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00:00The jellybabies.
00:05Voila!
00:09Now, there's a process eating a jellybaby.
00:13Some people start with the feet and some with the heads.
00:16For me, I prefer the heads.
00:20For some reason, it makes them taste better.
00:22I don't know why, but that's the way we just do it.
00:25Excellent.
00:27Alan Palmer is no stranger to the world of sweets.
00:33He helped to make millions for Treebore Bassett
00:36and has a unique appreciation for the appeal of these sugary treats.
00:43I can't even tell you how many sweets there used to be,
00:46and I couldn't even try to claim that I've tried most of them,
00:49but, I mean, there were hundreds, if not thousands,
00:51of different types of sweets.
00:53There was a lot of competition on the shelf.
00:55But the process of getting them to this stage
00:58is serious business and big business.
01:06For almost 200 years, the UK sweet business has been a profit gold mine,
01:12steeped in wondrous and creative treats.
01:14This is what sweet shops were all about.
01:18It's just pure joy.
01:20This business was born from endless innovation in sugar
01:23and grew a market of delicious variety.
01:26From gobstoppers to blackjacks to glacier mints,
01:29British sweets have come in an almost infinite array of shapes and sizes.
01:34But these Willy Wonka dreams soon turned into big money reality
01:39as growing titans battled for profits.
01:43On the face of it, selling sweets is a friendly, cosy business.
01:49But in practice, it's a war.
01:52Well, there was nothing to compare, really, was there,
01:55with roundtree fruit pastels or fruit gums?
01:58High streets throughout the country were the battlegrounds
02:00in a raging sweeties civil war.
02:03The independent news agent was our lifeblood.
02:06But a surprise entry from Germany changed everything.
02:10Arabo blindsided us.
02:12We hate Arabo.
02:14We don't like them.
02:16Leaving the former British champions fighting to survive.
02:20This is not a market where the meek are allowed to prosper.
02:25This is the story of a battle for our sweet tooths.
02:29Sugar, we love it.
02:39It's not just an ingredient.
02:41Its addictive charms have fuelled an entire industry
02:44designed to give us one thing, pleasure.
02:48There were small shops in pretty much every village
02:51and the kids would rush to the shops
02:54to buy some candy after their school day.
02:57And there were hundreds, if not thousands,
03:00of different types of sweets.
03:03Sweets have been booming since the Victorian age,
03:06spurred on by one of the 20th century's darkest events.
03:10The Second World War came along and had a massive impact
03:13on everybody in this country.
03:15Sugar was one of the ration products
03:17and so there was hardly any confectionery available
03:19during the war years and, in fact, right through
03:21when rationing was lifted in the mid-'50s.
03:24And then, of course, suddenly, you know, sugar was cheap again.
03:26And available and everybody wanted to buy candy and indulge.
03:32Desperate to get the sugar fix we'd missed in years of rationing,
03:37we went sweetie mad.
03:39And the market obliged.
03:41Almost anything you could dream up seemed to exist
03:43in a golden age of sugary success.
03:46Do you chew a sweet, suck it or crunch it, madam?
03:49Crunch it.
03:50Well, I suck it to start with and end up by crunching it.
03:53If it's a boil sweet, I suck it and then chew it and swallow it.
03:57Right?
03:58What about if it's a toffee then?
04:00Oh, that's got to be chewed, of course.
04:02Whether it was bonbons, fruit salads, candy lipsticks or love hearts,
04:08British sweets were iconic.
04:10You could look at the counter and it was filled with everything
04:13from jelly snakes to cola bottles.
04:17And for your 10p that you'd go in and you could say,
04:20I want one of those and two of those and put them into paper bags.
04:23And you came out feeling you had lots.
04:26The first thing you notice is the colours and the contrast.
04:30Soft, hard, bright colours, multi colours.
04:35So everyone is different.
04:37It's just the sheer variety and beauty of sweets, I think.
04:42They've got to feel irresistible, they've got to feel light-hearted
04:45and they've got to feel like fun.
04:49Out of the free-flowing post-war sugar market,
04:52rose two companies that had consistently created very different products.
04:57Bassets from Sheffield and from York, Roundtrees.
05:03Capitalising on the sugar boom,
05:05their sweets were specially selected and packaged
05:07to be instantly recognisable product brands.
05:10Sweets they hoped would make them number one in Britain's households.
05:17One of our oldest branded sweet products is the fruit pastel.
05:21They're a special product because they've got a very strong real fruit flavour.
05:28And that recipe and method of making them has been carefully guarded over nearly 150 years now.
