Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles Tube - 115g

Fruit Pastilles have been a fixture of the British newsagent counter for generations, the tube you grabbed with a paper on the way to the bus. They sit in that small group of sweets nearly everyone in Britain has an opinion about, usually involving which colour is best and who keeps taking it.

People in Canada go looking for them because the memory is so specific: the chew that takes its time, the wrapper you unroll a bit at a time, the last one rattling about at the bottom. You cannot quite describe it to someone who did not grow up with it. You just want the tube.

This is the classic 115g tube, built for pockets, handbags and the glovebox. Unopened, it keeps happily in the cupboard, and once it is open it rarely survives long enough for that to matter. Roll the wrapper back down and it travels well.

Rowntree's is also the name behind Jelly Tots and Randoms, so the pastilles tend to end up in the same basket as other sweets from the same corner of the shop. A few tubes posted to someone who left Britain years ago goes down very well indeed.