Think there’s only one true Pineapple Lump? Prepare to have your mind blown.
In this country, we’re lucky enough to lay claim over things like pavlova, an ozone hole and the alleged unification of chicken, cranberry and brie. One of our finest examples of Kiwiana, however, lies in the form of a chocolate-coated pineapple-flavoured lolly. Pineapple Lumps are iconic, but there are actually more variations on the Pineapple Lump out there – and the story of OG vs knockoff is more complicated than you might think.
Flashback to the early 1950s: an Oamaru company called Regina Confections (est. 1884 in Dunedin) is busy producing an early version of the chocolate fish, which is filled with pineapple-flavoured marshmallow. Regina employee Charles Diver is tasked with utilising waste created in this process, so he rounds up the marshmallow offcuts, lumps them into lumps and covers them in chocolate. These morsels are named… Pineapple Chunks.
Fast forward to the early 1960s: Regina Confections changes the name of their tasty lil nuggets from Pineapple Chunks to Pineapple Lumps, presumably because it just sounds better. Some time after that, Cadbury obtains the rights to the Pineapple Lumps name and begins producing them in their Dunedin factory, and these are sold under their brand Pascall.
During the mid-80s to mid-90s, the Regina Confections company goes bust after a tumultuous situation involving a forced board takeover and a sharemarket crash, after which the company changes hands several times. Finally, in 2001, Regina is bought by Nestlé, who promptly close the Oamaru factories down and move confectionery production to Australia. Meanwhile, Cadbury (still manufacturing in Dunedin) is working hard to market Pineapple Lumps as a national treasure.
You might think that is the end of the Regina story, but the spirit of the Oamaru company endures. In 2001 their factory is bought from Nestlé by a group of investors, who start a new company on the Regina factory site named Rainbow Confectionery. Today Rainbow produces a range of sweets you’re bound to have encountered, including their Pineapple Chunks, in the same factory where Charles Diver invented them 70ish years ago.
According to history, then, exactly no-one is truly making the original Pineapple Lump – and more than one manufacturer has some claim to authenticity. Cadbury Pascall produced and marketed Pineapple Lumps through all of Regina’s turmoil which no doubt will have solidified its icon status in New Zealand. Meanwhile Rainbow Confectionery has the OG factory, the OG name (even if hardly anyone knows it) and use a recipe that’s authentic to Charles Diver’s original.
There’s no doubt that Cadbury Pascall holds the cards in terms of popularity, which makes it ironic that Pineapple Lumps, the brand with real icon status for a whole generation of Kiwis and a recognised symbol of Kiwiana, have been produced in Australia since 2018.
To add to an already confusing lumpscape, in 2023 it’s evident that there are many more players in the space than just Pascall and Rainbow Confectionery. But how different can they really be from each other? Who deserves the biggest slice of market share? Can they coexist peacefully? I set up a blind tasting picnic on the Whakatipu with some trusted friends to try and answer these questions once and for all.
8. Bloomsberry Candy Chocolate Pineapple Chunks
140g box, $8.99 from Briscoes
2.5/10
They might sound pricey, but it’s Briscoes, so the sticker price should be slashed on most given days. But despite the allure of savings, Bloomsberry’s offering received mostly scathing reviews from our panel. This variety features a milk chocolate coating, with a filling that sits on the spectrum somewhere between marshmallow and chewy nougat. Although made in Aotearoa, Luna likened the taste of this chunk to “a cold towel” while Cam described it as a “cardboard shoe”. A few remarked that the filling had a good “fruity juiciness” to it, but Georgia followed this by saying the flavour was let down by its mouthfeel, which reminded her of “Pink Batts covered in cardboard”. Generally, though, the chocolate coating was neither loved nor hated – instead the textural experience was its downfall. Mallory likened it to “a bag of lollies you might get for free at a WOF testing station”.
7. Night ‘n Day Pineapple Chunks
120g punnet, $4.90 from Night ‘n Day
3.5/10
The Night ‘n Day chunks were suspiciously similar to a few other brands, and our panel picked them out as second worst. This one can be described as a thicker-but-softer marshmallow piece coated in milk chocolate. Ben said “my teeth enjoyed biting it” while Georgia thought there was “too much marshmallow” and that “a good pineapple lump needs to be skinnier, and have more chocolate – better chocolate.” Cam said the filling “slid out of the chocolate” and it wholly “tasted like a car tyre”. Victoria compared this variety to “something at a birthday party when you’re five years old”, her closing comment being “it tastes like climate change”. It has to be said that this one is available to buy 24/7, which may win it points in the eyes of some.
6. Countdown Sweets Pineapple Pieces
180g bag, $1.90 from Countdown
4.3/10
Countdown’s Pineapple Pieces are a variety that I’ve personally loved for years – however my so-called friends begged to disagree. Mallory said they tasted like “Easter marshmallows that are a year old that I’m trying to hide from my siblings” while Luna described the experience as “chalky with cheap chocolate.” Victoria had a seemingly visceral reaction to this one, uttering “so sweaty, so sweaty, so cheap.” While the majority were not impressed, Cam described his experience as “pleasant”, noting the chocolate “melted well”. Personally I also found the chocolate melted away promptly, but in its wake left a kind of hard fragmented sheet on the underside that took a bit longer to dissolve – to this day I’m left wondering what in the world that was.