05:34Sweetness of the sugar, sharpness of the fruit.
05:39Quite firm, certainly not soft, really makes you want to chew it as you start on it.
05:45What was your favourite flavour?
05:47Blackcurrant.
05:49Unfortunately, the first one was the green one.
05:52I still like them, but not as much.
05:55Today we've come to the Roundtree Macintosh factory in York
06:00and we're going inside to see. Would you like to come with me?
06:07Roundtree Macintosh has been a giant of British confectionery for 150 years.
06:13The confectionery operations in the UK were started by Henry Isaac Roundtree when Henry Isaac bought a cocoa business.
06:20But in the 1870s trouble was brewing.
06:24Roundtree's cocoa business was struggling to turn a profit and he rapidly needed a sweet but cheap treat to offer his customers.
06:32He found what he was looking for across the English Channel.
06:37Henry Isaac Roundtree went and found a chap called Claude Gaget who worked in France who made pastilles.
06:43Roundtree persuaded the French sweet maker to secretly develop a fruity gummy pastille to suit British tastes.
06:51That's where Roundtree's fruit pastilles came from.
06:54They both saved the business and they're now probably one of the longest serving brands in the whole confectionery industry.
07:01Roundtree's genius was keeping the process of making his fruit pastilles a closely guarded secret.
07:08One that even those in the know still can't fully share.
07:13The old Roundtree company used to have a rule that all products had to have one difficult stage in them.
07:22So nobody else could come in with a knock off copy.
07:25You don't want somebody down the road making cheaper pastilles and taking your market.
07:31Dr Bill Edwards spent ten years creating gummies, lozenges and boiled sweets for Roundtree's.
07:37All sugar confectionery has sugar in it and it has glucose syrup.
07:41He's agreed to show us the basic method for making fruit pastilles.
07:47At this point we're just dissolving the sugar.
07:50In a factory you would be using a steam heated pan.
07:54The advantage of steam heat is it's very controllable.
07:57In a fruit pastel the secret is a solution of gum acacia.
08:02It comes from a tree from a desert in places like the Sudan.
08:07One of its properties is you can make strong syrups out of it and that's really why it goes into sweets.
08:12It also protects the flavour of the sweet and of course it alters the texture.
08:19There are some elements that still remain top secret.
08:23There are only certain things I can talk about.
08:25The confectionery industry is very, very secretive.
08:29I mean more secrets have escaped from the places where they make nuclear weapons
08:33than they've ever escaped from a major confectionery factory.
08:38At this point I'm going to add some orange oil.
08:42With citrus fruits you have the oil which is in the skin and that has a lot of the fruit flavour.
08:48Black currants normally work quite well.
08:51If you try and make a banana flavour it tends to be a bit iffy.
08:55To give them their famous firm and chewy texture,
08:58Roundtree's pastilles have to be air dried for seven days.
09:03You have a new taste sensation.
09:11It's actually quite nice.
09:15Yeah.
09:16Roundtree's competitors never got close to copying the secret recipe.
09:23And fruit pastilles were a huge hit with the British public.
09:31I must say I've always thought these things are delicious and I can't say there's anything wrong with them today.
09:36I'm going to have another one.
09:37Credit where credit's due, fantastic product.
09:44They are just the ultimate reference point for a relatively hard gum.
09:51While Roundtree's had perfected the pastille, other iconic sweets had been created, sometimes purely by chance.
09:58George Bassett was one of the first people to get into sweet manufacturing and inevitably they had created over the years hundreds of different products.
10:11George Bassett's most iconic product was created thanks to one clumsy mistake in 1899.
10:20It's called licorice.
10:21I wonder if you can guess what they're going to make.
10:24The only Bassett salesman of the day apparently knocked over a tray of sweets when he was taking them to a customer and the customer thought that's a fantastic idea.
10:33Let's sell them as a mixture.
10:34All sorts were popular, but they were licorice based and with fruit pastilles riding high, Bassett's decided to create a fruity gummy sweet of their own to take on Roundtree's.
10:49We strived for texture.
10:51Wine gums are supposed to be chewy and not too soft.
10:55And they've got to have that sort of fruity flavour to them.
10:57One of the great things about wine gums is that lovely smell, which I think is the glazing wax, carnauba I think it's called, which stops them sticking together.
11:10You can really feel it when you pick the wine gum up and it just slightly sticks to your finger and has that very, very specific smell to it.
11:22Roundtree's sort of think that they do the best fruity flavours. What do you think about that?
