Cough Sweets
Lockets €1.30 for 41g €32.19 per kg
These sweets contain added vitamin C which may lead you to believe they will help you get through your cold faster. Now vitamin C is no bad thing in a cough sweet but you need to be taking it long term for it to make much difference. Curative properties aside, these sweets taste quite pleasant and the menthol and eucalyptus are extremely good for clearing a blocked nose. The makers make much of their sweets’ honey centre but we are not entirely convinced – you think a Locket has a lot more suck in it and then suddenly its walls collapse and a little pocket of honey oozes out creating a sticky mess in the mouth.
Verdict: Invigoratingly pleasant.
Star rating: ****
Jakemans Soothing Menthol Sweets
€1.99 for 100g €19.90 per kg
These are old-school sweets that will soften your cough and soothe your throat with “delicious tasting menthol sweets made with only the finest ingredients”. And that is pretty much what they do. They taste lovely, with the hard menthol flavours complemented by a softer taste of honey. The ingredient list is impressively pure and the price is not prohibitive. While you should be able to source them in any chemist, finding them in your local corner shop will be all put impossible.
Verdict: Very hard to top
Star rating: *****
Fisherman’s Friend
€1.60 for 25g €64 per kg
These lozenges are absolutely lethal, but in a good way. They don’t have anything fancy, like honey or lemon or vitamins, but they are painfully refreshing and will clear your nose and leave you feeling invigorated in seconds. They will also leave your mouth tingling in a way some people might consider pleasant although others may think it horrendous. They look a little like dog worming tablets and are not individually wrapped so, if you tear the pack too much, you will be fishing them from your pockets for weeks. And per kg, they are the most expensive by a country mile. Still great though.
Verdict: Ouch
Star rating: ****
Strepsils Honey Lemon Lozenges
€3.69 for 125g (approx) €29.52 per kg
We are not convinced that these did anything for us despite the fact that they promised us two anti-bacterial actions, contained some multi-syllabic ingredients and clearly positioned itself as a medicine rather than a sweet. The manufacturers limited us to one lozenge every two or three hours which is not what we want when our throats are sore. Medical matters aside, these taste very nice and have the strongest citrus flavours. You get 24 sweets in a pack – we could not find a weight anywhere on the box – and while an individual box is very expensive, the unit price is surprisingly cheap.
Verdict: Hmmmm mediciney
Star rating: ***
Halls Mentho-lyptus Honey and Lemon
€1.25 for 33.5g €37.31 per kg
The makers of this sweet coined the word mentho-lyptus a long time ago and it is still proudly displayed on the packaging. These are the kind of cough sweets that you can find everywhere so, if you find yourself hacking like a TB ward as you wait for your bus on a cold morning, these will be able to help you out. While they ease a cough, they taste harsh. Despite the flavour, they don’t help clearing a blocked nose. They can be fairly pricey too and a single packet will not go too far. The wax paper which wraps each sweet, meanwhile, has an irritating habit of getting too attached to the sweet it is covering and it can leave a sticky mess behind.
Verdict: Surprisingly dear
Star rating: ***
