Interesting Facts

Licorice Allsorts are a very popular sweet in the UK.  They are a colourful mixture of liquorice, sugar, coconut, aniseed jelly, fruit flavourings, and gelatine. ( They were first produced in Sheffield, England, by Geo. Bassett & Co Ltd, under the name Bassett's Allsorts, but the idea of mixing up several sweets came about by accident.  According to Basset's own marketing, in 1899 a sales representative for the company, Charlie Thompson, supposedly dropped a tray of samples he was showing a client in Leicester, mixing up the various sweets. After he scrambled to re-arrange them, the client was intrigued by the new creation. All I know is they are delicious, and thankfully there isn't one bit of salted liquorice in them.) 

According to a study in the Journal of Marketing Research the actual taste of inexpensive wine improves, if the label looks expensive. (In one experiment a group tasted the same wine from different bottles, and the more the tasters liked the label, the more they liked the wine. Another survey back in 2012 , found that consumers believed heavier bottles were more expensive and contained higher-quality wine. It seems we really do taste with our eyes, and it means we have a tendency to enjoy wine (as well as other products) more when we think they’re expensive.  Seemingly a carefully crafted label can make us think that something is more expensive than it actually is, so much so that people enjoy identical products such as wine or chocolate more if they think they have a higher price tag. Of course that doesn't explain the Primark effect.)