11:27Tribal Bassett think they do the best fruity flavours, so I suppose it's a matter of opinion.
11:34Everybody loves wine gums and pretty much everybody loves jelly babies as well.
11:39They were eaten by pretty much all age groups.
11:44Bassett's wine gums were a hit and soon overtook market leader fruit pastilles to become top dog.
11:51But their rivalry through the first half of the 20th century was a very gentle affair.
11:59Both companies felt there was more than enough profit to go round.
12:03Our competitors were really very good and they kept us on our toes.
12:06But it's a good industry, by and large, it was quite gentlemanly.
12:12But this green and pleasant Sweetieland was about to be torn apart.
12:17As a major corporation moved in, launching the opening shot in what would become a race for dominance, Mars.
12:26Sweets are quite a ruthless business.
12:29And everybody was trying to fight the same battle as Mars, but not with the same quality of ammunition really.
12:34Mars Limited have built their business on what people enjoy eating.
12:45And we continue to search for new and subtle flavours to appeal to the public palate.
12:49Mars had been a thorn in the side of British chocolate companies since the 1930s.
12:57Then in the 60s, they saw an opportunity to make a killing in sweets.
13:02Sugar, in general, the ingredients are a bit cheaper than they are to make chocolate.
13:07And therefore, there's more opportunity to make good margins, good profits on sugar products.
13:13They just needed the right product to tempt us.
13:17And so they turned to a unique, soft American confectionery.
13:21Sugar up till then had been largely about solid boiled sugar products.
13:25And Mars had this new, sort of cloudy and opaque, soft and chewy recipe, very unlike anything else in the market.
13:32Mars were experimenting with taffy.
13:35It's a bit like toffee, but less likely to lose you a tooth.
13:39They cooked up big vats of glucose, sugar and palm oil, allowing it to lightly set before adding juicy fruit flavours and citric acid for a mouth-watering hit.
13:51We had these really zingy strawberry, lemon, lime flavours, which at the time I think seemed much more modern to people.
13:59Next, they pulled out the mixture on machines, aerating it to create a smooth, chewy texture.
14:06It was very different, and it was a lot easier to eat.
14:10It produced this sort of mouth-watering effect, and that was completely new news in that market.
14:14Launched to the sound of an unforgettable jingle, the fruit taffy would come to be called opal fruit, and it would refresh a stale British market.
14:22Opal fruits, they're so fruity, they make your mouth-water.
14:28Opal fruits, made to make your mouth-water.
14:33The opal fruits tagline was describing the one thing that made opal fruits really different.
14:38At a high citric acid content, that by definition makes your mouth-water.
14:41Mmm.
14:42Which gives you the sense of refreshment.
14:45And opal fruits did exactly what it said on the tin.
14:48But you can see they're made to make your mouth-water, because you can't talk once you reach them.
14:52Because it's like your mouth is filling up with fruit chips really, which is what makes them so lovely.
14:58Throughout the 1960s, opal fruits went head-to-head with the likes of Bassets and Roundtrees munching away at their profits.
15:07Mars were the new kids on the block, and the zingy flavours were new to the marketplace.
15:12But arguably, Roundtrees products were technically somewhat more difficult to make.
15:18We didn't see opal fruits competing directly.
15:23But the battle lines had been drawn.
15:26This was open warfare, and the fight soon spilled out of the factories and onto the high streets.
15:31Mars' approach, I think, was different partly because of the style of the products that were made.
15:37But also, we sold them in a very different way.
15:41For outdated British brands, things were about to get worse.
15:46In the 1980s, the way customers started buying sweets also changed.
15:51The news agent became the dominant sweetie retailer, promoting impulse buying that was perfect for sweets, as customers added little delicious extras to their bags as they went to pay.
16:04The real heart of the business was in those little confection shops, which sold newspapers and cigarettes and stuff, of course, at the time.
16:09So the product needed to be where it was tempting for people to buy, where it was no more than a slight stretch to pick it off the shelf.
16:17In this market, Mars were the first to realise that if you wanted a buyer's attention, where you put your product really mattered.
16:25Mars really concentrated on having a small number of products that sold really fast.
16:29So if we put our big sellers in the best display spaces, we would get the best return for our business.
16:35Dishing out financial incentives, Mars convinced shopkeepers to put their leading products together in what they called the hotspot.
16:44The hallowed space nearest to the till.
16:47They called their strategy block merchandising.
16:52At the time, it was absolutely a core part of how we got the edge in the market.
16:55Mars competitors were literally edged out of the prime shelf space and saw sales plummet.
17:02On the face of it, selling sweets is a sort of a friendly, cosy business.
17:09But in practice, it was a war.
17:13And it was primarily a war for space.
17:17Ed Christie joined Roundtree's in the 1980s as a sales rep and was told to begin the fight back against Mars.
17:24So there's a lot of research that's gone into what are the best positions in any confectionery display.
17:30The hotspot is here.
17:32It's obviously near the till.
17:34Clearly, the coldest spot is this top right-hand corner.
17:39And the difference in sales between a product sold in this hotspot and in the cold spot would be in the order of one and a half to two times.
17:48The natural best sellers should go in the hotspot, but Mars would offer the retailer £50, or whatever the incentive was, to put all their products in a block.
17:59So they would take advantage of the best positions, regardless of how well they naturally sold.
18:04Roundtree's knew they needed a bigger strategy to respond to this new threat or risk losing their position in the market.
18:12They had very good merchandising operations. In truth, we could see they were getting ahead of us.
18:17We needed a new initiative that would actually get us better positions in the marketplace.
18:23Roundtree's thought they'd found their answer with some cunning high-tech market analysis.
18:29They spent tens of thousands developing it, and if it worked, it would seriously sour the pitch for Mars.
18:35What we wanted was something that was different, and something that would benefit the retailer, so that they would actually want to break up the block.
18:43And that's how Merchandising by Merit started to develop.
18:50Hello. It's a well-known fact that in Great Britain, more confectionery is consumed per head than in almost any other country in the world.
18:58My goodness, it all looks terribly familiar, but it looks slightly dated, but I think that shows how techniques have changed.
19:07The company even produced a no-expense-spared video to rubbish Mars' selling tactic and promote a radically different way of looking at things.
19:16Roundtree Macintosh weren't convinced that manufacturer block merchandising was the best way to market confectionery.
19:21They believe that this system undermines the trade as a whole, and you, the retailer.
19:28Merchandising by Merit was the first time we took videos to the retailer to show them how it could be done, and how he could improve his profits, and we just happened to do better as well.
19:40Roundtree's wanted to show shopkeepers that breaking up Mars' block and putting all the top-selling brands in the hotspots would make everyone sweeter profits.
19:51It's actually surprisingly slick, considering it's so old. I also remember the first time I saw this was in the Merchandising by Merit suite in York,
20:02and they projected on the biggest telly I'd ever seen in my whole life. That was the essence of the Merchandising by Merit logic.
20:09The Merit being a good-selling product should go in a good position, regardless of who actually happens to make it.
20:15It's a really clear, quite clever, logical sales pitch.
20:22Well, there you have it.
20:24When Roundtree's bought in Merchandising by Merit, they were very much trying to mimic what Mars had been doing,
20:29because in truth it was working for Mars, but it was very, very successful for them.
20:34If I look at stores today, so this is 30 years on from when these shelf wars were playing out,
20:40I think what Roundtree's has successfully done is disrupted the block merchandising approach.
20:45It's very rare when you see all the Mars products and all the Roundtree's products merchandise in blocks.
20:51So, I'm going to buy a packet of fruit pestles today, seeing as they're in the hot spot.
20:56Thank you very much.
20:57Cheers. Bye.
20:59Roundtree's had foiled Mars' attempt to dominate the sweetie shelves,
21:03and had maintained their spot at the top of the leaderboard of Britain's most loved sweets.
21:09They celebrated with a quirky fun campaign, highlighting the irresistible fruitiness of the product.
21:14I bet you can't put a fruit pestle in your mouth without chewing it.
21:17Got a chew, got a chew, got a chew, the only thing you can do
21:21Were the Roundtree's fruit pestles chew.
21:24But a new shadow would soon linger over the sweet maker's world, and it was huge.
21:30Bassett Foods, who make licorice all sorts, have welcomed the £91 million takeover bid from Cadbury Schweppes.
21:37If the offer is accepted, it will give Cadbury the largest share in the chocolate and sweets market in this country.
21:42In 1989, Cadbury, the UK's biggest chocolate maker, decided it wanted in on sweets, and it went big.
21:52Within two years, it had snapped up Trebor, Maynard's and Bassett's to create the ultimate sugar titan.
21:58The creation of Trebor Bassett was a game changer for the sugar confectionery industry.
22:04Almost overnight, Cadbury had added more than six major brands to its empire, with a mammoth range of sweeties, from jelly babies to wine gums and even extra strong mints.
22:16And they had big plans to take on the market.
22:19So we focused on four or five different products under each of those brands. We called them pillar brands.
22:26Alan Palmer was given the job of promoting the sweet juggernaut.
22:30The expectations were very high.
22:34And so, really all of the time, we were focusing on growing our business and profitability.
22:39To promote this huge range of different brands, Alan knew exactly who to turn to. Marketing expert Jaspal Chadda.
22:48If you want to see the UK battleground for sweets, it's here.
22:54As the battleground expanded with major retailers, his approach to boosting the company's profits would revolutionise the industry and transform the way we eat sweets.
23:03I remember Alan Palmer saying to me, time waits for no man or woman. You have to get this done.
23:17It's the early 1990s and Jaspal Chadda has embarked on a mission to boost sales for new mega-confectioner Trebor Bassett.
23:26To tempt customers to spend big on treats, Jaspal developed an unprecedented range of bagged sweets and in the process created a new snacking culture.
23:37No one took this as a project, as what I call a transformational event in packaging.
23:46There's huge trends towards people travelling more, people watching movies more. There's lots more those kind of occasions.
23:54What we were trying to do was create moments of joy.
24:01So every bag had its own sensation and so you created effectively this family occasion where you're munching through different sweets.
24:12Jaspal designed a range of bags for 60 of the new company's most popular sweets.
24:17Right. So this is the bag revolution on a page. This one page captures all the tears and perspiration of launching 60-odd products in eight months.
24:35The retail trade moved into convenience stores, to garages, to supermarkets and packaging for the confectionery industry had to follow that convenience requirement.
24:47Ultimately my aim was to create this kind of moorishness. You can't stop because you need another one.
24:53Because you need another one. Even in the packaging, I was loath to have resealable packaging.
25:01Because I wanted them to eat the whole pack. Don't save it for next time. Eat it now.
25:07In the summer of 1991, Trebor Bassett's bagged sweets flooded onto the market, from supermarkets to corner shops to petrol stations.
25:18These shareable sensations were backed by countless humorous ad campaigns.
25:23Wine gums got the pure bonkers treatment.
25:26Maynard's original wine gums are filled with delicious juicy flavour just waiting to be set loose.
25:31All you've got to do is chill.
25:35So we created advertising. It's all about joyful, fun, play value. The childhood in you.
25:42Hootsman, there's juice. Loose, commit this house.
25:47The ads for all sorts played on the idea of customers being unable to resist their seductive sweet charms.
25:53We've gone too far this time.
25:55Want too many and you might turn dirty.
25:57Capturing that emotion in brilliant advertising will get you success, no question.
26:04All your favourite Bassett sweets in one bag.
26:08But watch out for the all sorts.
26:10The new bags flew off the shelves, giving Cadbury's Trebor Bassett a 25% share of the market.
26:16Roundtrees were stunned by this new arrival, whose ads captured carefree childhood joy.
26:22As the market moved that way, it was not really good for Roundtrees at the time.
26:24We didn't have products that were ideal to move into bags.
26:28Roundtrees, by far, were our biggest competitor.
26:31But what they didn't have was the kind of diversity of products we had.
26:36When we first put fruit pastels into bags, the tests that we did showed that we were getting a lot of bits of pastels, the sugar, rubbing off each other and falling into the bottom of the bag.
26:47So you ended up with slightly bald fruit pastels, which is not ideal in the product that we wanted to get to the consumer.
26:54Roundtrees' response was immediate.
26:57But I think they could never compete.
27:00So, no, it was good to see Roundtrees suffer for once.
27:04Can I say that?
27:09Cadbury were delighted. Between Trebor Bassett and Maynard, they were selling more sweets than ever.
27:15The half-pound bag range grew to something like 20% of our total business from virtually nothing in the space of three years.
27:25But it wasn't long before the surging popularity of Britain's bagged sweets was noticed by a sweetie giant.
27:31As the 90s rolled on, this master of confection from Germany made a bold play for British customers.
27:41It was difficult to know whether it was going to stay or whether it would have gone.
27:45As it turned out, it's become a massive brand.
27:52I'm going to get a colour bottle, haven't I?
27:56At Haribo, we focus really heavily on a really great tasting product with a really great texture.
28:02But more than that, Haribo's about the childlike happiness and the fun and the smile that we can put on people's faces.
28:07And I think that was the gap that we saw in the market that we could bring to consumers in the UK.
28:16Haribo had in fact taken its first steps into the UK market during the 70s with an investment in a sweet maker called Dunhills.
28:23This traditional producer, known for the licorice pontefract cake, eventually gave Haribo a base from which to dazzle British taste buds with their gummy sweets.
