conducted a Zoom interview with the TikTok music sensation<\/a> 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\u2019s lolly wrapper.<\/p>\nAnd then she stopped chewing. \u201cOooh,\u201d she said. \u201cI do need my wisdom teeth out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not even using my teeth,\u201d said Beth. (A bag of Mackintosh\u2019s costs $2.75 on special. A replacement filling costs upwards of $190. Beth had done the Mackintosh math).<\/p>\n
My office poll had produced a smorgasbord of opinion. Coconut was, variously, \u201cbrave and liberating\u201d and \u201clike eating a lolly dropped in sand\u201d. We laughed at the colleague who recently discovered coconut was \u201cdesiccated\u201d and not, as she had previously believed, \u201cdevastated\u201d, but this was just a distraction. What flavour is harrogate and why is it the worst?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tastes like a sour egg and cream.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI got lemon at one point. Beyond that, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNostalgia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrogate is, to misquote Winston Churchill\u2019s 1939 radio speech, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigmatically-coloured wrapper. (If it\u2019s been some time between Mackintosh\u2019s, prepare yourself \u2013 harrogate\u2019s once chirpy yellow hues are now a dull, mustardy brown).<\/p>\n
Weirdly, I was not the only person wondering. <\/p>\n
The night before I was due to file this Canvas magazine column, the Dull Men\u2019s 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 \u201cwhat\u2019s a Harrogate?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mr]()
Mr Fantasy is a TikTok music sensation who hails from Harrogate, England. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
It was 2am and the post had garnered 240 responses. I started scrolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarrogate 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat makes so much sense,\u201d came the reply. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a Nana flavour and in New Zealand only people over 80 drink normal tea* as a generalisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The internet will, of course, tell you that \u201charrogate\u201d 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. <\/p>\n
But what would RJ\u2019s, the confectionery company that manufactures New Zealand\u2019s Mackintosh\u2019s Toffee De Luxe lollies tell me?<\/p>\n
To misquote Madonna, life is a mystery and if you\u2019d rather keep guessing, it is time to stop reading. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we truly appreciate your interest, we\u2019d prefer not to take part in an interview on this topic,\u201d said a customer services representative for RJ\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor your reference, the harrogate flavour is described as \u2018a toffee flavour with notes of butterscotch, barley sugar, and a hint of lemon\u2019. We hope this information is helpful for your piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
*What is normal tea? Investigation pending.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s flavour is coconut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I asked my family group chat for advice. \u201cSoap,\u201d replied my little sister. \u201cWorst flavour in the bag.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[308,38864,138,3595,8650,40840,27747,9067,4748,13635,13840,19133,2882,56770,39608,56773,13617,111,139,69,384,5970,56772,8229,56771,8238,2201,6923,56775,56774],"class_list":["post-71691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-actually","tag-answers","tag-business","tag-by","tag-explained","tag-flavour","tag-harrogate","tag-hate","tag-hiding","tag-knight","tag-like","tag-looking","tag-love","tag-mackintoshs","tag-manufacturer","tag-mustard","tag-name","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-really","tag-tastes","tag-they","tag-toffee","tag-under","tag-went","tag-what","tag-wrapper","tag-yellowtinged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}