Why everyone’s talking about Percy Pigs

Marks & Spencer has sparked a social media firestorm by changing the recipe of its Percy Pigs to make the sweets vegetarian.

The decision to remove gelatine from the ingredients has been criticised by commentators ranging from Piers Morgan - who recoiled in disgust when he tried the new version on Good Morning Britain - to The Sun, which ran a full front-page rant against the “P.C. Pigs”.

Meanwhile, Percy Pig fans have taken to social media to deride the new gelatine-free recipe as “frankly vile” and “an assault on normal food”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But why has there been such a strong backlash - and is using gelatine actually necessary? The Week looks at the facts:

How did Percy Pigs become a sacred cow?

First appearing on shelves in 1992, Percy Pigs quickly became “the sweet du choix of the chatterati”, and have since become something akin to a British icon, says The Guardian’s Zoe Williams. Indeed, “a Percy Pig appreciation society has even been set up on Facebook and currently has 250,000 members”, reports Metro.

The huge popularity of the chewy confectionary took even its makers by surprise.

“You could argue it’s not a traditionally British sweet,” M&S product developor Lucy Clark told The Independent back in 2010.“The British have a long history of sweets like wine gums, and I think the taste of Percy Pig is more continental.

“We pioneered the use of natural colours and flavours, and they taste better because of it. People also notice that they are fresher than most chewy sweets and there’s a perception that they are healthier because of the fruit juice. All of that gives people the excuse they need to eat them.”

Until the recent recipe change, Percy Pigs also contained real pig - in the form of pork gelatin.

Although gelatine doesn’t add flavour to food, it “does serve a purpose - usually it’s used as a thickener or stabiliser in desserts and sweets”, says the BBC.

However, the increasing popularity of vegetarianism led M&S to take another look at the recipe. “For the last eight years we have been working to help our favourite pig move away from using pork gelatine,” the firm said in a tweeted response to criticism of the change.

“We have progressively introduced the new recipe across all of our Percy range and from May this year we will be able to celebrate that Percy is 100% gelatine free and can be enjoyed by everybody.”

The new formula replaces gelatine with pectin, a common vegetarian alternative in sweets and jellies.

What was the response?

Some critics claim that moving away from gelatine has altered the flavour of Percy Pigs.

In a statement to the BBC, M&S said that the new recipe had been tested to ensure it’s “as close to the original as possible”, and that all the “really important things people love about Percy” are the same.

But not everyone is convinced.

The Guardian’s Williams concludes that claims the new version tastes like soap are overblown, but adds that “the texture, however, is worse”. “Any notion of the perfect balance will always be subjective, but without any trace of gelatine...the chew is just boring,” she writes.

What next?

M&S “seem to have succumbed to a bit of pressure from sweet fans”, says the Manchester Evening News. The retailer is looking for 100 volunteers to join a panel that will help decide whether the recipe should be reverted back its original, gelatinous form.

The prospect of a return to the original Percy Pigs met with a positive response from many people online, although others were too busy trying to make a quick buck by selling bags of the original product on eBay, reports the London Evening Standard.