We have only been a few days into autumn but the shops have decided that it is already summer. Halloween and All Saints come through the door and they do it every year with less margin compared to Christmaswhich even advances these festivities in supermarkets such as Mercadona. The Valencian chain is already promoting its ‘terrifying’ sweets and they come hand in hand with the first nougat of the season. It is not going to be that we lack time to saturate ourselves with sugar and chocolate.
They will be arriving little by little at all their shops, and they have probably already made their appearance days ago in more than one, but there is no escape and soon all supermarkets and other retailers will have to juggle to fit the entire assortment of sweets and products associated with the fall and winter holidays. Why respect the calendar and follow a successive order, if they can overlap?
As of this week, Mercadona has highlighted in its list of news in the online store its halloween candy catalog, basically chocolate bars and sweets in the shapes of various figures associated with the Halloween festivity (pumpkins, vampires, skulls, skeletons, spiders, little monsters…). But if you continue going down the list, other old acquaintances appear, the nougats and pralines.
We can now buy again hard and soft nougat, and a whole assortment of chocolate nougat that repeat from other years: crunchy, with almonds, with kikos, with peanuts and honey and the famous hazelnut cream, which supposedly mimics the taste of Kinder Bueno chocolate. And in case there seems to be little variety for the month of September, we also have a bag of mini nougats and several chocolates with a festive air.
It is not that Mercadona is the first chain to bring out Christmas sweets, since it has been weeks since we have seen the first panettone and pandoros in Salvamás, Carrefour and some other regional super, but when the Valencian chain fires the starting gun, there is no turning back.
Until recently we could thank the fact that we have embraced Halloween in Spain for giving us some margin before suffering the Christmas embarrassment, but not even that is respected. We are left with the doubt as to whether these nougat early risers will still be from the previous year’s campaign, although, if we compare the prices, compared to 2021, we see that we’re not even going to save advance purchases. They are all more expensive.
If hard and soft nougat cost 2.30 euros for 250 g last year, now we see them at 2.55 euros for the same weight. The chocolate nougat has gone from 1.05 to 1.60 euros, the same as the hazelnut cream, which used to cost us 1.45 euros. few surprisestaking into account that Mercadona is one of the chains that have increased their prices the most in recent months.
We will have to see how the Christmas products are presented in the other shops. But let’s hope be late in arriving a little more, that before we have our panellets, saint’s bones, fritters and others. Not for lack of sweet.
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