28:36Haribo, from its conception over a hundred years ago, was making Haribo gold bears.
28:41So it had a long established recipe and a history of making great quality fruit gums,
28:46which when Haribo bought into the UK, brought those products across for the UK consumer to try.
28:53Haribo took full ownership of Dunhills in 1994 and started producing their famous melt-in-the-mouth gummies on site.
29:01These squidgy delights were softer than anything else the market could offer.
29:06And they were crafted using unique recipes to create colourful fruity gums and meringue-like foam.
29:14They could even combine the textures to make creative gummy mashups.
29:18And they were as cheap as penny sweets from the pick-and-mix.
29:23When Haribo looked at the UK market, everyone was fixated by Roundtree's, Cadbury's and then Mars.
29:31So effectively it was a three-horse race.
29:34And I think the complacency set in.
29:36Then, in 1995, Haribo changed the face of sweets with a blend of gummies tailored to the British market.
29:46StarMix came about because we had a really successful product range in what we call Countline or, you know, 1P, 2P, 5P sweets.
29:58And we had an idea of how we could take the most popular of those sweets and mix them in a bag format that we could then sell through the supermarkets.
30:08And that's why StarMix is called StarMix. It's because it's the mix of the star products, the best sellers.
30:14So it's our gold bear, our dummies, our fried eggs, our rings, our heartthrobs and our cola bottles.
30:19Combining the best of their gummy penny sweets in a popular bag, Haribo had created a phenomenon.
30:28Backed by an equally inventive ad campaign that played to pure childish fun,
30:33it sent shockwaves through the formerly cosy British market.
30:37No one was prepared.
30:41I remember Haribo coming onto the market very well.
30:43In those days I was working in our European operations and we'd seen them working in Germany and France.
30:49So we were quite bothered about them.
30:53Let's open this, shall we?
30:58They are brilliant at textures.
31:01Just the right amount of chew.
31:03You don't want to be forever fighting and you run out of stamina.
31:08Right?
31:10You don't want to be, oh my God, that was a tough eat.
31:13You want to make it quick and juicy.
31:17Haribo, I've completely nailed it.
31:25I just don't think it's particularly good if I'm absolutely honest with you.
31:29It lacks sophistication in its taste.
31:32It's quite bland.
31:34And the chewiness, which can be seen as a virtue, is not particularly to my taste.
31:41I don't think I'd have launched this.
31:45The gummy titan quickly built on the success of Starmix, expanding the range with more fun treats.
31:52Before long, they were dominating the UK competition.
31:54Firms like Roundtree's needed to find a way to rise to the challenge.
31:59And fast.
32:01This is my kitchen equivalent of the sweet shop.
32:06So I have my sweets in here.
32:11Lot of Roundtree products in there.
32:14So, Black Crump Hassel, that's my favourite.
32:16Sue Hawksworth spent five years heading up Roundtree's sugar brands and was their secret weapon in their bid to take on Haribo.
32:26Absolutely gorgeous.
32:30Haribo blindsided us in a way.
32:33They effectively took the joy and pleasure of pick and mix and put it all together in one bag.
32:40So what could we do to counter that?
32:43Sue led a team of sweet moffins that had one mission.
32:47To uncover the secret of Haribo's gummy sensations and create a sugary super sweet to fight back.
32:54With Roundtree's, the whole benefit and premise of that brand was the real fruity flavours that we delivered.
33:01And we delivered through using real fruit juice.
33:05So at first, we thought, well, on a straight eat-for-eat basis, our products stood the test.
33:13So we created Roundtree's Fruit Pastel Body Parts.
33:17After months of painstaking work, Roundtree's unleashed their major innovation with a unique playful advert.
33:24But while these shapely fruit pastels were popular, they weren't up to taking on the might of Haribo.
33:29If I'm honest, the actual delivery of the shapes themselves weren't anything like the quality that you could get with Haribo.
33:37And that was because a pastille didn't lend itself to being moulded and formed that way.
33:43Body parts led Roundtree's to a key realisation.
33:47We had to look beyond pastels.
33:51We had to look at the soft gummy or even the foam marketplace in order to create that distinct shape.
33:57Before they could perfect their own gummy, Roundtree's had to reconsider the basics of how and even where their sweets were made.
34:05A soft gummy is made in a different way to a fruit pastel.
34:10Typically, those products have very rapid mould changes because they're making sweets in different shapes.
34:17Roundtree's didn't have that expertise in the UK, but one of their factories in Eastern Europe did.
