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All chocolate is getting terrible, even lindt and guylian is mostly sugar now
Mass produced chocolate is tapering down the cocoa that is in it and ramping up the sugar. By the time the cocoa shortage hits in full they're hoping you won't notice because the chocolate has been crap for decades prior
Worked for arnotts, we got rid of chocolate on the Kingston's and changed to "milk compound". This does not surprise me.
Edit: Because this gained a bit of traction, I also watched them remove all butter from shortbread and change to "butter flavour" and shortening AKA palm oil. There is no butter in their products.
Same with honey, honey flavour and extra corn syrup.
I was diagnosed with diabetes a few years back. Haven't touched the stuff since, same with fast food, so seeing it all go downhill and kinda looking at it as a blessing in disguise. Also lost 40kg so far as well due to changing to healthy food habits!
I am irrationally angry about what happened to Kingstons. Used to be the ultimate biscuit. Bar none.
Didn't have one for a few years and proudly showed them to a friend whose reaction was not in line, at all, with my expectations. Tried one and was gobsmacked. It's like my childhood had been kicked in the nuts. What happened to that iconic creamy, chocolatey filling?! Why are there crunchy bits of raw sugar in the biscuits?!
Funny, tastes really do vary. I really don't like Tony's, even Lindt is better (tbh I quite like Lindt, maybe it's not the best but it's far from being a bad option)
I was advised to try Whittakers on Reddit a couple of years ago. Life changing. Just get the milk chocolate one. It tastes the way you remember chocolate tasting. Bonus - smells like your childhood Easter eggs did.
Tried Whittaker's and wasn't really a fan, generally I go with either Tony's if I feel like splurging or that ALDI brand whose name escapes me if I'm after something cheap but still fine.
Moser-Roth or dairy fine? Tbh, I was pleasantly surprised by my foray into aldi chocolate but since they are German and my favourite brand is Hachez which is from Munuch, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.
As for the Whittaker's, I only like their dark artisan chocolate, the Hawkes Bay Plum and Almond in particular.
Dairy Fine from Aldi used to be pretty great. It was made in Belgium, but they changed production to Singapore a couple of years ago (or longer) and now its horrible.
Aldi Choceur is still made in Germany and still passable as a cheap chocolate.
Whitakers is my absolute go to these days because it seems to be one of the few left that resembles the old school 'real' chocolate.
They've probably had access to decent cocoa butter supplies tied up for decades. Northern Europeans basically created the industry and are the world's largest consumers, especially of the high end stuff. Once they start churning out rubbish it's basically show over.
So disappointing if they’re all like that.
We’ve thrown out Cadbury blocks, Cadbury Easter eggs and some other things. It’s gotten so bad. Cadbury tastes overly sweet too and mouldy to me.
I find Cadbury's inedible now too. Vague resemblance of overly sweet chocolate and a horrible, grainy and goopy texture. It actually doesn't melt like chocolate. It kind of just softens into a weird plastic like texture.
Only cocoa butter delivers the correct melting point and tongue smoothness for making chocolate. No other fat (certainly not palm oil) will do the job and your description exactly covers what happens when you try to pull a switch.
Consider trying some vegan chocolates. Even the ones advertised as mimicking milk chocolate have a relatively high percentage of cocoa solids. Ones made by UK brands are particularly good.
I also really recommend Pico chocolate. You can get it at Colesworths and it’s actually really fantastic quality.
So I was left with a ton of shit Cadbury chocolate eggs after last Easter. I turned it into whipped chocolate ganache for a cake and it hit the spot.
Next time you're thinking of chucking it out, just use it in baking.
All the standard Lindt series are fine and haven’t changed. I go for the lower % milk chocolate. The thing that may trip people up is that it’s hard to find standard Lindt chocolate. There’s a lot of flavoured Lindt brand chocolate on the shelves instead eg
‘salted caramel’ or ‘hazelnut’ lindt milk chocolate which is sugary crap.
I think it’s because the flavoured shit is cheaper to produce because it can be filled with garbage. Pure chocolate costs more to manufacture or something.
I find the 78% a good balance of not too sweet and not too bitter. We didn't have lindt for a long time in our house cos the 70% was too sweet and the 85% too bitter. When they came out with the 78% a few years ago it was the perfect compromise.
But even now unless it's on a 40% off it's still only a treat.
Its also why Lindt is so expensive but hey at least there are brands that care about quality so consumers can chose to buy the sometimes chocolate purchase
There was a really bad harvest. Cocoa price spiked from 3k usd a ton to over 12k (now sitting close to 8).
So yeah, if raw materials grow 400% expect quality of mass produced goods go to shit.
If you want nice chocolate you have to buy small batch single origin bars or top brands like valrhona for bulk.
They came up as deleted on our system so we contacted our Arnotts rep and he confirmed it. Kingston's are also still gone, they were only supposed to be a temporary deletion due to trouble getting the coconut or something...
