One of our favourite sweets, the Jelly Tot, was made by accident. It was a sweet mistake.
The other day I noticed a car with the number plate ‘Jelitot’ parked on the side of the road in Klein Windhoek and that got me thinking about the sweet variety. The soft, round fruit-flavoured sweets coated in granules of sugar were invented when Dr Brian Boffey worked for Rowntree’s in York in the early 1960s. With a PhD in Chemistry he was the perfect research scientist to work for the sweet company. At the time he was newly qualified at just 28 years old. When he inadvertently made the first Jelly Tots he was trying to create a powdered jelly that set instantly. Instead, he produced small sugar droplets, which he initially thought of as a failed experiment. But, like many things considered failures in life, when viewed from a different perspective (and often in retrospect) they reveal a positive side. And so it was in this case. Colour and flavour were added to the sugar droplets and they soon proved to be a hit across the country. The popular Jelly Tot was born and is still a firm favourite more than fifty years later.
Whenever I see the name Jelly Tots, I think back to the time when I heard someone teasing one of our short, compact soccer teammates about his stature. He reminded us never to underestimate the power within a person, saying “Dynamite comes in small packages”. To this someone humorously countered “So do Jelly Tots”, triggering a burst of laughter.
(Reference: The Star: Did you know a Sheffield student invented Jelly Tots by mistake? 6 April 2018)
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