Quality Street lover goes viral after ranting chocolates have no shiny wrappers

A woman's viral rant about Quality Street has divided opinion online after she complained that the festive chocolates no longer have shiny plastic wrappers.

In a video posted to TikTok, the British woman, who hasn't been identified, is filmed holding a tub of the seasonal confectionary as she angrily rants: "I never thought I would be reduced to this. I have just opened a tin of Quality Street for probably the 60th time in my life, and what I have found inside is this travesty."

She then promises to boycott the brand, as she continues: "I will never, Quality Street, purchase this product ever again. And you can take that and put it wherever you like, because this is a travesty."

The woman goes on: "Our family, ever year, has enjoyed Quality Street in its shiny wrappers, especially the purple ones."

"Now who wants to eat this piece of garbage? I know I don't." she angrily declares, holding a purple paper-wrapped Quality Street chocolate to the person filming her outburst.

She ends her rant with: "So quality Street, 0 out of 10 for festive cheer. You can put your chocolates where the sun never shines."

She deleted the video after it went viral, but it's since been widely shared online. Her monologue sparked a debate about Quality Street's use of paper wrappers, and some people agreed with her.

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), one person said: "This is actually so real I'm so serious I get it", and another said, "you know what I thought the same thing!"

Another user, Bradley Warner posted a video responding to the woman's rant where he echoed her point. He said: "What the flip is going on here, it's paper." The response even made it as far as the Welsh Parliament, with Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies tweeting: "First Labour and Plaid gave us blanket 20mph speed limits, and now this."

Others, however, branded her rant a classic "first world problem". The video has since been taken down from TikTok by its account, whose bio now reads: "I do believe in saving the planet but we might have missed the boat."

Quality Street announced in October 2022 they were changing the wrapper for their chocolates for two reasons. The first one is that they used to wrap their chocolates in a similar paper wrapping in 1936, the second reason is that this change was for the environment.

In their statement announcing the change, they said: "The landmark move from dual foil and cellulose to recyclable paper wrappers will see Quality Street remove almost 2.5 billion individual pieces of packaging material from its supply chain globally."

Louise Barrett, Head of the Nestlé Confectionery Product Technology Centre in York, said:"Quality Street made history from the start, using the world's first twist-wrapping machine to revolutionize the way chocolates were manufactured and sold.

"Now we are making history again with the introduction of paper packaging for our famous sweets. We hope the fact that our famous sweets are now recyclable will make finding your own Quality Street favorites even more popular this year."

Other brands which ditched plastic packaging

Nestlé, the parent company of Quality Street, has changed the packaging of multiple products. The first product to switch to paper was Smarties, making them "the first global confectionery brand to switch to recyclable paper packaging". The company also trialled paper packaging for KitKats in Australia.

In May 2023, Mars announced a trial to see how successful paper wrapping would be. The trial Mars bars wrapped in recyclable paper were sold in Tesco. In a statement at the time, Mars Wrigley UK, the parent company of Mars, said: "The innovation allows Mars Wrigley UK to eliminate a considerable amount of plastic from the physical Mars bar."