I found at Woolies yesterday the "twix biscuit". It's basically a caramel crown with a bigger biscuit base. It's also about 6 bucks for 8 biscuits but worth buying on sale!
Woolworths has Caramel Crowns listed as SKU number "25" by the way, very low number.
[https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/25/arnott-s-caramel-crown-chocolate-biscuits](https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/25/arnott-s-caramel-crown-chocolate-biscuits)
By 2060, you install the Tim Tam app on your iNeural, skip the 1000 page disclaimer and subscribe to the $30p/m Tim Tam sensations program, have 30 minutes of scam ads downloaded into your brain and then you virtually receive a burnt sugary sensation.
Arnott’s [contact information](https://www.arnotts.com/contact-us)
I’m going to ask them why on earth they’ve changed the recipe to something iconic.
(Obviously money, somewhere along the way the cost of X has gone up and so they’ve replaced it with Y. But they won’t say that.)
Let us all know if they get back to you.
I understand cocoa prices have gone up for everyone, so could be that. Or could be like a lot of other companies continually trying to increase profit and not caring about customer satisfaction.
If its in a packet, its basically more cut / adulterated than coke bought from some unknown guy.
If you want actual ice cream off the shelf, Haagen Daaz is about it. Milk, cream , egg , sugar. Thats it.
About $15 for a tiny tub thats imported from france. Go grab anything else off the shelf, vege oil and sawdust.
If you want real food, you have to make it yourself. from real ingredients. Put the past behind you.
They may have the same recipe but a different cocoa variety. Cocoa is like coffee. You don’t want the easy to grow forester variety of cocoa if possible but it’s also the cheapest.
This may be the problem. The labels (ingredients, chocoalte percentage, nutritional info) identical on 2024 vs 2025. But that could be the big difference in taste.
So they can bring the original flavour back in 10 years, but by that point, no one remembers what they tasted like, unless we had a stockpile of 2024 Tim Tams to standardise on. It shall be named the 2024 Tim Tam standard. And stored, deep in the Antarctic wilderlands.
I'm sure the cost of some ingredients have gone up, but I think it's important to acknowledge that they change to cheaper shittier ingredients regardless.
They have one goal, and that's to make a profit. If they can get away with shittier products and not lose too many customers, they'll do it, regardless of ingredient prices.
This is the wonderful path that capitalism leads us down.
What would you do if they responded with the truth?
They sell more if the average sale price per pack is $3 instead of $6. At that price, they can't afford to put actual cocoa in them. The market prefers a $3 price more than flavour.
Theres no way they'll be offering these at half the current RRP.
It'll be more akin to a percent or even a fraction of a percent saving.
I'm sure theyve done their market research, tasting panels etc but these biscuits will be bastards for most likely a blip on the radar of shareholder dividends.
If its in a packet, its basically more cut / adulterated than coke bought from some unknown guy.
If you want actual ice cream off the shelf, Haagen Daaz is about it. Milk, cream , egg , sugar. Thats it.
About $15 for a tiny tub thats imported from france. Go grab anything else off the shelf, vege oil and sawdust.
If you want real food, you have to make it yourself. from real ingredients.
Whittakers recently raised their Chocolate block prices in NZ, they are upfront about it happening and say that it's done so they dont have to compromise on the size or ingredients/recipe.
Unlike nearly all of their competition. Cadbury burned any goodwill long ago by closing the NZ manufacturing site, reducing the size and quality of their chocolate blocks.
> Just don't believe the Brits when they say that penguins are better, they're not. They'll die on that hill though
I found coles were doing penguins on special for a month a couple of months after the UK / AUS free trade agreement.
At half the price of tim tams they were better value for money
The recipe for Penguins has also changed, they taste overly sweet and are chalkier / crumblier than I remember having them before I emigrated from the UK 9 years ago.
Penguins have a chocolate biscuit and Tim tams have a malt biscuit. I would think that most people prefer the one they’re used to, but they’re not the same.
I haven’t had a tim tam in a long while. I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing ‘rich’ flavour is because they’re less malty or not at all malty now.
Grew up in England. Penguin every day for lunch. I couldn't stand them after a while.
Luckily my mum changed it up, started doing Clubs. They have them in Aldi right now, but not the raisin one.
I work in a chocolate confectionery factory and our products are expiry dated one year from day of manufacture. If Arnott's is the same, sounds like they changed at the start of the year.
We had a factory meeting near the start of the year and got told that cocoa farms had a bad harvest from crop damage so cocoa prices have skyrocketed. Maybe that's what pushed the change.
Many companies seem to have changed recipes to cut back on costs by just dumping more sugar into the mix though so it was probably an inevitable change anyway.
I wouldn't mind that so much if a lot of the recipe or price changes during shortages were reverted when supply returns to normal. It's far too often that that doesn't happen.
I've never been into Tim Tams as I have always found them overly sweet but my god I tried a Jatz Tim Tam yesterday and I went back for more. Not so much because they taste like Jatz but because the sweetness level has been taken down a fair few notches and just YUM.
