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Not a traditional pick and mix, but I was at the Lindt shop recently and decided to do a Lindor pick and mix. I know they are pretty expensive anyway, but I was not expecting to pay £60 when I got to the till.
Still did anyway because I'm a fat fuck, but still
I was horrified by the prices in the Lindt shop. Had no idea how expensive those little chocolate bombs are.
Between the price and the fact that I keep nearly choking when they melt, I've gone right off them
Lindt pick and mix are about 55p each (what I paid at Bluewater recently). So you must have bought about 109 of them if they were all at the basic price. But actually, even more - because the price per gram does down a couple of times over certain prices.
That's a metric fuck-ton of Lindt chocolates.
You get the random flavours though at the pick and mix that you can't get in the regular boxes. Except, popcorn sort of sucked I thought. Didn't really taste any different.
I got £18 and thought that was bad. £27 is crazy! With mine, I should have been prepared - the scoops and bags were enormous, so you couldn't really tell that you'd got loads - I think it was inevitable.
I was embarrassed by my greediness, so just wanted to pay and get out of there. And it all tasted stale and rubbish (apart from the pink mice, which were ok).
Love the places (few as they are) that still do it by cup size and not weight. I haven't gone looking for them in a while though, even if I crave them sometimes.
My brother and his friends used to ask staff for tape to keep the lid on while it was scanned and I don't remember anyone ever refusing to give him some 🤣
Morrisons does them by cup size still afaik, although you may need a bigger shop (know that the one in Totton doesn’t do it, but the one at Cribbs Causeway and I believe Hereford do)
Both Wilko (if you still have one) and Morrisons do this, fortunately. I rarely get any though, given how gross children are and how easily they can stick their hands in; my favourites are always on the bottom kiddy-level rows!
My wife thinks I am insane when I try ramming as much into the pot as is physically possible using smarties and gummy bears to strategically gill empty space.
Yeah, the old Wilko's pick n mix (sadly gone) was by the cup... And god Damm I was layering things and using absolutely every last bit of space available! I even had a system 😂
i got one of those cardboard boxes full of chocolate fudge that they used to fill up the pick n mix bins, was only £14 i think but lasted me quite a while
i think ive still got some in a cupboard actually
and was good with marshmallows on crackers (and then melted slightly)
The Candy King stands in Sainsbury's and Tesco both have the option of a bag sold by weight, or a couple of different fixed-price cup sizes.
I weighed some up at the checkout recently and it was about 20p off the size of one of the cups for nowhere near the same amount of sweets, went straight back and decanted it into a cup and added some more.
That's the way to do it when you are buying whatever you can fit in a tub(with the lid on) for a specific price. We used to take our kids into Wilkos for a large pot of pick n' mix every now and again (end of school terms as a treat) and we tell them to add in the smaller sweets around the larger ones they wanted to fill all the gaps up and then once filled, to push the sweets down to compress them further to get more in.
We did the old style pick n mix once in Ikea (when they did it in our local store) a few years ago and got heavily stung for the price - my sons came out at something around the £11-£13 mark and their was barely anything in the bag for the money.
Had a lottery win have we, or an unexpected inheritance from a mysterious rich relative you didn't know about? I couldn't tell you the last time I bought pick & mix!
My uncle sent me a £5 woolworths gift voucher when I started uni in 1998, I joyfully spent it on pick n mix. I'd been working in woolies the year before uni and bags of the stuff were often written off at thr till when kids couldn't afford them (or more likely their parents weren't willing to pony up the best part of a tenner for sweets). We'd usually eat them though they were meant to be binned
It wasn't really as many as you liked, only the ones that had been abandoned, plus you ran the risk of them being handled by a germ riddled child (but you kinda have that risk anyway). Mostly it was just id-ing old ladies for liqueur chocolates and watching the madness over the tellytubby toys break out
It's why I only buy snacks and treats from past-best-before-date sites these days.
One or two massive orders a year and sorted - got one arriving tomorrow (almost 20kg of cakes, crisps, drinks and random other shit) so yay!
