People Can Now Cuddle a Percy Pig While Eating Its Fruity, Gummy Face

Fresh from being cancelled, Percy Pig invites children to cuddle before eating its face

2020 has been a wild year for Percy Pigs. The cute, cult-followed gummy fruit sweets were cancelled in July, after Henry Dimbleby published part one of the National Food Strategy and used them as a totem of “genuinely misleading” food labelling. “Cancelled” of course means that there was a manufactured furore over absolutely nothing, which obscured the lack of substance in the NFS.

Now Marks and Spencer has introduced a new, cuddly Percy Pig toy, capitalising on the character’s popularity with kids and adults alike, which is a pretty weird flex. Original Percy Pigs already contain pork gelatin, which has made The Smiths angry in the past, which is good. But to introduce a cuddly version of an animal whose sweet analogue involves literally eating its face appears to be a recipe for minor trauma. Marks and Spencer even launched the toy with a frightening video showing a Percy Pig boardroom full of pigs, as if they had decided to both create sweets modelled on their own faces and allow humans to consume them. There were even bags of the sweets on the table, the board staring down the fates of their chewy simulacra. “I never thought the children would eat MY sweet for a face,” sobbed the pig with a sweet for a face.

And in other news...

• The most exciting pizza in London bows out, as ASAP Pizza retires for the summer in Borough Market.
• A photo of a police officer posing as a Deliveroo rider in north London provokes discussion over food delivery companies’ ties to the “gig economy” and immigration enforcement.
• With the government yet to confirm an extension of eviction protections, London restaurants are in limbo over rent once again.
• Nebula, a new pizza opening in Hackney, is adding to the city’s list of voguish Hawaiian pizzas. Pickled pineapple and Tabasco-branded sriracha on this one. [Hot Dinners]
• Good tweet: