Fair Go research comes in many different forms, and for this story, different flavours.
Like, egg and cream, Harrogate, mint, coconut and toffee de luxe.
As many of you will have sussed, we're talking about Mackintosh’s toffees, the subject of an email from Marie in Waikanae - which read:
"How many coconut toffees in a bag of Mackintosh's is a fair mix? Half the bag? I don't think so."
Marie's mix certainly didn't sound right, so we got right onto RJ's, the makers of the mix here in Aotearoa.
RJ's says its toffees are sorted by a machine that can only identify weight, and not colour or flavour, and they do pop a warning on the packet saying:
"We cannot guarantee all variants are in this bag” .
We did, of course, have to buy some sample mixtures of our own, and we found a pretty even distribution of flavours.
Marie also told us "I really dislike the coconut ones that leave you with something resembling a small pile of sawdust on your mouth".
Tough call, Marie, especially for all the coconut toffee lovers. Can it really be the worst flavour?
Our quick quiz of lolly lovers in the street revealed fans of egg and cream, malt and mint, but coconut? Not so hot.
And our online straw poll asking for your likes and dislikes showed coconut was the least favourite flavour by quite a margin - 41% said it would be their last pick of the mix.
Sarah Tuck from Dish magazine might have an explanation for the coconut dislike.
"Desiccated coconut has that slightly gritty texture and I think that you get that in the sweets as well."
And a small toffee, with a little bits of gritty texture in it? That might be part of the reason people don't like it - as well as the flavour."
Surprisingly, coconut also took out third-favourite place, behind egg and cream and mint.
Sarah said "it's a tricky thing to get it right, you can't please all the people all the time, so ideally you don't want to have half a packet full of one flavour".
"But if you've got a mix - and you've got a mix in your audience - you should be okay".
Here's hoping Marie's story doesn't end on a sour note, as RJ's have some complimentary sweeties for her. Let's just cross fingers and hope that the replacement mix is light on the coconut.
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