The Sports Biscuits Issue

Fox's Sports biscuits are a well-loved brand of small, rectangular shortbread biscuits featuring depictions of people playing various sports - just about exactly what the name suggests, in fact. For many years, we at the Campaign for Real Sports Biscuits have been enjoying these small, unassuming biscuits, from the odd single one with a cup of tea to occasional frenzied bouts of whole-packet-munching overindulgence, and we continue to do so — but with our enjoyment sullied by a sad change.

You see, Sports biscuits used to have a wonderful stick-man style to them, in which athletic bodies were represented by simple lines and heads were almost precisely the same shape and size as balls, leading to the traditional question "What's this one meant to be?" and, of course, the hilarious possibility that those footballers might in fact be having a pleasant kickabout with their mate's disembodied head. Furthermore, this simple and unsubstantial design could be easily customised with a quick scratch of the teeth, producing tennis players with no arms and many an entertaining Spot the Ball competition.

But those days are gone. Sports biscuits have changed. Much like cinemagoers are no longer content with grainy black and white or a piano accompaniment and computer users rely on menus and windows over text and commands, so Fox's seem to assume that biscuit-eaters now desire charmless near-silhouettes over their well-crafted, long established stick-figures.


We apologise for the difference in image quality between these two images, a problem we hope to correct. We do not wish to skew anyone's perception of the changes made through the use of a poorer-quality image for the new style.

These new designs hold none of their predecessors' intrigue and subtlety and, with their combination of increased all-round detail but blank faces, are just a little creepy.

At the Campaign for Real Sports Biscuits, we believe that this change ought to be reversed. That is not to say that we oppose all change to the design of Sports biscuits: we wholeheartedly embrace the inroduction of new sports to the range and appreciate such efforts to keep the product current. However, tampering so fundamentally with their style subtracts substantially from the appeal of the biscuit, and we oppose it unequivocally.

It is our intention to make our views heard, be it through letters, petitions or even boycotts of the Fox's brand. Reports on action taken, progress made and other odds and ends will appear here periodically. For more information or to join the Campaign, e-mail us at campaignforrealsportsbiscuits@gmail.com