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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

Excellent marketing if so - I already want some.

I love a Tunnock's teacake - but they are pretty dangerous for me. I work maybe 3 mins walk from a Tesco Express and by the time I've left the shop I've usually eaten one, another on the walk, one in the lift then there are only 3 left - and I can share three with my work mates. So I eat the rest...

Delicious.

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Dangerous indeed. They come in boxes of six, which I always treated as a single-serving.

I moved to Finland so I can't get them here, but at least I'm consoled by the availability of Irn-Bru!

They still have Irn Bru in Finland? They stopped making it in Scotland once the sugar tax came into force :(.

Although if I'm honest, I drank far too much of the stuff so it's probably a good thing I can't buy it any more.

They do. Sometimes I see individual cans in K-supermarkets, but otherwise:

https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/327752/Irn-Bru-virvo...

Ingredients: ... sweeteners (aspartame, acesulfame K)

Unfortunately that's the new "not really Irn Bru" recipe :(.

It's still Scotland's leading soft drink and you can buy the original high-sugar recipie:

https://irn-bru.co.uk/products/1901

That's the original recipe, but not the one that was known as Irn Bru immediately before the sugar tax -- it's got no caffeine in it. I've not tried it.

Any changes made before I started drinking it are merely historical baggage, but any changes made after I started drinking it have a fundamental effect on whether I consider it the same product. See also: "New Coke".

(Also, I can taste Aspartame -- so while many people might say that the low sugar variant is sufficiently similar in taste, I really don't enjoy it. Although, as I posted above, this is probably a good thing.)

You can definitely still buy it in Scotland.

You can buy something marketed as Irn Bru, but it's not really Irn Bru. Real Irn Bru does not contain artificial sweeteners.

We're gonna go "No true Scotsman", on irn-bru? That takes some doing!

I get what you're saying, and I kinda believe the best Irn-Bru was the stuff in a glass bottle, delivered to the door, when I was a kid.

But the stuff that's out there, to my mind, is still just fine. It cures hangovers. It tastes of sugar and love, whether there's real sugar, real iron, or real love in it is almost immaterial.

"Made in Scotland, from Girders" :).

Un(?)fortunately I taste Aspartame as being bitter so it's not as sweet for me as it used to be :(. Which is probably a good thing, given how much I used to drink :P.

Single serving indeed, they don't really work for sharing. Similar for the 8 Tunnock's caramel bars...

I haven't tested either, but I would of course give [1] a try for comparison purposes. If you already have, how did they compare?

[1]: https://brunberg.fi/en/tuoteryhma/chocolate/kisses/

They're very similar to look at, but the chocolate is wrong and the consistency of the "foam" part differs too.

Close, but sadly not close enough! (I enjoy both, but the Tunnock's teacakes, and their caramel logs too, are a clear winner for me. Probably due to my childhood memories and associations as much as anything else. Bias!)

Thanks, this kind of information is very hard to find elsewhere and ... I just find snack food interesting. :)

Same for me, nothing comes close!

I moved to Australia and forgot they existed until I found them in the "Foriegn Food" aisle and my house has been stocked with them every day since.

They've been my favourite sweet for as long as I can remember.

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