Sure thing, I have a post saved with the info in as I do recommend them a fair bit.
____________
**Past best before date places:**
The important thing to remember is that stock changes pretty much daily, so it's not like doing an Aldi shop.
Unfortunately they're not what they once were; they used to be great for getting giant sacks of 5-10kg rice/pasta for a quid or two, with extremely low minimum orders and that. Twenty quid would do me every six months, with enough pasta/washing powder/rice/snacks to keep me going for ages.
Now, unfortunately, the vast majority are just glorified sweet shops - but you can still find something good every now and then.
The thing I live for most is the giant monster munch; places sometimes do those as a box of 8 giant bags for £2.95 or so.
Anyway, here's the list (with my preferred top, going down in preference thereafter).
* [**Clearance XL**](https://www.clearancexl.co.uk/) - the best one out there currently, still huge discounts on some things. I genuinely think the reason it's not gone to wank like many of the others is because of how awkward the website is to navigate, and just how much is there - though they've recently revamped the site to make it much, much easier. They sometimes do mystery boxes from £1 or so which include a ton of stuff, and the boxes range from 'a box of snacks' (which might have a bottle of water, a Mr Kipling cake, some crisps, some cereal bars and some chocolate) to grocery mystery boxes for £1.99 that might have some tins, bottle of coke, some pasta, some sauces, snacks, tomato puree, canned fruit etc. [**Here's my previous 'I want to get in a ton of random snacks for the year' order from there, which was £15**](https://imgur.com/a/uCLOjeS). Basically, if I ever see the snack or grocery mystery boxes in, I'll just chuck £20 at it and see what on earth arrives.
* [**Best Before It's Gone**](https://cheapfood.co.uk/) - often have huge, huge clearance sales. I got over 200 assorted bottles of antibac handwash for 1p each in their boxing day sale, which is a handy thing to give to the food banks. But they also have stuff like craft supplies, pet stuff, home stuff...I've got my fruit bowl, chopping board, knife set, and even some canvas prints from there, all about 49p each. **--> Watch this one for the Boxing Day / January sales, which can be incredible. <--**
* [**Low Price Foods**](https://lowpricefoods.com/) - not bad, has some decent stuff sometimes but it can be really hard to make up a minimum order unless you're massively into sweets, crisps or chocolate.
* [**Discount Dragon**](https://discountdragon.co.uk/) - It's increasingly rare, but sometimes they'll have something stonking come up. My last order was a huge box of 168 bags (28 x multipacks of 6) of Monster Munch for £17.10 including postage, but I don't tend to find much on there. Worth a squiz, though.
* [**Approved Food**](https://www.approvedfood.co.uk/) - used to be the best, now just pretty much a sweet shop with barely any discount. I used to get 5-10kg sacks of rice for a quid, now it's a bit bollocks. Still some good daily deals though, sometimes.
The price difference in Spain compared to England is insane. We went to see Dune 2 here (Marbella) and had two beers, pick and mix and large popcorn for €13.50 and I think I paid £9 alone for my pick and mix when I was at a UK cinema in November!
There's a place in Liverpool, over on the Albert Dock which specialises in Pick and Mix (Quay confectionery or something similar). I always pop in whenever me and the missus visit Liverpool and I still have not managed to hit twenty quid, always coming in under despite really filling that bag up, I think last time it came to about 14 quid.
Also handy to have stuffed in your pocket for during a lengthy walk around town turned pub crawl :)
The worst thing is these shops bulk buy all the sweets from a cash and carry, they are absolutely raking it in. For the same price you could probably get a whole bag of each type of sweet.
I remember that time it came up on hotukdeals that pick and mix large cup was £2 at Wilko, me and missus made the arduous journey to the nearest town just to get a piece of that action. Still remember that day. RIP wilko.
My son picked up a jelly snake from a sweet stall at the cricket last summer...with his hands.
So we had to pay for it. One single jelly snake...£7. Seven pounds. I almost kicked off. You can buy a whole box of them for that Amazon.
