Turns out that packaging was very misleading because nothing could prepare me for the horror that was lurking inside. In the series by Terry Pratchett, Discworld, the country of Djelibeybi (a pun on "jelly baby", but putatively meaning "Child of the (River) Djel", and possibly derived from Djellaba), is the Discworld's analogue of Ancient Egypt.

This wasn't mentioned on the front of the pack, but my senses were telling me they tasted of coconut so I checked the ingredients and sure enough, coconut was listed as one of the flavourings. According to the pack they're to celebrate 90 years of jelly babies (and yes, that is a set of false teeth you can see in the pic): For readers outside the UK who may not have heard of jelly babies, they are a classic British jelly sweet that is usually coated in starch powder. Liquorice amp; Blackcurrant Flyers – like the traditional Liquorice Flyers but with blackcurrant crystals in the middle – producing that traditional blackcurrant and liquorice taste combination. According to Coca Cola UK there's been a big demand from consumers to bring it back, and they have listened.The sweets were invented in 1864 by an Austrian immigrant working at Fryers of Lancashire, and were originally marketed as "Unclaimed Babies". They're a new range of flavoured peanuts from Walkers with a stripy-patterned crunchy coating, which looks similar to the stripy crust you usually see on Tiger Bread. This is used during the manufacturing process and enables the sweets to be released from the mold without breaking.

In October 1963, as Beatlemania was breaking out, fans of The Beatles in the United Kingdom pelted the band with jelly babies (or, in the United States, the much harder jelly beans) after it was reported that George Harrison liked eating them. Which is probably a good thing, as the thought of eating granny-shaped sweets is a bit weird, but then you could say the same of jelly babies, I guess.In the 2018 film Johnny English Strikes Again, the titular character (played by Rowan Atkinson) carries a box of jelly babies with him, but they are actually disguised explosives, as in said context, "jelly" is actually short for gelignite, and they blow up whomever eats them. They're described as "compound chocolate coated marshamallow biscuit", which had me a bit worried because I intensely dislike compound chocolate.