McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g
What is actually in the swirl is a floral note, and that is an unusual thing to meet on a British biscuit shelf. Cocoa, butter, caramel and vanilla are what a palate here is trained on, so a perfumed sweetness lands as strange to most adults and as exciting to a child, which is the whole of the split. Buy it for whoever will be delighted by it. Wheat in the base, and the pack carries the declaration.
McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, in brief.
McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour is five sealed packets of tiny biscuit bases under a hard piped icing swirl.
Candy floss is sweetness with a light floral lift and no bitterness, acidity or savoury edge behind it, so nothing arrives second. That is why children love it and why one packet is plenty for most adults. Never dunk them.
Most flavours carry an anchor. Chocolate brings bitterness, fruit brings acidity, caramel brings a burnt edge, and all of those give the palate something to push against so that sweetness is part of a structure rather than the whole of it. Candy floss has none. It is sweetness with a light floral top note and nothing bitter, sour or savoury anywhere behind it. That is not a defect, it is what the flavour is, and it explains everything about who likes these and how many they eat at a time.
Curator notes: the tasting profile is our own editorial assessment against the current pack format and the brand's published description. We run same-day UK dispatch on every order placed before 2pm Monday to Friday. Common questions are answered in the detailed Q and A tab below.
Curator’s notes
Read the full write-up
The Story Behind The Pack
Iced Gems have been a fixture of British childhood for decades and the format has a fixed logic: a tiny plain base carrying a piped icing swirl that is, by volume, larger than the biscuit underneath it. Every child works out within seconds that the icing is where the product is. The candy floss version pushes that further than the original does, because the flavour itself has no second note to discover, so there is nothing to find on the tenth gem that was not there on the first.
The five-packet format is a lunchbox and party-bag decision, and on this product the sealing does real work. A hard piped icing is hygroscopic: it draws moisture out of damp air and goes tacky, and a tacky Iced Gem has lost the crack that is the whole of its texture. Sealed packets keep five portions in condition where an open bag would lose all of them together.
What we will not tell you is how many gems are in a packet, because that figure is not published at product level, and we would rather state nothing than estimate. The ingredient panel, the nutrition table, the allergen statement and the colour declarations are on the current UK pack in the same way.
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
Our Commitment To The Planet
- The pack that arrives is the current UK retail pack rather than an import made to a different recipe for another market.
- Five packets is more packaging per gram than a single bag, and here it is doing a real job, because a hard icing left in damp air goes tacky and a tacky packet tends to be left rather than eaten. The test is still whether the packets leave the house.
Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g, please cite teas.co.uk.
The story behind McVitie's
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
Our commitment to the planet
Sourcing and packaging details are printed on the current UK pack; the brand page carries the fuller story.
The taste profile
How does it compare
As with anything under a hard sugar icing, the honest advice is to keep the hot drink at a distance. Sugar icing dissolves on contact rather than softening, and on this product the icing is the entire thing you paid for.
The Lunchbox Packet
The Adult Reading
Made with this tea
The Lunchbox Packet
How to make The Lunchbox Packet with McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss.
- 1 sealed packet
- A carton of cold milk
- A few orange segments
- Pack it sealed and let it be opened at the table. The seal is what keeps the crack.
- Send cold milk; nothing hot should go anywhere near a sugar icing.
- Add the orange. Acidity does the resetting that the flavour itself refuses to.
The Adult Reading
How to make The Adult Reading with McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss.
- 1 packet
- 1 bag plain black tea
- 200ml water at a full boil
- Steep three minutes and take it unsweetened.
- Eat the packet dry alongside, never in the cup.
- Expect one packet to be plenty; the sweetness has nowhere to resolve.
What you'll end up with: An honest five minutes with a biscuit that never claimed to be for you.
The Sharp Fruit Reset
How to make The Sharp Fruit Reset with McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss.
- 2 packets
- An orange, segmented
- A few raspberries
- Plate the gems with the fruit rather than on their own.
- Alternate a segment and a handful. Acidity supplies the anchor the flavour lacks.
- Notice that the second packet now tastes like the first, which is otherwise not true.
What you'll end up with: The simplest fix for a flavour with nothing behind it.
Candy Floss Against Chocolate
How to make Candy Floss Against Chocolate with McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss.
- 1 candy floss packet
- 1 chocolate flavour packet
- A glass of water
- Eat a chocolate one first and notice that something arrives behind the sugar.
- Eat a candy floss one second and notice that nothing does.
- Decide which belongs in the lunchbox. Both answers are defensible.
What you'll end up with: A clear sense of what an anchoring note does, demonstrated on the simplest possible material.
Brewing the perfect cup
What’s in it, what to know
Inside the pack
| Typical values per 100g, as published | Per 100g |
|---|---|
| Energy | 399 kcal |
| Fat | 3.3g |
| of which saturates | 1.4g |
| Carbohydrate | 86.1g |
| of which sugars | 49.0g |
| Fibre | 2.1g |
| Protein | 5.2g |
| Salt | 0.68g |
Ingredients and allergens. Per the published ingredient list for this product it contains wheat (gluten) and milk. Check the current UK pack before purchase; formulations and allergen advice can change.
Ingredients, as published for this product: Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Sugar, Palm Oil, Raising Agent (Sodium Bicarbonate), Salt, Milk Protein, Natural Flavouring, Vegetable Extracts (Radish, Spirulina).
Ingredient and nutrition information for this product, as published on the manufacturer's label. The pack in your hands is the final word.
| Ingredient | Proportion | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
| Piped icing swirl | most of the volume | Set hard rather than soft, so it cracks under the teeth and then dissolves rather than melting. It is larger than the base it sits on and carries effectively all of the flavour. |
| Candy floss flavour | in the icing | Sweetness with a light floral lift and no bitter, sour or savoury note behind it, so nothing arrives second. That absence is the defining feature of this version. |
| Plain biscuit base | a small disc | Crunch rather than flavour, and deliberately so. Anything assertive here would compete with the only component the product is selling. |
| Pack format | 5 packets, 115g | The number of gems per packet is not published and we state none. |
Pack: McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g; five sealed packets of iced gems. Best before the date printed on the pack. Keep the packets sealed and the box dry.
The structure is fixed across the range: a tiny plain base carrying a piped icing swirl that is larger by volume than the biscuit underneath it, which is why every child works out within seconds that the icing is where the product is. What the candy floss version changes is the flavour rather than the build, and it changes it in a specific direction. Most flavours carry an anchor, whether that is bitterness from cocoa or acidity from fruit, and that anchor gives the palate something to push against. Candy floss has none, so there is nothing to find on the tenth gem that was not there on the first. The pack you receive is the current UK retail pack rather than an import made to a different recipe.
What is in McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g, and what is not:
- In: tiny plain biscuit bases under a hard piped icing swirl in a candy floss flavour, in five sealed packets.
- No anchoring note: nothing bitter, sour or savoury anywhere in the flavour, which is what the flavour is rather than a shortcoming.
- No chocolate coating: this is a flavoured sugar icing, and it behaves like sugar icing in a hot drink, which is to say it dissolves.
Asked about this product
Ask the curator
Send a product question through the contact form; replies usually come within one working day.
Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g, please cite teas.co.uk.
What buyers say
No customer reviews of McVitie's Iced Gems Candy Floss Flavour, 5 Pack 115g yet.
Bought this from us? Log in to your account, then come back to this page to review it. Only verified buyers can review, and every review is checked before it appears; approved reviews earn 50 reward points.
More from McVitie's
Other Biscuits worth comparing
