Vote for your go-to chocolate biscuit bar below
The best thing about a penguin, my kids tell me, is the joke. We are talking chocolate biscuits, of course, and what my twenty-something offspring remember fondly is the riddle on the wrapper. How does a penguin build a house? Igloos it together.
Now, the Aussies are coming for your biscuit break. Tim Tams, the Australian-made chocolate-coated sandwich bars (first created in 1964) that bear a remarkable resemblance to McVitie’s Penguins (invented in Glasgow some 30 years prior), have been available in this country from specialist shops – and even on the “foreign foods” shelves of some supermarkets – for a few years, but now they’ve gone mainstream with listings in Waitrose and Ocado.
They have a legion of fans and a quick look at reviews online suggests that Australians wouldn’t give a XXXX for anything except a Tim Tam. Mind you, my expat mates are sniffy about the amount in each packet, since there are just nine biscuits (165g) in the British packets and a more generous 11 in 200g packs sold Down Under. The Australian price of $5 works out at about £2.58 currently, or £1.29 per 100g, while the British ones come in at £1.53 per 100g. Not an unreasonable markup given they’re actually made in Oz and have to be shipped all the way here.
However, those TimTams are 50 per cent more expensive than a trusty Penguin (which is about £1.02 per 100g). Wowsers. Can they really be half as good again?
Let’s manage expectations: with food, as with many things, it’s a law of diminishing returns when it comes to price. Spending twice as much is unlikely to give you something twice as good, but you’d hope it would be a bit better.
Of course, there’s the glamour of the Australian connection, and the opportunity to mention casually how much you grew to love Tim Tams during your gap year in the Outback. But whether they could really steal the hearts of devoted British Penguin fans is more doubtful.
Yes, other chocolate-covered biscuit bars are available: Clubs (plain chunky biscuit, thick coating), Rocky (oaty biscuit, thinner coating), even the venerable chewy Tunnocks caramel wafer, to name just three. But the appeal of Penguins, Tim Tams and their imitations is their sandwich structure: they’re essentially Bourbon creams covered in chocolate (Tim Tams with a noticeably strong vanilla/caramel flavour). None are going to win any prizes for health: they’ve all got palm oil, emulsifiers and various other UPF (ultra-processed food) signifiers on their ingredients lists.
One obvious difference is that Tim Tams are not individually wrapped, unlike Penguins and some of the supermarket mimics available. However lunchbox-friendly Penguins are, less plastic packaging has to be a plus. And although Tim Tams sit in a plastic tray, it is a recyclable one.
As for names, most supermarkets have followed McVitie’s lead and piled onto the chocolate critter bandwagon for their own-label versions. There’s Morrisons’ called Toucan, Aldi’s Seal, and Lidl plumping for Arctic bars sporting a picture of a polar bear. (Asda’s Puffin bars, meanwhile, after being cited in a court case by United Biscuits, were ruled in 1997 to have ‘passed-off’ the more famous Penguins; their packaging had to change but the name was allowed to remain, although they have since been discontinued). As for Tim Tams, creator Ross Arnott named them after the winning horse in the 1958 Kentucky Derby.
The Australian bars feature more grown-up branding, muted brown packaging and absolutely no cute animals or jokes; their slogan, “There is no substitute,” hasn’t quite got the ring of “P-p-p-pick up a Penguin.”
But what they do have going for them is the Tim Tam Slam – a biscuit-dunking technique that involves biting off diagonally opposite corners and dipping the biscuit in tea with one of the nibbled corners barely submerged. The other corner is then quickly sucked, like a straw, until the tea has soaked through the biscuit. If you’ve got the technique right, when eaten the inside will be squelchy and soft and the chocolate coating just beginning to melt.
Warm, squidgy and gooey, the result is a sort of Pot-Noodle-level chocolate fondant pudding. It’s not elegant but trust me, this one really has to be tried. No joke.
Aldi Belmont Biscuits Milk Chocolate Seal Bars
£1.09 for eight (54p/100g)
Quite blandly sweet, although contains less sugar than Penguins or TimTams. Nice and crunchy. Put it in a Penguin wrapper and only a connoisseur would notice, though it lacks that distinct full flavour.
Morrisons Toucan
£1.25 for eight (62.5p/100g)
Identical to Aldi’s Seal Bar in looks and taste, so likewise tastes fine, if not quite in Penguin’s class.
Lidl Tower Gate Milk Chocolate Arctic Bars
£1.09 for eight (54p/100g)
Look exactly like Morrisons’ Toucans and Aldi’s Seals, but the flavour is subtly different, as though there’s a shot of caramel latte syrup in the mix. An extra mark for that.
Tim Tam Original
£2.50 for nine at Waitrose (£1.53/100g)
2cm shorter than a Penguin but slightly thicker. Well flavoured, with a caramel vanilla note, although the chocolate (actually chocolate-flavoured coating, according to the wrapper) melts easily. Very sweet.
Penguin Original
£1.75 for seven at Tesco (£1.02/100g)
A tad longer than most of the own-label bars, and has a slightly lower chocolate percentage. The biscuit is crunchy and more malty than chocolatey but has a pleasingly rounded flavour. The joke still tickles.
M&S Food Milk Chocolate Coated Bourbon Creams
£2.50 for six at Ocado (£1.54/100g)
Squat little bars with a much thicker coating than the other supermarket versions; they are more than 50 per cent chocolate. A crisp and mild flavoured biscuit, though palate-buzzingly sweet overall.
Aldi Specially Selected Milk Chocolate Just Divine
£1.79 for 11 (90p/100g)
There’s been a run on these Tim Tam imitations since their launch in March and no wonder: they taste far more chocolatey than the Aussie version and use real Belgian chocolate. Look at that price, too. A win.
Have your say...
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