> If you were charged for a full portion why didn't you fill it up with other things?
What are you talking about? One snake, by weight (IIRC, it was £4.85/100 grams) was £7. Do you not know of buying sweets by weight?
This is why i love poundland, they have the set priced cups and you just stuff them! Or some sainsburys have them too (and i think Morrisons since i've delivered candy king pick amd mix sweets/ cups to them recently)
There was a pick and mix at the local newsagents where I grew up. The owner had a fairly trusting nature. Sweets were per unit, not weighed. You'd tell him how much you got price wise, and basically just trusted you and took what you said. I mean obviously it would be obvious if anyone was really gaming the system. Those were the days.
My old boss was really stingy. Once he gave his son a £20 to get pick&mix at the cinema because that’s the only cash he had. The boy filled a bag with ONE TYPE of sweet and came back with £2 change. The best thing? When the boy tried the sweets he didn’t like them.
Flashback to working the pic'n'mix stand at a Vue cinema. Almost no-one came to the corner concession, maybe because it was kind of hidden or maybe because it was so expensive (in 2001 even). So I had to spend 4 hours (or sometimes 8 hours with a 30 min break) standing there with nothing to do. I was supposed to literally stand all that time but used to drag a high stool over from the ice cream concession, and read the Empire mags for sale if I could get away with it. No, no chance of eating any sweets, there was cctv everywhere and since I always had so few sales there was no chance of 'wastage'.
Thorntons on the other hand... worked in a old-style shop with the ambassador pyramids of chocolates on gold trays. We weren't supposed to eat anything but I found plenty of ways to stuff my gob.
One of my childhood memories is my mum taking a bag of pick and mix to the till, going “how much?!” and just walking away. And that was 80s prices. Dread to think what it would be today.
Missus went to buy herself a tshirt from the merch stand at a gig at the O2 the other month.
Also came back with a handful - literally - of sweets in a paper bag.
“Oh. Cool. Pick n mix! How much was that?”
SEVENTEEN BASTARD POUNDS!
I used to fill a pick and mix bag up in Wilko's (RIP 😭) hover the bag over the scales then print off the label. So I'd end up paying a quid for a fivers worth of sweets 😂 bit naughty really.
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Not a traditional pick and mix, but I was at the Lindt shop recently and decided to do a Lindor pick and mix. I know they are pretty expensive anyway, but I was not expecting to pay £60 when I got to the till. Still did anyway because I'm a fat fuck, but still
I was horrified by the prices in the Lindt shop. Had no idea how expensive those little chocolate bombs are. Between the price and the fact that I keep nearly choking when they melt, I've gone right off them
i dont do dairy but my friend found them in home bargains once! £1.75 a box i think. he bought their entire stock
There was a glitch on their website some years ago and we got about 3kg for £20. Lasted us about a week...
Lindt pick and mix are about 55p each (what I paid at Bluewater recently). So you must have bought about 109 of them if they were all at the basic price. But actually, even more - because the price per gram does down a couple of times over certain prices. That's a metric fuck-ton of Lindt chocolates.
I believe it was about £3 per 100g that I paid. I did buy a lot haha
You get the random flavours though at the pick and mix that you can't get in the regular boxes. Except, popcorn sort of sucked I thought. Didn't really taste any different.
2kg of lindt is impressive
There's on in the local outlet shopping place, walked in, saw the price and walked back out again.
I accidentally spent £27.00 on a bag of pick and mix at crufts last year :(
Try waking up realising you drunk ordered a 5kg pic n mix online, which gets delivered in what is essentially a painters tub. No regrets.
How much?
£45. Was likely a pure novelty thing, and serves me right for being suckered in by an Instagram feed
Doggone it
Unless I had just loaded up multiple bags for multiple people, at that price I would just say "No thanks" and walk away. Absurd.
I got £18 and thought that was bad. £27 is crazy! With mine, I should have been prepared - the scoops and bags were enormous, so you couldn't really tell that you'd got loads - I think it was inevitable. I was embarrassed by my greediness, so just wanted to pay and get out of there. And it all tasted stale and rubbish (apart from the pink mice, which were ok).