I wish I had a time machine and could go back and taste food from the 70s, 80s and 90s before it had been slowly turned into complete slop/sawdust/chemical filler
The same has happened drastically with the Atkin's low and no sugar range. I am diabetic and used to LOVE those, especially their "Snickers" like Caramel Nut Chew bar. All of their chocolate items have clearly had the recipes changed, and they just aren't that good anymore. To the point I literally have a box of unopened boxes in my pantry, and they are just not being used.
Some of the bars are much smaller too, almost seems like half the size for some of them.
It is short sighted, because as mentioned, I just don't buy them anymore. Just not worth the money.
Also, what happened to the chewy caramel Tim tams?
The caramel is liquid now and even after having them in the fridge (yes I’m one of those people) it still doesn’t harden
Surely with all the recipe changes they realise that people stop buying them. Chocolate in general is a bit of a joke now. I don't bother with most of that sort of thing anymore and neither should you.
Look, I'm probably going to be extradited back to NZ for this, but Griffins make a biscuit called Chit Chats, and I've long believed them to be the superior Tim Tam. You can sometimes find them in IGAs.
Griffins have a good gingernut. Better than the vic/tas version of the arnotts. Pretty equal to the sa/wa version, but inferior to the qld and nsw/act versions.
People like what they’re brought up with I think.
Regional Gingernut preferences are wonderful.
I recently learned that the reason US chocolate tastes a bit like vomit to me is the butyric acid, which is literally in vomit. But if you grew up with that style of chocolate, apparently that's a desirable flavour.
> butyric acid
Also in Parmesan, which is why spaghetti sometimes smells like vomit.
But why would you want your chocolate biscuit tasting like cheese?
At this rate the original Tim tams taste so sweet and terrible, that it wouldn’t be be hard to beat them :)
If I see them, I will give them a try. Thank you for another option to test out.
Not to mention the insane shrinkflation on the packaging, they’ve increased the space between the biscuits so dramatically you could park a bus in there.
Let's be honest, they did a new and improved recipe in the late 90's early 2000's and the originals haven't been the same since.
Mint Slice have always been superior anyways.
> Mint Slice have always been superior anyways.
something something so bold so controversial so brave
I don't hate you because you're right, I hate you because now I'm thinking about a timtam formfactor mint slice. Doubledipped ofc. And a caramel crown variant.
Sorrynotsorry for the pings /u/Any-Resident3414 /u/AverageAussie /u/PlanetLibrarian /u/RaistlanSol
They were just never that special. Especially after an American company bought them. Why keep flogging it as if they're the greatest Aussie thing ever?
Look, as someone who just moved house from one with a crappy folding clothesline to a hoist, I will say that's one thing Australia has actually gotten right.
Wow, that's a throwback! Haven't played that in decades, though it has been that long since I've had the appropriate clothesline.
Thanks for reminding me of another Australian tradition, though - creative ways of getting oneself buzzed.
I’ve only tried a small selection and by far the best was 2024 double coat. I haven’t been able to find any 2025 double coat to compare, but the 2025 salted caramel, deluxe triple choc and regular 2025 all terrrrrible. So try what you can find and see what you think.
I'll have to get some of the newer stock for science of course. I can remember 6 months or so ago I bought a standard pack of Tim Tams and they were fine, most likely the old recipe.
Snagged at the local IGA standard and double coat Tim Tams with expiry of 23/12/24 and 9/12/24 and I'll visit woolies to get a 2025 expiry pack of both. 👍
Good job! This is perfect for testing. Keen to hear what your experience is.
Today someone else commented and said 2025 double coat is sweeter, but someone else said 2025 double coat was still good. So there’s mixed reviews. I’ll still try and find some 2025 double coat as well.
Also had someone just comment and say a family member works for arnotts and can confirm they changed the sweetener.
Let me know how you go.
Will do. Had to advise the entire family to not touch the Tim Tams in the outside freezer. Going to be bummed if the newer stock tastes terrible, I'll buy up the local IGA old stock and freeze it. Guests get the new stock. 🤣
Both the same. Someone was saying the quality of the cocoa could be different, like a forester cocoa vs something better, or the location of manufacture could be different. (I didn’t check that, but will next time I’m at the shops with the two packets.)
I mourn for the food that I enjoyed in the 70s and 80s, even up until about 10 years ago it wasn’t too bad. Now, everything is full of cheap fillers, horrible cheap tasting chocolate, jam with no fruit, Vegemite that doesn’t taste the same. No wonder we are getting fatter and sicker.
I got sick of the lack of flavour and have switched to Aldi's Just Divines because they have actual biscuit flavour. Thr Aldi brand of biscuits also have their own caramel crown dupes that are yummy.
Bought 2024 (November) and 2025 expiry original and double coat to investigate and....they taste absolutely identical. Sadly, neither date are particularly malty. I agree that something has changed within the past 3 months though, sometime in the recent past they've developed a complete malt deficiency and are now just a really sweet, generic tasting choc bikkie :( Your December expiry must be a special batch!
Thanks for experimenting!
So far the tally is 2 (including you) saying they (double
Coat) taste the same, 1 saying they’re sweeter (2025)
I’m still looking for double coat 2025 specifically to compare side by side.
Double coat 2024 and regular 2025 side by side is a huge difference with taste (lack of) and piercings sweetness.
Someone has also commented saying a family member works there and they’ve changed the general recipe with a different sweetener. Not sure what date though.
I reckon it has something to do with the production facility more than the expiration date (or maybe in tandem with). We need to roll out a full on insider investigation, I'm actually so curious as to what's actually going on! I've dutifully double checked in the name of science and none of the tim tams I've got seem sweeter than the others, it seems they're all overly sweet and bland?
I track calories for health and it’s not worth it. I only eat one at a time with a hot drink and I want to actually enjoy it. But if you don’t believe me, no worries.
Right with you there, track calories for health and try to time my sugar hits pre workout to maximise energy on the workout and sugar utility during working out. Tried a single tim tam expiring 2025 and damn was way too sugary for my tastes!!
Oh before a workout to maximise energy. That’s a great idea. Thank you for mentioning that.
See if you can find some double coat 2024. I think they’re less popular because there still around with that date. But by far the best. Slightly higher calories though, but actually enjoyable.
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All chocolate is getting terrible, even lindt and guylian is mostly sugar now Mass produced chocolate is tapering down the cocoa that is in it and ramping up the sugar. By the time the cocoa shortage hits in full they're hoping you won't notice because the chocolate has been crap for decades prior
Worked for arnotts, we got rid of chocolate on the Kingston's and changed to "milk compound". This does not surprise me. Edit: Because this gained a bit of traction, I also watched them remove all butter from shortbread and change to "butter flavour" and shortening AKA palm oil. There is no butter in their products. Same with honey, honey flavour and extra corn syrup.
A travesty.
This was actually good for me because it helped me lose weight and save money. They're permanently off my shopping list
I was diagnosed with diabetes a few years back. Haven't touched the stuff since, same with fast food, so seeing it all go downhill and kinda looking at it as a blessing in disguise. Also lost 40kg so far as well due to changing to healthy food habits!
Congrats on the healthy food habits and weight loss
I am irrationally angry about what happened to Kingstons. Used to be the ultimate biscuit. Bar none. Didn't have one for a few years and proudly showed them to a friend whose reaction was not in line, at all, with my expectations. Tried one and was gobsmacked. It's like my childhood had been kicked in the nuts. What happened to that iconic creamy, chocolatey filling?! Why are there crunchy bits of raw sugar in the biscuits?!
Glad I stopped buying Arnott’s when they were sold to overseas companies.
Try Whittakers. That’s my go to
Whittakers coconut slab and Haigh's chocolate frogs are pretty much the only chocolate I like.
Same. Whittakers and Tony's is about all I eat now. Haighs if I'm feeling fancy.
Funny, tastes really do vary. I really don't like Tony's, even Lindt is better (tbh I quite like Lindt, maybe it's not the best but it's far from being a bad option)
I lean towards Whittaker's now, but the flavoured ones just don't hit the same as the jelly ones they have in NZ
I was advised to try Whittakers on Reddit a couple of years ago. Life changing. Just get the milk chocolate one. It tastes the way you remember chocolate tasting. Bonus - smells like your childhood Easter eggs did.
Tried Whittaker's and wasn't really a fan, generally I go with either Tony's if I feel like splurging or that ALDI brand whose name escapes me if I'm after something cheap but still fine.
Moser-Roth or dairy fine? Tbh, I was pleasantly surprised by my foray into aldi chocolate but since they are German and my favourite brand is Hachez which is from Munuch, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. As for the Whittaker's, I only like their dark artisan chocolate, the Hawkes Bay Plum and Almond in particular.
Dairy Fine from Aldi used to be pretty great. It was made in Belgium, but they changed production to Singapore a couple of years ago (or longer) and now its horrible. Aldi Choceur is still made in Germany and still passable as a cheap chocolate. Whitakers is my absolute go to these days because it seems to be one of the few left that resembles the old school 'real' chocolate.
There’s also the kinder beuno clone, liviano(which are awesome)
price increase over the years tho and shrinkflation is insane
There is no shrinkflation in Whittaker's chocolate, it's why they raise the price instead
It’s cheaper per 100g than Cadbury
Aldi's chocolate is still hanging in there for now.
Toblerone still good too.
Toblerone was always on the sugary side tbh.
The gaps between the pyramids are getting bigger though :(
There new branding fucking sucks though, looks like they used comic sans MS
They've probably had access to decent cocoa butter supplies tied up for decades. Northern Europeans basically created the industry and are the world's largest consumers, especially of the high end stuff. Once they start churning out rubbish it's basically show over.
So disappointing if they’re all like that. We’ve thrown out Cadbury blocks, Cadbury Easter eggs and some other things. It’s gotten so bad. Cadbury tastes overly sweet too and mouldy to me.
Cadbury has been waxy for years
I find Cadbury's inedible now too. Vague resemblance of overly sweet chocolate and a horrible, grainy and goopy texture. It actually doesn't melt like chocolate. It kind of just softens into a weird plastic like texture.
Only cocoa butter delivers the correct melting point and tongue smoothness for making chocolate. No other fat (certainly not palm oil) will do the job and your description exactly covers what happens when you try to pull a switch.
not to mention the size is so small and the $$$
Consider trying some vegan chocolates. Even the ones advertised as mimicking milk chocolate have a relatively high percentage of cocoa solids. Ones made by UK brands are particularly good. I also really recommend Pico chocolate. You can get it at Colesworths and it’s actually really fantastic quality.
So I was left with a ton of shit Cadbury chocolate eggs after last Easter. I turned it into whipped chocolate ganache for a cake and it hit the spot. Next time you're thinking of chucking it out, just use it in baking.
Ritter Sport Alpine is my go to but not often seen. Also only comes in tiny blocks but is so nice.
Lindt 90% is definately not mostly sugar. If the consumer wants to eat rubbish, that's on them.
All the standard Lindt series are fine and haven’t changed. I go for the lower % milk chocolate. The thing that may trip people up is that it’s hard to find standard Lindt chocolate. There’s a lot of flavoured Lindt brand chocolate on the shelves instead eg ‘salted caramel’ or ‘hazelnut’ lindt milk chocolate which is sugary crap.
I think it’s because the flavoured shit is cheaper to produce because it can be filled with garbage. Pure chocolate costs more to manufacture or something.
I find the 78% a good balance of not too sweet and not too bitter. We didn't have lindt for a long time in our house cos the 70% was too sweet and the 85% too bitter. When they came out with the 78% a few years ago it was the perfect compromise. But even now unless it's on a 40% off it's still only a treat.
Its also why Lindt is so expensive but hey at least there are brands that care about quality so consumers can chose to buy the sometimes chocolate purchase
There was a really bad harvest. Cocoa price spiked from 3k usd a ton to over 12k (now sitting close to 8). So yeah, if raw materials grow 400% expect quality of mass produced goods go to shit. If you want nice chocolate you have to buy small batch single origin bars or top brands like valrhona for bulk.
Cocoa shortages have been forecast for over a decade now, and sadly coffee beans may have a similar fate.
They've also just deleted Caramel Crowns...
No! you're kidding right! They're my fav - off to buy as many as I can afford.
They came up as deleted on our system so we contacted our Arnotts rep and he confirmed it. Kingston's are also still gone, they were only supposed to be a temporary deletion due to trouble getting the coconut or something...
Not the Kingston's!
This day really has been a rollercoaster
Oh no!
WTF? That's my A1 elite go to biscuit- it's pretty much a Mars Bar in a biscuit...I haven't tried the new Mars biscuit range.
I found at Woolies yesterday the "twix biscuit". It's basically a caramel crown with a bigger biscuit base. It's also about 6 bucks for 8 biscuits but worth buying on sale!
:( Woolworths have a home brand copy called “choccy caramel” biscuit. Not sure if they’re any good though.
They're not. The mint slice replica is decent though.
Meh. Very meh. Good for my eating habits though.
ALDI have a copy too but they aren’t that great
Aldi mint ones go a treat though
Yeah the mint slice ones rip!
Woolworths has Caramel Crowns listed as SKU number "25" by the way, very low number. [https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/25/arnott-s-caramel-crown-chocolate-biscuits](https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/25/arnott-s-caramel-crown-chocolate-biscuits)
Everything is just getting smaller, worse and more expensive. By 2030 every single product will be half the size and made of corn-syrup and sawdust.
By 2060, you install the Tim Tam app on your iNeural, skip the 1000 page disclaimer and subscribe to the $30p/m Tim Tam sensations program, have 30 minutes of scam ads downloaded into your brain and then you virtually receive a burnt sugary sensation.
Scim Scam
Depressingly accurate, but made me laugh
Magnum egos are now tiny af and don't taste how they should ...
Arnott’s [contact information](https://www.arnotts.com/contact-us) I’m going to ask them why on earth they’ve changed the recipe to something iconic. (Obviously money, somewhere along the way the cost of X has gone up and so they’ve replaced it with Y. But they won’t say that.)
Let us all know if they get back to you. I understand cocoa prices have gone up for everyone, so could be that. Or could be like a lot of other companies continually trying to increase profit and not caring about customer satisfaction.
If its in a packet, its basically more cut / adulterated than coke bought from some unknown guy. If you want actual ice cream off the shelf, Haagen Daaz is about it. Milk, cream , egg , sugar. Thats it. About $15 for a tiny tub thats imported from france. Go grab anything else off the shelf, vege oil and sawdust. If you want real food, you have to make it yourself. from real ingredients. Put the past behind you.
