Look out in your KSV Vending snack machine for the latest offering from tic tac®, the all new fruity ‘Strawberry Fields’. Careful market research by parent company Ferrero has shown that fruit flavoured varieties are particularly popular with younger consumers and overall fruit based sales are higher over the summer period. In 2010 a number of limited edition fruit flavours were introduced to test consumer reaction and resulted in Cherry Passion becoming a permanent addition to the tic tac® range.

With sales of £2.6million already recorded. Ferrero are heavily investing in an ambitious expansion plan to double in size here in the UK over the next five years and are looking to the tic tac® brand to contribute significantly to this growth. Unlike other fruit flavours Strawberry Fields are being marketed from launch as a permanent addition to the tic tac® range of what will now be five flavours. Funny the connections made by your mind sometimes, with this permanent addition immediately bringing to mind The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”!!!

That got me thinking what or where the title for the Beatles song was drawn from? A little investigation has shown that John Lennon was drawing on happy childhood memories with Strawberry Fields, but having grown up in Liverpool this has nothing to do with pick your own fruit farms or similar! Close to Lennon’s childhood home was a Salvation Army house where many happy hours were spent playing with his childhood friends in the wooded gardens to the home. Perhaps more significantly for John Lennon the summer garden party in the adjacent Calderstones Park with the Salvation Army band from Strawberry Fields playing will have given him perhaps his earliest experience of live music.

At least the brick gate post and name plate to Strawberry Fields still exists and is a popular item on any Beatles Merseyside tour even if it is almost obliterated by fans graffiti.

Written by: Colin from KSV.