34:22If you have got a manufacturing plant that can change moulds, change the kind of sweets that are going down, then the world's your oyster.
34:32I mean, you can make any shape and those shapes could be as random as you wanted them to be.
34:39Roundtree's thought they were finally onto something with a sweet that came in a variety of textures, flavours and over 100 different shapes.
34:49They christened it randoms.
34:50We managed to tap into that excitement of creating pick and mix.
34:56You didn't know what kind of shape was going to come out or texture.
35:00But it had those wonderful fruity Roundtree's flavours and they were in sharp contrast to the rather non-distinct flavours that were in a Haribo bag.
35:11I've got a packet of Roundtree's randoms here.
35:22Yeah, flavour's good.
35:24I think the flavour came out of them better than the fruit pastel actually, but that's an opinion.
35:30The fruit pastel is less elastic and the texture tends to break when you chew it in a different way.
35:37This is quite a different mouthfeel. It's rubbery. It breaks up more easily in the mouth.
35:47And when you squeeze it, it comes back again.
35:51And that's a typical gelatin product. It gives you an elastic sweet.
35:56Haribo have their own recipes. Their jelly sweets have got more gelatin in there, more rubbery.
36:02But that's the way they like them.
36:04Roundtree's blasted their new hope onto the market with a decidedly random campaign.
36:12It saw those who ate the sweets speaking in randoms.
36:18What the crocodile hat? What's that?
36:22Every time their fruity acorn gets that alarm clock, I want you to snowflake their teapot.
36:26Snowflake their teapot.
36:27Billions of random combinations in every bag.
36:30The random side out were new Roundtree's randoms.
36:33Having managed to come up with a distinctive fruity gummy of their own, could Roundtree's match Haribo's success?
36:40I don't think other products are Haribo-esque.
36:43I'm not sure if their product development is influenced by us or not.
36:47They certainly launched some mixed products and they launched some softer textured products into the market,
36:53which were quite different to other products that they'd launched before.
36:57But Roundtree's is a different brand to Haribo. It's offering a slightly different proposition.
37:00I think Haribo did take notice of what we'd done with Roundtree's randoms.
37:06It's interesting to note now that on their star mix they declare that they now contain real fruit juices in their sweets,
37:13which were, I think, their Achilles heel versus something like Roundtree's.
37:18Roundtree's had found their feet once again,
37:22but Haribo was about to unleash one of the biggest weapons in their arsenal.
37:26By the late noughties, Roundtree's had begun the fight back against Haribo's market domination.
37:41But the star mix creators would manage to stay on top using a very different type of advert.
37:48Haribo is all about kids and grown-ups loving our products. That's our slogan.
37:52And we were looking for a new way to convey that message.
37:59I can't be serious now.
38:02Alison Satterthwaite has been part of the team responsible for Haribo's advertising for 10 years.
38:08We wanted to find a new and distinct way we could really communicate the childlike happiness that the brand offers.
38:14And what better way to do that than through the voices of kids.
38:19I just want to talk about this Haribo star mix sweeties.
38:23I like the hearts.
38:25As soon as we had the idea of using kids' voices, we could have gone down a process which was write a script, imagine you're a child, what would a child say?
38:34But what I think people don't know or they don't recognise is that the dialogue of our adverts is completely based on unscripted conversation of kids.
38:45We got children round a table, opened up a bag of star mix and asked them what their favourite sweet was and why.
38:51And that's where the magic happens.
38:54Look, he made a big, big sandwich.
38:58That's really what Haribo's about.
39:02Hey guys, who loves Haribo Goldbeard?
39:06It was such a hit that kids' voices spread across the world.
39:10It's been phenomenally successful for us.
39:12The campaign has now reached as far afield as the United States and most recently into Japan.
39:17Look! Haribo Goldbeard!
39:21Oh, there's another one!
39:23You had to be impressed by what they did.
39:26They managed to capture both kids and grown-ups and tap into that nostalgic feel.
39:33They brought out the kid in every adult and that's been the premise of their advertising now for decades and they did very well with it.
39:41With the award-winning global success of their advertising and unstoppable gummies, Haribo today turns over more than £180 million a year in the UK alone and has five of the top ten selling sweets in the country.
39:57Did I think Haribo would become as big as they've become?
40:01No, I don't think I did.
40:03Their operations were done well and there was some arrogance.
40:07When we looked at competitors coming in that we didn't think were quite as good, I think Haribo probably proved us that we shouldn't have been quite self-confident.
40:14We're much more open to new sensations. So, yes, disruptors are here to say and they're going to keep coming.