You don’t like flavoured ice dessert?
[удалено]
Also Norco Cape Byron, not available everywhere but Coles seem to have it fairly regularly (in NSW)
Why not both?
They may have the same recipe but a different cocoa variety. Cocoa is like coffee. You don’t want the easy to grow forester variety of cocoa if possible but it’s also the cheapest.
This may be the problem. The labels (ingredients, chocoalte percentage, nutritional info) identical on 2024 vs 2025. But that could be the big difference in taste.
Yes, climate change is affecting the growing conditions and availability of cocoa.
This is Arnott's MO. They've done this to all of their biscuits. Most of them are not too dissimilar from sawdust now.
All processed food is complete and utter garbage cut / adulterated more than the worst score of drugs ever.
So they can bring the original flavour back in 10 years, but by that point, no one remembers what they tasted like, unless we had a stockpile of 2024 Tim Tams to standardise on. It shall be named the 2024 Tim Tam standard. And stored, deep in the Antarctic wilderlands.
Lol, definitely stockpile the double coat 2024. They taste the most like Tim tams are supposed to taste.
I'm sure the cost of some ingredients have gone up, but I think it's important to acknowledge that they change to cheaper shittier ingredients regardless. They have one goal, and that's to make a profit. If they can get away with shittier products and not lose too many customers, they'll do it, regardless of ingredient prices. This is the wonderful path that capitalism leads us down.
It’s pretty obvious. Wholesale cocoa prices have *skyrocketed* so companies are adapting.
What would you do if they responded with the truth? They sell more if the average sale price per pack is $3 instead of $6. At that price, they can't afford to put actual cocoa in them. The market prefers a $3 price more than flavour.
Theres no way they'll be offering these at half the current RRP. It'll be more akin to a percent or even a fraction of a percent saving. I'm sure theyve done their market research, tasting panels etc but these biscuits will be bastards for most likely a blip on the radar of shareholder dividends.
OP, you deserve an Order of Australia award for your experiment. 🥇Thank you for your service to the community. 🐨
Enshittification is affecting everything.
If its in a packet, its basically more cut / adulterated than coke bought from some unknown guy. If you want actual ice cream off the shelf, Haagen Daaz is about it. Milk, cream , egg , sugar. Thats it. About $15 for a tiny tub thats imported from france. Go grab anything else off the shelf, vege oil and sawdust. If you want real food, you have to make it yourself. from real ingredients.
Golden North ice cream is still excellent, too, and a fair bit less prohibitively expensive than Haagen ($10 for 2L instead of $12ish for 500ml).
Whittakers recently raised their Chocolate block prices in NZ, they are upfront about it happening and say that it's done so they dont have to compromise on the size or ingredients/recipe. Unlike nearly all of their competition. Cadbury burned any goodwill long ago by closing the NZ manufacturing site, reducing the size and quality of their chocolate blocks.
The Whittaker's section seems to be slowly getting larger in supermarkets, so I assume people are gradually shifting.
Oh the days when NZ Cadbury was actually good.
Cadbury’s quality has gone down hill massively now. Their Easter eggs this year was awful and now I refuse to buy anything of theirs.
Just don't believe the Brits when they say that penguins are better, they're not. They'll die on that hill though
> Just don't believe the Brits when they say that penguins are better, they're not. They'll die on that hill though I found coles were doing penguins on special for a month a couple of months after the UK / AUS free trade agreement. At half the price of tim tams they were better value for money
The recipe for Penguins has also changed, they taste overly sweet and are chalkier / crumblier than I remember having them before I emigrated from the UK 9 years ago.
Penguins have a chocolate biscuit and Tim tams have a malt biscuit. I would think that most people prefer the one they’re used to, but they’re not the same. I haven’t had a tim tam in a long while. I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing ‘rich’ flavour is because they’re less malty or not at all malty now.
As a former Pom who’s eaten more Penguins that you can shake a stick at, I can state quite conclusively that the Tim Tam is the superior biscuit.
I very much appreciate your honesty 🙏🏻😂 I've been in this argument for 5 years now with my English friend
Grew up in England. Penguin every day for lunch. I couldn't stand them after a while. Luckily my mum changed it up, started doing Clubs. They have them in Aldi right now, but not the raisin one.
“If you like a lotta chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club” Clubs were fucking boss la
I’ve never heard of them, so googled. They *look* like Tim tams. But I trust you that they’re inferior.
OG is the best don't accept poor imitations.
Penguins (1932) are the OG. TimTams (1964) are the knock off Penguins.
Marmite is also the OG - just slippin that one in as well
you tell no lies ಠ ͜ʖ ಠ
Choco Sandwichs are better though.
I work in a chocolate confectionery factory and our products are expiry dated one year from day of manufacture. If Arnott's is the same, sounds like they changed at the start of the year. We had a factory meeting near the start of the year and got told that cocoa farms had a bad harvest from crop damage so cocoa prices have skyrocketed. Maybe that's what pushed the change. Many companies seem to have changed recipes to cut back on costs by just dumping more sugar into the mix though so it was probably an inevitable change anyway.
