Percy Pig sweets contain real pig

A packet of Percy Pig sweetsSupermarket Marks & Spencer sells some very nice pig-shaped sweets called Percy Pigs (or possibly just Percy Pig, as the pictured packet suggests).

I was highly amused to notice last week that one of the major ingredients of Percy Pig(s), along with glucose syrup and sugar, is pork gelatine. Pork – pig – Percy Pig. Get it?

However, according to Wikipedia, pig-shaped sweets are "a traditional sweet in the United Kingdom and have been around for many years".

I don't recall there being many pig-shaped sweets in my youth, and if there were, I don't know whether they contained pork gelatine. But I imagine they probably did, so I can't give M&S staff too much credit for their wit.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

As an enthusiastic consumer of all things Percy Pig, I'm disturbed by this news.

I'm particularly disturbed by the spin-off range Percy Piglets, which now seem more akin to genocide than confectionery. Is each sweet made from a separate, real live piglet? I think we should be told.

Moreover, what's up with Percy Pig and Friends, a range which contains not just pig sweets but also those in the shape of cows and sheep? Just what exactly are we eating?

Anonymous said...

What about Penny pig?? Percy's mistress??? What a porky slut! She has jaundice for starters and tastes like cif .. (formally known as jif) We believe that Miss Penny Pig is the WAG of the M&S farmyard animal based confectionary world. Discuss ...

Anonymous said...

What about Penny pig?? Percy's mistress??? What a porky slut! She has jaundice for starters and tastes like cif .. (formally known as jif) We believe that Miss Penny Pig is the WAG of the M&S farmyard animal based confectionary world. Discuss ...

Anonymous said...

i love percy pigs, but consider myself vegetarian..this is grose and tragic, now i cant eat them boooo..........

Anonymous said...

The gelatine is just the ear bits. If you are veggie then just eat his face.

Anonymous said...

Marks and Spencer have been making Percy Pigs for a while, only recently they seem to have had a surge in popularity.

I became vegetarian ten years ago and continued eating these as they were a big favourite of mine AND they were, at the time, suitable for vegetarians. Then (quite sometime ago, maybe eight years) without warning the 'suitable for vegetarians' disappeared from the front of the packet, leading me to check the ingredients and see that they had changed their recipe to include gelatine.

I wrote to Marks and Spencer a couple of times asking why they had done it and imploring them to change the recipe back to being vegetarian, but got nowhere.

I miss Percy Pigs VERY much. :(

Bah M and S!

Anonymous said...

FYI Percy pigs now come in a veggie variety that contain no pig . Incidently veggie Percy has one green ear !