Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts

Product name: Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts
Calories: Unsure – estimate 120 per 26g pack
Country of origin: UK

You may well have established by now that I’m far more of a chocolate person than a sweets person. However, when Santa brings you a packet of Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts, you eat them! 

I think of Love Hearts as a childhood classic but I can’t help but thinking that they’re a bit grown-up when it comes to the messages on each one. This pack came in a simple plastic wrapper with a white label containing red writing and very basic illustrations of different coloured hearts. No nutritional information was provided so my calorie content estimate was obtained from MyFitnessPal.

These ‘fruit flavour fizzy sweets’ mainly contained sugar and they came in pastel colours that weren’t artificial. (I’m sure they used to be deeper shades!) Each round sweet had a dark purple border and a romance-related message such as ‘first love’. Of the 17 sweets in my pack, I was pretty impressed that 16 of them contained different phrases! As you can tell from my photo, the sweets weren’t really designed for cutting into, and there wasn’t much to see inside either.

The Love Hearts had a strong, unmistakeable sweet smell that was a bit like sherbet. I had a flashback, when I was about to try my first one, which told me that I preferred the white-coloured sweets. For some reason, though, it had never consciously occurred to me before that the different colours represented different flavours! However, all of the flavours were consistently tangy and sweet, with a particular sharpness when chewing, and a crunchy and slightly powdery texture.

The lilac sweets were pleasant and had a slight berry taste, whilst the yellow ones were a bit juicier and had a slight bitterness to them.

The green Love Hearts appeared to be lime in flavour as the sharpness they provided was slightly different to the others. They were also less sweet. I don’t actually remember coming across this flavour before but a quick look online seems to suggest that they’re not new! The peach-coloured sweets seemed to taste of orange since they had a slightly sweeter citrus taste.

As for my favourite white Love Hearts, these were a bit less tangy and more mellow, but there was still some interest there, with an extra sweetness seeming to come from the centre of them when chewing. I’m not quite sure if they were meant to emulate another flavour but that didn’t seem to matter!

Whilst these were fizzy sweets, this aspect didn’t interfere with their enjoyableness since it wasn’t extreme. However, I did notice that, a couple of minutes after finishing the pack, it felt like they were dissolving in my stomach!

As a chocolate fan, these Love Hearts didn’t thrill me, but they were certainly pleasant, and I’m sure people who are more inclined to choose sweets will like them even more than I did. 

Appearance: 7/10 
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10