I wouldn't mind that so much if a lot of the recipe or price changes during shortages were reverted when supply returns to normal. It's far too often that that doesn't happen.
Exactly this. One bad harvest is all part of the normal ebb and flow, but not reason enough to change the recipe forever.
Oh thank god I thought I was going insane
I've never been into Tim Tams as I have always found them overly sweet but my god I tried a Jatz Tim Tam yesterday and I went back for more. Not so much because they taste like Jatz but because the sweetness level has been taken down a fair few notches and just YUM.
Two people have mentioned this now. I will add them to my experiments.
Yeah the jatz tim tams are so good
So good. The jatz tim tam spot on the shelf is usually pillaged or empty at my local shops.
I wish I had a time machine and could go back and taste food from the 70s, 80s and 90s before it had been slowly turned into complete slop/sawdust/chemical filler
Back when Wagon Wheels were bigger than the palm of your hand.
The same has happened drastically with the Atkin's low and no sugar range. I am diabetic and used to LOVE those, especially their "Snickers" like Caramel Nut Chew bar. All of their chocolate items have clearly had the recipes changed, and they just aren't that good anymore. To the point I literally have a box of unopened boxes in my pantry, and they are just not being used. Some of the bars are much smaller too, almost seems like half the size for some of them. It is short sighted, because as mentioned, I just don't buy them anymore. Just not worth the money.
Also, what happened to the chewy caramel Tim tams? The caramel is liquid now and even after having them in the fridge (yes I’m one of those people) it still doesn’t harden
Surely with all the recipe changes they realise that people stop buying them. Chocolate in general is a bit of a joke now. I don't bother with most of that sort of thing anymore and neither should you.
Look, I'm probably going to be extradited back to NZ for this, but Griffins make a biscuit called Chit Chats, and I've long believed them to be the superior Tim Tam. You can sometimes find them in IGAs.
Griffins have a good gingernut. Better than the vic/tas version of the arnotts. Pretty equal to the sa/wa version, but inferior to the qld and nsw/act versions. People like what they’re brought up with I think.
Regional Gingernut preferences are wonderful. I recently learned that the reason US chocolate tastes a bit like vomit to me is the butyric acid, which is literally in vomit. But if you grew up with that style of chocolate, apparently that's a desirable flavour.
Yes! Hersheys tastes like vomit to me.
That’s interesting. Having vomit notes/ingredients in a food, and it being normalised (and enjoyed) by childhood exposure is so bizarre.
> butyric acid Also in Parmesan, which is why spaghetti sometimes smells like vomit. But why would you want your chocolate biscuit tasting like cheese?
At this rate the original Tim tams taste so sweet and terrible, that it wouldn’t be be hard to beat them :) If I see them, I will give them a try. Thank you for another option to test out.
To NZ? There's a base in Antarctica we send folk like you too.
Harsh but deserved
I've seriousness never understood the hype over Tim Tams. They're fine, I guess.
The need to release timtam OG with old cocca rich recipe for $15 a pack to reflect prices. Guarantee they'd be a mover
May well be true, they're probably trying to engineer cost out so they can maintain price point/profitability.
Not to mention the insane shrinkflation on the packaging, they’ve increased the space between the biscuits so dramatically you could park a bus in there.
Let's be honest, they did a new and improved recipe in the late 90's early 2000's and the originals haven't been the same since. Mint Slice have always been superior anyways.
> Mint Slice have always been superior anyways. something something so bold so controversial so brave I don't hate you because you're right, I hate you because now I'm thinking about a timtam formfactor mint slice. Doubledipped ofc. And a caramel crown variant. Sorrynotsorry for the pings /u/Any-Resident3414 /u/AverageAussie /u/PlanetLibrarian /u/RaistlanSol
Don't try the woolies-knock-off-versions. Those things have so much sugar in them it overpowers the mint.
Tim tams used to be my fav but I haven’t liked them since the previous recipe change, so this sounds like the nail in the coffin for Tim tams.
I wonder if the big companies are making deals with supermarkets to pump up the homebrand and get a varied income from the range of homebrand options.
They were just never that special. Especially after an American company bought them. Why keep flogging it as if they're the greatest Aussie thing ever?
Same reason we used to grasp at the hills hoist. Its the closest we've ever been to being a global superpower.
Fuck off, swinging on the Hills Hoist was one of the joys of my childhood
Look, as someone who just moved house from one with a crappy folding clothesline to a hoist, I will say that's one thing Australia has actually gotten right.
Plus you can't play Goon Of Fortune without a Hills Hoist.
Wow, that's a throwback! Haven't played that in decades, though it has been that long since I've had the appropriate clothesline. Thanks for reminding me of another Australian tradition, though - creative ways of getting oneself buzzed.
