Let’s talk about custard creams.

Once a noble biscuit, favoured by tea-swilling aunties and children with a talent for spotting a cracked edge at twenty paces.

But something’s gone terribly wrong.

Back in the golden age of biscuitry, a custard cream was a solid, trustworthy rectangle. Beige, mildly crunchy, and filled with a modest splodge of custard-ish paste. Nothing showy. Just a quiet nod to pudding. It tasted like the first day of the school holidays and came with a crunch you could set your watch by.

Not any more.

Now, the modern custard cream has been chemically embalmed and dipped in something that glows faintly under UV light. The filling isn’t custard, it’s some sort of synthetic frosting that tastes like a toothpaste factory had a breakdown during a sugar delivery. One bite and you’re hurled into a cloying avalanche of saccharine, the kind of sweetness usually reserved for American cereals or unstable unicorns.

The biscuit itself—once sturdy enough to survive a dunking—now collapses like a cheap gazebo in a stiff breeze. And the flavour? Gone. Replaced by something you’d expect to be sold in a shiny wrapper with a QR code and a health warning.

So let’s take a moment, shall we? The next time you see those garish yellow packets in the supermarket, remember what we once had. A biscuit that understood its role: dependable, nostalgic, and quietly excellent.

Rest well, custard cream. You were flavourful without being needy. Sweet without being desperate. And now? You’ll likely be reincarnated as a £7.50 “heritage biscuit” in a shop that refuses to take cash and insists on calling jam “fruit reduction.”

But that, as they say, is another story.