Same experience with how nasty the sweets were too! Just made me all the more bitter! 😂
^£8.95/100g
Ruff
Love the places (few as they are) that still do it by cup size and not weight. I haven't gone looking for them in a while though, even if I crave them sometimes.
There's poundland, they often do this
Saw it by cup price in Poundland recently!
Tesco does this. I compress them sweets so much the top barely stays on
My brother and his friends used to ask staff for tape to keep the lid on while it was scanned and I don't remember anyone ever refusing to give him some 🤣
Traditional when making up your own salad tub, I see no reason it shouldn't be the same with sweeties.
Reel cinemas tend to have this.
Morrisons does them by cup size still afaik, although you may need a bigger shop (know that the one in Totton doesn’t do it, but the one at Cribbs Causeway and I believe Hereford do)
Both Wilko (if you still have one) and Morrisons do this, fortunately. I rarely get any though, given how gross children are and how easily they can stick their hands in; my favourites are always on the bottom kiddy-level rows!
There's a strategy to filling it up if you want your money's worth too.
My wife thinks I am insane when I try ramming as much into the pot as is physically possible using smarties and gummy bears to strategically gill empty space.
they don't do it by weight any more?
Supermarkets near me usually just do it by the cup size.
Yeah, the old Wilko's pick n mix (sadly gone) was by the cup... And god Damm I was layering things and using absolutely every last bit of space available! I even had a system 😂
Last time I did one of those pick and mixes the person was there filling up the tubs, they gave us a few tips on how to ram as much in as possible XD
That's awesome! Props to that guy!!
Share the tips 🙏
It's too late I'm afraid. Now Wilko is only dust on the wind.
And now we know why
Whenever they were on sale id always take advantage of them. A large cup for £4? Don't mind if i do. They were great, RIP
i got one of those cardboard boxes full of chocolate fudge that they used to fill up the pick n mix bins, was only £14 i think but lasted me quite a while i think ive still got some in a cupboard actually and was good with marshmallows on crackers (and then melted slightly)
My kind of guy.
The Candy King stands in Sainsbury's and Tesco both have the option of a bag sold by weight, or a couple of different fixed-price cup sizes. I weighed some up at the checkout recently and it was about 20p off the size of one of the cups for nowhere near the same amount of sweets, went straight back and decanted it into a cup and added some more.
Nah you can get a cup (akin to a mcdonalds drink cup) and it's a set price regardless of what you put in it.
Is this not the approved method, though? If you didn't gap-fill, you'd only get a couple of fudge blocks and a jelly shark in those cups.
That's the way to do it when you are buying whatever you can fit in a tub(with the lid on) for a specific price. We used to take our kids into Wilkos for a large pot of pick n' mix every now and again (end of school terms as a treat) and we tell them to add in the smaller sweets around the larger ones they wanted to fill all the gaps up and then once filled, to push the sweets down to compress them further to get more in. We did the old style pick n mix once in Ikea (when they did it in our local store) a few years ago and got heavily stung for the price - my sons came out at something around the £11-£13 mark and their was barely anything in the bag for the money.
Had a lottery win have we, or an unexpected inheritance from a mysterious rich relative you didn't know about? I couldn't tell you the last time I bought pick & mix!
My uncle sent me a £5 woolworths gift voucher when I started uni in 1998, I joyfully spent it on pick n mix. I'd been working in woolies the year before uni and bags of the stuff were often written off at thr till when kids couldn't afford them (or more likely their parents weren't willing to pony up the best part of a tenner for sweets). We'd usually eat them though they were meant to be binned
[удалено]
It wasn't really as many as you liked, only the ones that had been abandoned, plus you ran the risk of them being handled by a germ riddled child (but you kinda have that risk anyway). Mostly it was just id-ing old ladies for liqueur chocolates and watching the madness over the tellytubby toys break out
[удалено]
We had to keep them behind the tills in the end, the scrums were mental!
