For more than 70 years, Marks & Spencer sold products under a separate brand name within its stores, one that became synonymous with quality for generations of shoppers. First launched in 1928, the branding was named after one of the retailer’s co-founders, and initially marked out items considered the very best quality on offer.
That branding gradually disappeared from shelves starting in the year 2000, but M&S has spent the past couple of years quietly bringing it back, reviving nostalgic treats and long discontinued chocolate bars that had disappeared decades earlier. Now, another retro favourite is joining that lineup, a biscuit assortment with roots stretching all the way back to the 1950s.
What was in this classic biscuit box actually originally?
The original assortment box dates back to the 1950s, and traditionally featured a mix of teacakes, chocolate sandwich biscuits and jaffa eclairs, and that’s a totally different lineup compared with what’s on offer today. M&S’s product development team recently rediscovered the heritage packaging in the company archive and decided it was a good idea to revive it properly.
Rather than recreating the original recipe exactly, the team has reimagined the contents entirely, keeping the original concept and packaging design while giving the actual biscuits inside a modern update ahead of the festive season.
View this post on Instagram
The updated box now contains 21 biscuits spread across six different customer favourite varieties, rather than the original three-way split. The new lineup includes milk chocolate fudge creams, milk chocolate sandwich fingers, jam sandwich creams, marbled chocolate whirls, all butter chocolate chunk cookies, and chocolate covered milk shortcakes.
Priced at £5, the box is already available to buy online, with a wider rollout to stores nationwide expected by the end of September. It’s a fairly accessible price point for a nostalgic treat, especially heading into a season where shoppers tend to be stocking up on biscuit tins and selection boxes anyway.
The team behind it says it captures the spirit of Christmas.
According to the lead product developer behind the biscuit range, the team fell in love with the original packaging the moment they found it tucked away in the archive. The goal was to capture that same sense of nostalgia through the packaging itself, while filling the box with biscuits shoppers actually love buying today.
Combining old favourites like jam sandwich creams with newer, more indulgent chocolatey options was described as a joyful mix of old and new, striking a balance that feels both familiar and current. For the team involved, that blend of nostalgia and modern taste is exactly what makes it feel like a proper Christmas product, something shareable and packed with the kind of small, comforting detail M&S has built a reputation on.
How it fits alongside M&S’s wider biscuit range
This marks the first new mixed biscuit box M&S has launched in years, joining an already growing lineup of selection boxes on shelves. Other options currently available include an all chocolate selection box, an all butter chocolate chunk cookie assortment, a Scottish shortbread tin, and a Belgian biscuit collection, with prices ranging from around £6.50 up to £10.
Given how well received M&S’s chocolate tin proved last year, with some shoppers going as far as calling it better than more established festive chocolate brands, it seems likely this new biscuit box will generate similar enthusiasm once it lands more widely in stores.
How shoppers reacted when the box was first unveiled
The new biscuit assortment was first shown off at M&S’s recent Christmas showcase event, where guests reportedly responded warmly to the look of the selection, with some suggesting it could rival other well established festive biscuit brands this Christmas.
Several other festive additions were also revealed at the same event, including three new cookie flavours heading to the in-store bakery, among them a sticky apple version and a chocolate cornflake option, alongside a wider refresh of the frozen dessert range and a handful of new seasonal drinks.
A brief look at the branding’s history at M&S
The branding was first registered back in 1928, inspired by another of the retailer’s bestselling product lines at the time, and named in honour of one of the company’s founders. It was originally reserved exclusively for the very best quality products made specifically for M&S.
Food products weren’t actually added to the brand until 1954, with an almond crisp biscuit thought to be the very first item to carry it. By 1958, the branding had expanded across the entire range sold in M&S stores, and it remained a defining part of the retailer’s identity for decades before being gradually phased out from 2000 onward. It briefly reappeared on a small menswear range in 2021, before M&S began properly reviving it more widely across food and fashion over the past couple of years.
Given how enthusiastically shoppers have responded to M&S’s other nostalgic revivals recently, this retro biscuit box looks set to become one of the more popular festive additions on shelves this year, so it’s probably worth grabbing one before stock runs low closer to Christmas.
