I asked my family group chat for advice.
“Soap,” replied my little sister. “Worst flavour in the bag.”
I went to the supermarket and spent $5.50 of my own money on two packets of Mackintosh’s assuming this would return an even spread of the six flavours that defined the long family car trips of my 1980s (egg and cream for Dad, toffee de luxe for Mum, mint and/or coconut for the kids and harrogate and/or malt for absolutely no-one).
My purchase comprised 50 individually wrapped sweets – 16 coconut, 12 mint, eight toffee de luxe, six harrogate, five egg and cream and three malt. (If you need any more proof that the world is neither just nor fair nor equitable, buy a bag of Mackintosh’s).
A passing property writer swooped in on the 6% portion of my stash. Once, she said, she had written to the manufacturer complaining about the miserly distribution of malt Mackintosh’s. She received a voucher and the kind of explanation you might base an entire dystopian novel on:
“Our Mackintosh lollies are sorted by a machine that can only operate and identify weight. Unfortunately, our machine does not have the capacity to see colours or flavours. When the machine has dispersed the premixed flavours into the bag it automatically seals. We do have a declaration on the back of the bag that states ‘we cannot guarantee all variants are in this bag’.”
I feel certain they would sell more Mackintosh’s if they could guarantee zero harrogate variant, but this, it turns out, is a subjective opinion.
The six Mackintosh’s flavours of every long family car trip, circa 1984. Photo / Michael Craig
“Harrogate is where Mr Fantasy is from,” recalled my colleague Jenni, who had recently conducted a Zoom interview with the TikTok music sensation who may or may not have been Kiwi actor KJ Apa wearing a terrible wig and a yellow and brown shirt that may or may not have been influenced by a harrogate-hued Mackintosh’s lolly wrapper.
And then she stopped chewing. “Oooh,” she said. “I do need my wisdom teeth out.”
“I’m not even using my teeth,” said Beth. (A bag of Mackintosh’s costs $2.75 on special. A replacement filling costs upwards of $190. Beth had done the Mackintosh math).
My office poll had produced a smorgasbord of opinion. Coconut was, variously, “brave and liberating” and “like eating a lolly dropped in sand”. We laughed at the colleague who recently discovered coconut was “desiccated” and not, as she had previously believed, “devastated”, but this was just a distraction. What flavour is harrogate and why is it the worst?
“It tastes like a sour egg and cream.”
“I got lemon at one point. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Nostalgia.”
Harrogate is, to misquote Winston Churchill’s 1939 radio speech, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigmatically-coloured wrapper. (If it’s been some time between Mackintosh’s, prepare yourself – harrogate’s once chirpy yellow hues are now a dull, mustardy brown).
Weirdly, I was not the only person wondering.
The night before I was due to file this Canvas magazine column, the Dull Men’s Club waded into my Facebook feed. A member had produced a bar chart depicting Mackintosh lollies on a scale of yum (harrogate least/egg and cream most) but, more pertinently, had asked “what’s a Harrogate?”
Mr Fantasy is a TikTok music sensation who hails from Harrogate, England. Photo / Supplied
It was 2am and the post had garnered 240 responses. I started scrolling.
“Harrogate is a posh UK town in North Yorkshire … they are known for a tea company and a posh cake company though, so maybe it tastes of tea and cake.”
“That makes so much sense,” came the reply. “It’s kind of a Nana flavour and in New Zealand only people over 80 drink normal tea* as a generalisation.”
The internet will, of course, tell you that “harrogate” was a flavour developed more than a century ago in the North Yorkshire town of the same name, to disguise the sulphuric taste of its water.
But what would RJ’s, the confectionery company that manufactures New Zealand’s Mackintosh’s Toffee De Luxe lollies tell me?
To misquote Madonna, life is a mystery and if you’d rather keep guessing, it is time to stop reading.
“While we truly appreciate your interest, we’d prefer not to take part in an interview on this topic,” said a customer services representative for RJ’s.
“For your reference, the harrogate flavour is described as ‘a toffee flavour with notes of butterscotch, barley sugar, and a hint of lemon’. We hope this information is helpful for your piece.”
*What is normal tea? Investigation pending.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior writer on its lifestyle desk. She holds a Masters in Gastronomy with first class honours and her favourite Mackintosh’s flavour is coconut.