Party Puffs Cereal (Limited Edition by Sugar Puffs)

There are lots of products available at the moment which are cashing in, I mean celebrating, the Queens Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. Usually this means the Union Jack and other patriotic imagery added to existing products. In other cases, some companies have gone the extra mile and created special editions of their best sellers which makes it a great time to be looking out for limited edition products.

I loved the look of these Party Puffs. It is not just a box of regular Sugar Puffs with a Union Jack flag on it, oh no, this has got added red, white and blue coloured meringue balls. The Honey Monster is also dressed up as a Queen's Guard, which is just too cute. When it comes to cereal I must admit that I love cereals that are full of colourful candy pieces, such as those US cereals like Lucky Charms. I know it's not healthy but it's just so FUN.

So far so good, but this is where this review comes to a crashing disappointing finale. I shook the box as instructed, no doubt to ensure those pesky meringue balls have not all sunk to the bottom of the bag. I poured out a serving. No colourful meringue balls, just a bowl of normal sugar puffs. I took the inner bag out. No meringue balls were visible inside the bag. I poured the bag into a bigger bowl and sifted through. Still no meringue balls! After much searching I found 9, yes a total of 9, meringue balls. In the entire bag! This is what 9 meringue balls looks like in a bowl.

It would have been better if I had not found any meringue balls in the bag, as it could be explained by a mix up at the factory, giving me a regular bag of  Sugar Puffs instead of the Party Puffs. I even checked the description on the box to see whether I had been mistaken about this cereal even containing colourful meringue pieces. Perhaps they had changed the design on the box but not the contents? But no, the front clearly says 'Sugar Puffs with balls of crunchy meringue'. The ingredients lists the meringue as 10% of the ingredients, so in a 320g box that should be at least 32g worth.

I thought I would give Sugar Puffs a call to find out if this was a one-off bad batch, but surprisingly they lack any kind of customer careline information on the packet. The only option you have is to return the product by post if you are dissatisfied and Sugar Puffs will then send you a refund. I was not prepared to package the box up and make a trip to the post office. Instead I returned the packet to Tesco, where I had bought them for £1.99. The customer services lady was excellent, very apologetic and agreed that it was terrible. I received a full refund thanks to Tesco.

I'm sure there is a gag here somewhere about the Honey Monster having no balls, but I certainly won't be buying these again to see whether the next packet is any better!

Let me know if you have had a similar experience with this or any other product.