5. Queen Anne Dark Chocolate Pineapple Nougat
140g box, $11.00 from Queen Anne online
4.6/10
We have landed on the most polarising lump yet. The Queen Anne variety definitely has an upmarket feel, evidenced by its exquisite boxed presentation, the sheer size of each lump, and the fact that they have found a home on the shelves at Smith & Caughey’s and Ballantynes. This said, you can skip the department store markup by purchasing direct. Their sticking point was how readily they were sticking to everyone’s teeth. The whole panel expressed just how difficult these were to chew, KP’s words being “just give up, there’s no point.” Despite the hard interior, the chocolate coating was almost universally favoured, with Georgia remarking “if you enjoy nibbling delicious chocolate off of a rock, it’s ten out of ten.”
Cam loved it overall, saying it was “something you might be served at a restaurant” and that it is “everything you want from a lolly.” Victoria liked that eating it was such a challenge, describing the experience as “portion control”. Mallory thought of the parents in the group, of which there were none, adding “it would be good to give to a child to help them remove their baby teeth.” This was also one of the most challenging brands to source locally, with most New World stores out of stock at the time of purchase.
4. Rainbow Confectionery Pineapple Chunks
210g bag, $1.90 from The Warehouse / 95g bag, $1.25 from Kmart
4.7/10
The first of the “kinda OGs”, Rainbow Confectionery’s offering received a middling response from the panel. KP described it as “flavourless and puffy” while Georgia thought the taste was as if “someone whispered pineapple.” Carl, a Pineapple Lump virgin and the least biased of us all, chimed in and said it was “good, fruity, like no particular fruit”. Mallory ironically added it “didn’t taste like a classic”. On tasting this one I found the chocolate fragmented, much like how I imagine a pane of tempered glass would shatter, before slowly melting away. Victoria’s reaction was physical again, further explaining this time “whenever I eat cheap chocolate I get sweaty, and I’m sweaty.” For all the negative remarks, our panel was not too scathing in their scoring, so I’d describe it as a middle-road lump that you should take for a spin before making your mind up.
3. DQ & Co Pineapple Chunks
100g box, $8.99 from Whitcoulls
7.1/10
From here we see the scores jump dramatically. DQ+Co sell a boxed “gift shop style” variety, purchased from Whitcoulls of all places, that again felt and tasted suspiciously similar to one or two of the other lumps on this list – though they looked very different to anything else, perhaps due to the fact that they were a few months out from expiration. I would assume bookstores have some of the lowest pineapple-lolly-stock-turnover metrics in the OECD. The upswing for this chunk was its interior texture, with Georgia noting its “good amount of chewiness” and Ben similarly remarking it had “great bite” with the exception of the chocolate, which unfortunately “fell off the bone a bit too quick” for his liking. Interestingly, several tasters thought the lump tasted not-pineapple-like, Luna describing it as “way more banana-y” and Georgia agreeing, adding “it’s giving Perky Nana.” Cam described this one as “standard issue, nothing special”. It should be noted that while Victoria’s sweats had died down at this point, this chunk still yielded slight perspiration.
2. Pascall Pineapple Lumps
120g bag, $3.00 from Countdown
7.6/10
And so we arrive at our (Australian-made) Kiwiana symbol, which managed to take second place. Victoria at this point experienced a sweatiness U-turn, her initial reaction being “that hits” followed by “it felt boujee, I was on the journey.” Others mentioned the refreshingly dark chocolate – Luna felt it was “not as sickly sweet as the others”. Meanwhile, the level of chewiness became a point of contention. Georgia told us this one gave her “lockjaw” and KP, an Australian national herself, simply said “I want to eat a whole bag, but too much exercise to chew.” Mallory was impressed, adding “oh yeah, having two of these.” These ones stood out from many of the others because of their chewier centre (as opposed to the regular marshmallow varieties) and their stronger fruity taste. Cam was not a fan of these qualities however, claiming “it stung my mouth, too tangy.”
1. Potter Brothers Pineapple Chews in Milk Chocolate
130g bag, $5.99 from Fresh Choice
8.9/10
In a complete surprise, the market underdog – a handmade variety produced by a small chocolatier located in Levin – takes out first place. This one was almost unanimously loved by our panel. Mallory described it as the “Scorched Almond of Pineapple Lumps”, matching Ben’s sentiment in saying it was “what you take to dinner parties and know people will enjoy it.” Cam on the contrary stated “It was just chocolate. We are here to rate Pineapple Lumps, not chocolate.” His opinion was mirrored by a few other tasters, Luna mentioning it was “maybe not for you if you prefer the pineapple part of the lump.” Overall this brand scored very highly, with several tasters scoring it 10/10. Pineapple Lump virgin Carl’s only words were “so good”. Crowd-pleaser Potter Bros. is available to buy directly from the chocolatier’s website, but I was able to find it at Fresh Choice and Remarkable Sweet Shop (for a considerable premium in the latter case, because that’s the Queenstown way).
(Honourable mention: Pams Pineapple Flavoured Bites. Sold at New World and Pak’nSave, but out of stock nationwide at the time of tasting.)
Update March 8: Potter Brothers has apologised and altered its marketing messages after revelations that its “handcrafted” confectionery was created from bulk product. Read more here.
So, now you know. I’m left wondering if the knockoff vs OG debate actually matters – it seems that people’s tastes (at least these days) are calibrated towards Pascall as the standard, which isn’t authentic to the original 1950s marshmallow-based recipe. Maybe it’s too far gone, maybe it’s just evolution at work. It could even be Maybelline. The sad thing is that every brand we tasted appears to be made in New Zealand, with the exception of Pascall. Where does that leave us in terms of its icon status? Should our most treasured lolly really be one that’s produced offshore? That’s a question for another day.