40:26At this factory up in Leicester, a new brand is taking a very different approach to sweet making.
40:33As young consumers care more and more about what goes into food, Candy Kittens burst onto the market in 2012 with a key difference, making sweets with a social conscience.
40:45The company was created by TV personality Jamie Lang and designer Ed Williams.
40:50When we first started, the whole category was archaic. You know, nothing had changed. We were still eating like cola bottles and gummy bears and there was just nothing new and exciting.
41:01There was this huge gap in the confectionary shelf for a brand that was really speaking to consumers of our age.
41:09People that were young, interested in the products that they were eating and what went into those products and it just felt like it was prime time for someone to come along and challenge that.
41:16For more than a hundred years, gelatin, an animal by-product from pork or beef, had been used to give gummy sweets their distinctive texture.
41:27Aware of their target consumers' ethics, Candy Kittens decided to remove it.
41:31There's definitely a move towards vegan sweets. I remember when I was looking after the brands in the 1990s, that was something that continuously came up.
41:42But removing gelatin out of some sweets can fundamentally change the texture.
41:48So it's not an easy ask and for people that is a barrier.
41:52When we first started, people thought we were crazy. We would often get people at big, established confectionery companies telling us that natural ingredients are not important, that vegan is just a fad.
42:04Candy Kittens spent 18 months formulating the perfect recipe that could still feel squidgy and chewy in the mouth.
42:11We wanted to make them gluten free because we thought that would make a better sweet. But also we wanted to have real fruit juice in it, in terms of blueberry juice or watermelon juice.
42:21So we wanted to make the best sweet possible. It was always about changing that 1%. How can we get 1% better? 1% better? 1% better? 1% better?
42:29In the world of sweets, they were playing a risky game.
42:32Launching new products in the UK is incredibly difficult. The vast majority fail within the first 3 years. And if we look back at products that were launched back in the late 90s or even in the 2010s, very few of those products you'll find on the shelves today. So it's an incredibly hard thing to get right.
42:50We definitely had all of our eggs in one basket. And I think if it hadn't have worked, then perhaps we would have had to get ourselves down the job centre and start again.
42:58With their innovative ethical approach, Candy Kittens had lofty ambitions to take on the giants from the very start.
43:07So I think one thing that Haribo do quite well is the variety of sweets in the bag. So all the different shapes are something that kind of keeps you interested and makes you rummage through.
43:16But actually, because the sweets have all been mixed together, you then don't get any individual flavours. So you struggle to tell me that that's a strawberry or that's a cola. They all just taste sweet.
43:25And one of the things we've been passionate about at Candy Kittens since day one is making single flavour bags. Then you really know if you're eating a strawberry or a cherry.
43:34We made premium gourmet candy. That wasn't even a word until we came into the market. We invented that. We made candy premium.
43:42But charging one of the highest prices in the industry, three pounds a bag, do their own flavours cut it?
43:50It's very different to what we do. Quite a firm texture. But it certainly delivers on the very cherry branding.
44:00Do you think it's a little too expensive?
44:03I think that's for the consumer to decide. Certainly it is more expensive. It's nearly twice the price of Haribo.
44:09But ultimately consumers will decide where they want to spend their money on.
44:12Gelatin tends to make a product last longer in your mouth. And given that this hasn't got that as an ingredient, they've done very well to give it that longevity of eat.
44:23But sweets are bought for fun and enjoyment. They're cheap and cheerful and that's what they ought to be.
44:32So whilst it might be a nice sweet, twice the price? I don't think so.
44:39However, Candy Kittens business is steadily growing and they believe their influence is too.
44:45We did a slight update onto StarMix last year. We made a slight tweak to the recipe, included more fruit juice.
44:54And we've brought new vegetarian products to market over the last two or three years as we see that popular trend continuing.
45:02I think Haribo now have taken notice of this. To be a leader in sugar and confectionery, I think you have to be different.
45:08But it's more than that now. It's not just about what the product is, it's more about what you represent as a whole.
45:16New companies and brands will continue to disrupt the sweet market and drive innovation.
45:22We have a thirst for new products. I think we are desperate now as a population looking for fresh ideas and hoping those will become tomorrow's branchless fruit pastels.
45:39And the old guard of classic sweets isn't afraid to move with the times either.
45:43They're part of our culture, they're part of our heritage, a brand like fruit pastel. They have stood the test of time.
45:52They have now moved to vegan. The whole market has moved. And at the end of the day, they're a damn good product.
45:59Music
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