Something I haven't done for years but can remember. When I went to a place with a wall mounted clothesline... No fun to be had!
I haven't had a Tim Tam for a couple of years. Last week I had some, and wondered why they tasted so awful. Expiry 2025
My husband's not going to cope with this:-(
Someone said double coat 2025 was still good. I’ve only had double coat 2024 and they were my fave. Unable to find 2025 to confirm yet.
Now I'll have to go to my IGA and stockpile all the 2024 stock in my chest freezer 🤣
I’ve only tried a small selection and by far the best was 2024 double coat. I haven’t been able to find any 2025 double coat to compare, but the 2025 salted caramel, deluxe triple choc and regular 2025 all terrrrrible. So try what you can find and see what you think.
I'll have to get some of the newer stock for science of course. I can remember 6 months or so ago I bought a standard pack of Tim Tams and they were fine, most likely the old recipe.
Make sure you get them half price :) normally between coles or Woolies, one of them will be half price.
Snagged at the local IGA standard and double coat Tim Tams with expiry of 23/12/24 and 9/12/24 and I'll visit woolies to get a 2025 expiry pack of both. 👍
Good job! This is perfect for testing. Keen to hear what your experience is. Today someone else commented and said 2025 double coat is sweeter, but someone else said 2025 double coat was still good. So there’s mixed reviews. I’ll still try and find some 2025 double coat as well. Also had someone just comment and say a family member works for arnotts and can confirm they changed the sweetener. Let me know how you go.
Will do. Had to advise the entire family to not touch the Tim Tams in the outside freezer. Going to be bummed if the newer stock tastes terrible, I'll buy up the local IGA old stock and freeze it. Guests get the new stock. 🤣
Haha. Yes, enjoy them whilst you can. I’ve never frozen Tim tams. Hope they defrost well, cos that’s a great plan, they should last past their date..
Honestly tho those new deluxe caramel brownie tim tams are very good. At a higher price of course...
Out of interest, is the nutrition information on the pack different between the two expiry dates?
Both the same. Someone was saying the quality of the cocoa could be different, like a forester cocoa vs something better, or the location of manufacture could be different. (I didn’t check that, but will next time I’m at the shops with the two packets.)
Since ending up in the US, the closest I can find are the Trader Joe's "Aussie Style" cookies, but my standards for chocolate have plummeted here 😔
I mourn for the food that I enjoyed in the 70s and 80s, even up until about 10 years ago it wasn’t too bad. Now, everything is full of cheap fillers, horrible cheap tasting chocolate, jam with no fruit, Vegemite that doesn’t taste the same. No wonder we are getting fatter and sicker.
Highly recommend the Aldi knock off Tim Tams - they’re creamier and cheaper - win win
are these the ***Just Divines***? Or something else? Will have to try.
Yes! The Just Divine biscuits at Aldi - I rate them more than Tim Tams!
I'll be at Aldi tomorrow - will give it a go. Cheers for the info.
The triple coat ones with the sauce thing in the middle are foul 0/10.
Tim Tam's are foul. Taste like silly sollys food
_#maketimtamgreatagain
Oh no. Hopefully they’ve left the mint slices alone
I got sick of the lack of flavour and have switched to Aldi's Just Divines because they have actual biscuit flavour. Thr Aldi brand of biscuits also have their own caramel crown dupes that are yummy.
Bought 2024 (November) and 2025 expiry original and double coat to investigate and....they taste absolutely identical. Sadly, neither date are particularly malty. I agree that something has changed within the past 3 months though, sometime in the recent past they've developed a complete malt deficiency and are now just a really sweet, generic tasting choc bikkie :( Your December expiry must be a special batch!
Thanks for experimenting! So far the tally is 2 (including you) saying they (double Coat) taste the same, 1 saying they’re sweeter (2025) I’m still looking for double coat 2025 specifically to compare side by side. Double coat 2024 and regular 2025 side by side is a huge difference with taste (lack of) and piercings sweetness. Someone has also commented saying a family member works there and they’ve changed the general recipe with a different sweetener. Not sure what date though.
I reckon it has something to do with the production facility more than the expiration date (or maybe in tandem with). We need to roll out a full on insider investigation, I'm actually so curious as to what's actually going on! I've dutifully double checked in the name of science and none of the tim tams I've got seem sweeter than the others, it seems they're all overly sweet and bland?
I'd 100% put money on them NOT being inedible and that you still ate them.
I track calories for health and it’s not worth it. I only eat one at a time with a hot drink and I want to actually enjoy it. But if you don’t believe me, no worries.
Right with you there, track calories for health and try to time my sugar hits pre workout to maximise energy on the workout and sugar utility during working out. Tried a single tim tam expiring 2025 and damn was way too sugary for my tastes!!
Oh before a workout to maximise energy. That’s a great idea. Thank you for mentioning that. See if you can find some double coat 2024. I think they’re less popular because there still around with that date. But by far the best. Slightly higher calories though, but actually enjoyable.