Biscuit Blog: Tower Gate Pink Wafers

Tower Gate Pink Wafers

Perhaps this type of biscuit which has attracted most attention by name on television.  It features significantly in the first episode of the first series of  'Life on Mars' (2006) set in 1973.  A witness is being questioned and it is suggested that she might like some pink wafers.  A police officer is sent off to buy her some.  Pink wafers with their gaudy colouring and their very sweet flavour could almost seem to sum up the early 1970s. These biscuits have often featured in selection boxes but have always stood out among the various shades of brown that characterise most biscuits.

As you can imagine, having spotted these on another biscuit hunt in Lidl I was eager to give them ago.  These are under Lidl's own brand for biscuits and some other products, Tower Gate.  They were incredibly disappointing.  On the plus side they were as crunchy as promised without dissolving into powder as sometimes can be the case with pink wafers.  However, as you can see from the picture they were more a shade of orange rather than pink, that was despite the colour of the packet and even featuring a pink feline, presumably in reference to the pink panther cartoons.  The main problem was the flavour.  The biscuits were so lacking in the uber-sweetness you especially expect from a pink wafer that they could almost be deemed a savoury biscuit.  Indeed they tasted like a number of plain ice cream wafers sandwiched together.  The 'cream' was almost soggy in nature.  Certainly there was nothing of the pink wafer experience that I had anticipated.  However, I passed the packet to the teenager who lives in my house and he finished them off.

Perhaps I expected too much, but I was certainly let down by this product.

Rating:
*****

P.P. In the interests of balance, I must say that I have passed these biscuits on to a teenaged boy and he said that he really liked them and wondered if I had any more.  This suggests that at least one member of the younger generation has a taste for something that is not uncomfortably sweet and I guess this is why Lidl continues to sell them.