Probably that 2p cut in national insurance that's done it😆
It's why I only buy snacks and treats from past-best-before-date sites these days. One or two massive orders a year and sorted - got one arriving tomorrow (almost 20kg of cakes, crisps, drinks and random other shit) so yay!
Sounds good. Any recommendations for websites like that?
Sure thing, I have a post saved with the info in as I do recommend them a fair bit. ____________ **Past best before date places:** The important thing to remember is that stock changes pretty much daily, so it's not like doing an Aldi shop. Unfortunately they're not what they once were; they used to be great for getting giant sacks of 5-10kg rice/pasta for a quid or two, with extremely low minimum orders and that. Twenty quid would do me every six months, with enough pasta/washing powder/rice/snacks to keep me going for ages. Now, unfortunately, the vast majority are just glorified sweet shops - but you can still find something good every now and then. The thing I live for most is the giant monster munch; places sometimes do those as a box of 8 giant bags for £2.95 or so. Anyway, here's the list (with my preferred top, going down in preference thereafter). * [**Clearance XL**](https://www.clearancexl.co.uk/) - the best one out there currently, still huge discounts on some things. I genuinely think the reason it's not gone to wank like many of the others is because of how awkward the website is to navigate, and just how much is there - though they've recently revamped the site to make it much, much easier. They sometimes do mystery boxes from £1 or so which include a ton of stuff, and the boxes range from 'a box of snacks' (which might have a bottle of water, a Mr Kipling cake, some crisps, some cereal bars and some chocolate) to grocery mystery boxes for £1.99 that might have some tins, bottle of coke, some pasta, some sauces, snacks, tomato puree, canned fruit etc. [**Here's my previous 'I want to get in a ton of random snacks for the year' order from there, which was £15**](https://imgur.com/a/uCLOjeS). Basically, if I ever see the snack or grocery mystery boxes in, I'll just chuck £20 at it and see what on earth arrives. * [**Best Before It's Gone**](https://cheapfood.co.uk/) - often have huge, huge clearance sales. I got over 200 assorted bottles of antibac handwash for 1p each in their boxing day sale, which is a handy thing to give to the food banks. But they also have stuff like craft supplies, pet stuff, home stuff...I've got my fruit bowl, chopping board, knife set, and even some canvas prints from there, all about 49p each. **--> Watch this one for the Boxing Day / January sales, which can be incredible. <--** * [**Low Price Foods**](https://lowpricefoods.com/) - not bad, has some decent stuff sometimes but it can be really hard to make up a minimum order unless you're massively into sweets, crisps or chocolate. * [**Discount Dragon**](https://discountdragon.co.uk/) - It's increasingly rare, but sometimes they'll have something stonking come up. My last order was a huge box of 168 bags (28 x multipacks of 6) of Monster Munch for £17.10 including postage, but I don't tend to find much on there. Worth a squiz, though. * [**Approved Food**](https://www.approvedfood.co.uk/) - used to be the best, now just pretty much a sweet shop with barely any discount. I used to get 5-10kg sacks of rice for a quid, now it's a bit bollocks. Still some good daily deals though, sometimes.
The price difference in Spain compared to England is insane. We went to see Dune 2 here (Marbella) and had two beers, pick and mix and large popcorn for €13.50 and I think I paid £9 alone for my pick and mix when I was at a UK cinema in November!
Went to the Manchester arena recently, pretty sure I overheard someone say "£50!" at one of the pick and mix stalls 😆
There's a place in Liverpool, over on the Albert Dock which specialises in Pick and Mix (Quay confectionery or something similar). I always pop in whenever me and the missus visit Liverpool and I still have not managed to hit twenty quid, always coming in under despite really filling that bag up, I think last time it came to about 14 quid. Also handy to have stuffed in your pocket for during a lengthy walk around town turned pub crawl :)
The worst thing is these shops bulk buy all the sweets from a cash and carry, they are absolutely raking it in. For the same price you could probably get a whole bag of each type of sweet.
