A Pinch of Nonsense: Twelve Supermarket Sprinkle Tubs, Blind-Tasted by a Family Who Took It Far Too Seriously
There is a moment, roughly four seconds after a child has been handed a 99, when the sprinkles decide whether the whole enterprise is a triumph or a tragedy. Good ones add crunch, a flicker of colour and the faint suggestion that you are at the seaside even if you are in a retail park in Stoke. Bad ones taste of wax, bleed into a grey smear and leave you questioning the £1.20 you just spent. We decided to find out which is which.
The panel, the rules and the slightly unhinged spreadsheet
We bought 12 tubs of supermarket sprinkles — round hundreds-and-thousands, long sugar strands, rainbow rods, chocolate strands and a couple of mixed-shape novelty jobs — from the usual big names and the discounters. Prices ranged from 36p per 100g to £2.59 per 100g. Each was decanted into an unmarked bowl and tasted three ways: dry, on a plain vanilla scoop, and on a cheap cone with a smear of soft-scoop. The panel: two adults, a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. The six-year-old scored purely on colour. The nine-year-old scored purely on whether they could get a second bowl. We averaged the grown-ups and used the kids as a tie-breaker, then argued about the tie-breaker for 20 minutes.
Scoring: crunch out of 10; colour bleed out of 10 (10 = no bleed); waxiness out of 10 (10 = not waxy); flavour out of 10 (10 = tastes of something beyond sugar); and value in pence per 100g. Overall is a weighted score.
The results: twelve tubs, one sticky table
| Code | What it was | Price per 100g | Crunch | Colour | Wax | Flavour | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Own-brand round hundreds-and-thousands, 130g | 50p | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 7.1 |
| B | Budget sugar strands, 100g | 55p | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4.0 |
| C | Premium rainbow rods, 85g | £2.59 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 8.5 |
| D | Own-brand round, 200g | 55p | 7 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 5.5 |
| E | Natural-coloured strands, 75g | £2.40 | 6 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 7.0 |
| F | Value tub, 225g | 36p | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2.5 |
| G | Organic-style round, 60g | £2.50 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 7.0 |
| H | Sugar strands, 120g | 83p | 6 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4.3 |
| I | Mixed shapes, 90g | £1.39 | 3 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 4.5 |
| J | Rainbow rounds, 150g | 93p | 8 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 6.8 |
| K | Chocolate strands, 80g | £1.25 | 5 | n/a | 4 | 8 | 6.8 |
| L | Jumbo rods, 100g | £1.35 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 7.4 |
Note: K's colour score is naturally n/a; we gave it a free 10 so as not to punish it for being brown.
What the table actually tells you
The cheapest tub, F, was also the worst. It was dusty, it bled a pink puddle into the ice cream within 30 seconds and the nine-year-old described it as 'like eating a crayon's dandruff'. The most expensive, C, won on crunch and flavour: the rods stayed crisp, the colours held and there was an actual vanilla note rather than a waxy blank. But the value winner was D, a big 200g tub at 55p per 100g that did a perfectly decent job on a cone, even if the nine-year-old said the blue ones 'looked sad'.
The most interesting result was E, the naturally coloured strands. They scored a perfect 10 for colour bleed — no grey smear, no pink milk — but the crunch faded fast and the flavour was more 'sugar dust' than 'strawberry'. Good for a party table, not for a 99.
The chocolate strands, K, were a niche pick: pleasant enough, tasted of cocoa, but they looked like something the dog had tracked in and the six-year-old refused to put them on anything.
Kid verdicts, unedited
Six-year-old: 'The pink ones are liars. They look pink and taste like nothing.'
Nine-year-old: 'The posh ones are the best because they crunch. The cheap ones are like tiny wet pebbles.'
Both children agreed that the mixed-shape tub (I) was 'too big and weird' and kept falling off the cone, which is a design flaw, not a taste flaw.
The naming quirk that starts family arguments
In the UK, 'hundreds-and-thousands' usually means the tiny round balls; 'sugar strands' are the long rods; 'sprinkles' is the umbrella term that covers both, and also the little flat discs, the stars and whatever else the supermarket has decided is festive. In parts of Scotland and the North East, hundreds-and-thousands is the only acceptable term for the round ones, and calling them sprinkles may get you a look. In Wales and Northern Ireland, 'sprinkles' is widely understood. If a recipe says hundreds-and-thousands and you use strands, your fairy cakes will look like they have hair. This is not a metaphor.
Best buys for scoop-shop-style toppings at home
If you want the parlour experience without the queue: buy two tubs. A cheap round tub for cones (D or A) because rounds stick to soft-scoop and survive a lick; and a premium rod tub (C) for sundaes, where the crunch matters and the colour needs to hold in whipped cream. Keep them in an airtight box, not the fridge — moisture is the enemy of crunch. Add them at the last possible second. And if you are doing a cone rim, brush the rim with a little melted white chocolate, dip, then sprinkle; honey works but it drips.
The final word
Sprinkles are not interchangeable. A bad tub can make a good ice cream feel like a school fete that has overrun. A good tub makes a 99 feel like an event. Our overall winner was C, the premium rainbow rods, but the smart family buy is D: cheap, plentiful, and good enough that nobody will notice the blue ones are a bit sad. The one to avoid is F. Unless you need to wax a surfboard.
