Quality Street is a popular selection of individual sweet

Candy

Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...

s, usually contained in tins or boxes, manufactured in Halifax

Halifax, West Yorkshire

Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...

, in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 by Nestlé

Nestlé

Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...

.

History

Quality Street was launched in 1936 by Halifax confectioner Mackintosh's

Mackintosh's

Mackintosh's is a confectionery firm that was principally known for Mackintosh's Toffee and for brands such as Quality Street and Rolo.- Origins, Edwardian expansion and War-time contraction :...

, the name being inspired by a play of the same name

Quality Street (play)

Quality Street is a comedy in four acts by J. M. Barrie, written before his more famous work Peter Pan. The story is about two sisters who start a school "for genteel children"....

 by J. M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...

. 'The Major' and 'Miss', two figures inspired by the play's principal characters, appeared on all Quality Street boxes and tins until 2000.

The brand was acquired by Nestlé

Nestlé

Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...

 when they bought Rowntree's

Rowntree's

Rowntree's was a confectionery business based in York, England. It is now a historic brand owned by Nestlé, used to market a range of fruit gums and pastilles formerly owned by Rowntree's. Following a merger with John Mackintosh & Co., the Company became known as Rowntree Mackintosh, was listed on...

 in 1988.

In recent years, individual larger versions of the more popular chocolates have been manufactured and sold separately, as an extension to the brand.

In Western Norway, it is called "Shetlandsgodt" (Shetland Sweets), because it often was brought home by fishermen visiting Shetland. In Iceland it is traditionally known as "Mackintosh."

Contents

The sweets within the box have changed and evolved over the years. As of December 2010, there are 12 flavours of the individually wrapped sweets, all of which are either chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 or toffee

Toffee

Toffee is a confection made by caramelizing sugar or molasses along with butter, and occasionally flour. The mixture is heated until its temperature reaches the hard crack stage of 300 to 310 °F...

 based, as follows:

Current varieties

• Milk Chocolate Hazelnut with caramel (the 'Purple One')
• Chocolate Noisette Pate (the 'Green Triangle')
• Chocolate Toffee Finger (gold wrapped stick)
• Toffee Penny (gold wrapper)
• Vanilla Fudge
  Fudge
  Fudge is a type of Western confectionery which is usually very sweet, and extremely rich. It is made by mixing sugar, butter, and milk and heating it to the soft-ball stage at , and then beating the mixture while it cools so that it acquires a smooth, creamy consistency...
  
   (pink wrapper)
• Strawberry Delight (red circular wrapper)
• Coconut Eclair (blue wrapper)
• Caramel Swirl (yellow frustum
  Frustum
  In geometry, a frustum is the portion of a solid that lies between two parallel planes cutting it....
  
  )
• Milk Choc Block (green wrapper)
• Orange Crunch (octagonal orange wrapper)
• Orange Creme (orange circular wrapper)
• Toffee Deluxe (Brown wrapper)

Discontinued varieties

• Purple One (the original 'Purple One' with Brazil nut, replaced with hazelnut version)
• Chocolate Strawberry
  Strawberry
  Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...
  
   Cream (now replaced with Strawberry Delight)
• Chocolate Toffee Cup (now replaced with Caramel Swirl)
• Hazelnut Cracknell (red wrapper)
• Hazelnut
  Hazelnut
  A hazelnut is the nut of the hazel and is also known as a cob nut or filbert nut according to species. A cob is roughly spherical to oval, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. A filbert is more elongated, being about twice...
  
   Eclair
• Chocolate Nut
  Nut (fruit)
  A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...
  
   Toffee Cream
  Cream
  Cream is a dairy product that is composed of the higher-butterfat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, over time, the lighter fat rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream this process is accelerated by using centrifuges called "separators"...
  
  
• Malt Toffee (replaced with toffee deluxe as a "new" flavour)
• Milk Chocolate Round (now replaced with Milk Choc Block in green wrapper)
• Peanut Cracknell (blue wrapper)
• Coffee Cream (brown wrapper, same size and shape as the strawberry cream)
• Gooseberry Cream (green wrapper light green fondant with a touch of Gooseberry Preserve covered in milk chocolate)
• Apricot Delight (blue wrapper, square chunk, apricot flavoured jelly covered in milk chocolate)
• Toffee Square (metallic pink wrapper, a small square of very hard toffee)
• Chocolate Truffle (brown wrapper, square chunk, a soft truffle filling covered in milk chocolate)
• Montelimar Nougat
• Smarties (ordinary cardboard box of Smarties)

External links

• The Chocolate Review's article on Quality Street