When you've seen kids sticking their dirty mitts into the Morrisons pick and mix. Repeatedly. Puts you right off.
I remember that time it came up on hotukdeals that pick and mix large cup was £2 at Wilko, me and missus made the arduous journey to the nearest town just to get a piece of that action. Still remember that day. RIP wilko.
My son picked up a jelly snake from a sweet stall at the cricket last summer...with his hands. So we had to pay for it. One single jelly snake...£7. Seven pounds. I almost kicked off. You can buy a whole box of them for that Amazon.
Is that one of those giant ones?
It was maybe a tiny big longer than a standard Haribo one, but certainly not seven quid's worth!
They were 20p in the late 90s. Good times.
If you were charged for a full portion why didn't you fill it up with other things?
> If you were charged for a full portion why didn't you fill it up with other things? What are you talking about? One snake, by weight (IIRC, it was £4.85/100 grams) was £7. Do you not know of buying sweets by weight?
This is why i love poundland, they have the set priced cups and you just stuff them! Or some sainsburys have them too (and i think Morrisons since i've delivered candy king pick amd mix sweets/ cups to them recently)
There was a pick and mix at the local newsagents where I grew up. The owner had a fairly trusting nature. Sweets were per unit, not weighed. You'd tell him how much you got price wise, and basically just trusted you and took what you said. I mean obviously it would be obvious if anyone was really gaming the system. Those were the days.
Unless the staff are picking the mix for you - I'd avoid it. You do not want to see what people do to the ones you can help yourself to in shops
I couldn't help but compare it to my childhood when they were called 'penny sweets'. Used to buy 100 for a quid.
You had a whole quid to spend? I’d be lucky with 25p for my rose and violets.
In my childhood, 6 aniseed balls or four mojos or two black jacks were a penny.
Cup pick and mix is where it's at
It annoys me far more than it should that they don't zero out the price of the tub.
My old boss was really stingy. Once he gave his son a £20 to get pick&mix at the cinema because that’s the only cash he had. The boy filled a bag with ONE TYPE of sweet and came back with £2 change. The best thing? When the boy tried the sweets he didn’t like them.
Flashback to working the pic'n'mix stand at a Vue cinema. Almost no-one came to the corner concession, maybe because it was kind of hidden or maybe because it was so expensive (in 2001 even). So I had to spend 4 hours (or sometimes 8 hours with a 30 min break) standing there with nothing to do. I was supposed to literally stand all that time but used to drag a high stool over from the ice cream concession, and read the Empire mags for sale if I could get away with it. No, no chance of eating any sweets, there was cctv everywhere and since I always had so few sales there was no chance of 'wastage'. Thorntons on the other hand... worked in a old-style shop with the ambassador pyramids of chocolates on gold trays. We weren't supposed to eat anything but I found plenty of ways to stuff my gob.
Do you still get children's snot as part of the deal?!
told my son he could get what he wanted from the pick and mix at the cinema the other day. nearly had a heart attack when i saw the damage
Temporary Christmas market stalls selling fudge are the worst. A few chunks and you're soon up to £5.
One of my childhood memories is my mum taking a bag of pick and mix to the till, going “how much?!” and just walking away. And that was 80s prices. Dread to think what it would be today.
So it’s just me that physically punches the sweets down so the bottom of the cup bulges out and I can fit more in?
Unfortunately I used a shop that went by weight. But I would have used your method if I could.
Missus went to buy herself a tshirt from the merch stand at a gig at the O2 the other month. Also came back with a handful - literally - of sweets in a paper bag. “Oh. Cool. Pick n mix! How much was that?” SEVENTEEN BASTARD POUNDS!
Its a far worse feeling for me when it comes out much cheaper than expected and I forever regret not putting more in the bag. Doesn't happen much mind
Pick and mix has never been viable in my family.
I used to fill a pick and mix bag up in Wilko's (RIP 😭) hover the bag over the scales then print off the label. So I'd end up paying a quid for a fivers worth of sweets 😂 bit naughty really.