?

Gooseberry Cream had a pale, soft centre with a touch of real preserve. Its maker still lists it among the best-remembered sweets of yesteryear.

An orange-flavoured chocolate toffee in Quality Street's original 1936 selection carried which fruity place name?

Jaffa Toffee was in the very first tins and has long since been dropped. The brand now counts it among its lost favourites.

Crunchy pieces of which nut filled the Octagon, a Quality Street sweet that has since been discontinued?

Almond pieces gave the Octagon its bite under the chocolate. The eight-sided shape lives on in the tin's orange crunch sweet.

Which Hollywood star played heroine Phoebe Throssel in the 1937 film of the play Quality Street?

Katharine Hepburn's film lost money and helped earn her the label of box-office poison. It reached cinemas a year after the sweets borrowed the same title.

Heath Robinson's 1921 cartoons for Mackintosh's helped give Quality Street's Yorkshire birthplace which nickname?

Toffee Town was the setting of the artist's surreal newspaper cartoons, and the name stuck to the mill town where the firm had its headquarters.

Quality Street's factory starts preparing its Christmas stock as early as which month of the year?

March is when the lines begin on festive tins, some nine months ahead. In the run-up to Christmas the factory has turned out more than 10 million sweets a day.

John and Violet Mackintosh, whose firm later created Quality Street, began in 1890 by buying what kind of business?

A pastry shop was what their joint savings of £100 could buy. Violet ran it while John kept his job at a cotton mill, and the toffee she devised to draw customers became the business.

Which bar did Quality Street's maker Mackintosh's launch in 1963?

Toffee Crisp was invented by a great-nephew of the firm's founder, who took the idea from a cake his wife baked for their children.

Mackintosh's gained the chocolate expertise behind Quality Street by buying which Norwich firm in 1932?

Caley's had been losing money for its owner Unilever, and the deal was struck over a hotel lunch in London. Until then Mackintosh's had relied chiefly on toffee.

What colour wrapper covers the Toffee Finger, the chocolate-covered toffee stick in a Quality Street tin?

Gold wrapping makes the Toffee Finger look like a tiny ingot, which is how its maker describes it. It is one of the toffee sweets the brand's creator wanted in every tin.