I think it's something you would actually see on the shelves of Waitrose or M&S. My Mum gets through tonnes of those 'Millionaires' shortcake squares, always thought that was an odd name.

I still wouldn't buy it though. Regardless of whether it only tasted of cheese, the supposed olives in the recipe would put me off; I hate 'em.

Harry Hitchens team should have won - everything about their product was leagues ahead of the crappy La Popcorn venture.

What a let down the final two are. One who will put everyone`s backs up and the other seems lacking in energy.

Precisely.

Agree. Harry H would have been a great finalist. I always want to feed James citrus fruit and fresh veggies. He has a pasty look about him.

Zara's pitches aside, pretty much everything else was flat about La Popcorn and it was a peculiar outcome.

i know. Empire State had superior packaging to La Popcorn. Nick couldn't understand why the latter team had decided to go with a name that was French for 'the', despite the
Mediterrean connections!

To be fair, it WAS pretty predictable. I was talking to a friend and I was like "Oh, last year they had a task like this; the first two groups won't count, the team who's behind will get a surprise boost when it gets to Morrisons and win despite having a negative edit on every account the whole way through."

And it happened.

Have seen some shocking results over the years, but surely this one takes the biscuit.

Hopefully, they will learn from this mistake and change the format for next year otherwise I fear that young apprentice will be dying a very fast death.

That Mediterranean popcorn would not sell in Morrisons - which is full of high fat foods such as cakes, crisps, pies, fizzzy drinks etc.

Repackaged it could sell in an higher end store like Waitrose.

But isn't that a point - these are not real orders which makes the result academic.

The American "idea" wasn't an idea but something you see in every second cinema across the country...

Had they pitched to a different supermarket chain then the results would have been very different.

Morrison's customer base sit within a B2 and below demographic and therefore any product with a "foreign" name, even "la", is deemed to be aspirational. Had they been presenting to Waitrose with their A, B,C1 demographic the product would have been seen as rather too cheap. The fact that the popcorn over-riding taste profile was cheese also probably went in their favour as had it been too "olivy" then it would not have fitted their customers' tastes.

I personally would be quite likely to buy La Popcorn just to try out it. I like to try something different.
The American popcorn seemed fairly ordinary, popcorn came from America in the first place, so making American popcorn is hardly an innovation.
I may not have noticed it on a supermarket shelf as I wouldn't have realised it was any different from any other generic popcorn.

I guess if I was Alan Sugar....I would switch the teams around to get the candidates I wanted in the same team. The people I would set up the candidates to see would be given the nod to make sure the right group won but with some (whose gonna win ) tension thrown in and hey presto.
But that's me, I would cheat.. I'm sure nothing like that has gone on in this TV program....so the result is as it is.

Ha ha.... that's priceless! Well worth a quick check of a decent French dictionary! I thought Harry H was a natural too. Apart from the name, I don't agree that the Mediterranean idea was a bad one - you only have to look down the crisps isles to see how exotic flavours are taking off. Just the small matter of actually choosing something tasty! They mentioned basil, and I also wondered about pesto. Much closer to a more familiar pizza type flavour, rather than olive, which would surely be an acquired taste.

If indeed they were thinking of French. A poor name in any case. I agree with you the Mediterranean idea was a good one.

The Crisps Isles. Are they in the Mediterranean? <runs away>

[slaps forehead] and me saying they needed a dictionary!

Do any of these products actually make it to the shelves? If they do and there has been a risk taken on orders then all well and good.

On the other hand, if there's no chance of them making it any further than the pitch, then you may find that these 'team created' products (I know that the ones that the teams have to decide whether they want to sell/promote after they see the demonstrations/pitches are real - the pie maker is an example) give the potential 'buyers' a chance to be cavalier with their orders and potentially open to interference from SALS.

The buyers are getting advertising courtesy of the Beeb, and when it comes to making orders, if no product actually exists then ordering 100K of any product means an astronomical outlay of zero - so the advertising is even free. Someone mentioned that SALS tweeted that it was the Morrissons order that swung it, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't told the 'buyers' what to order seeing as the companies are getting free advertising. Of course, it would make sense if SALS did rig it because he wouldn't want to squander £25K on someone who's likely to mis-spend the money. This is purelly hypothetical though, and I have no doubt of the shows integrity and fairness. Also, the Beeb has never been involved in any form of rigging of contests where children are involved. *hums the Blue Peter theme tune...*

Have only seen three or four weeks but knew from then that James would be in final. I could see that Zara also has potential but is cocky.

Does marketing have to be grammatically correct? Especially with an imported word like popcorn so gender isn't really "correct". The Spanish word for popcorn is feminine (palomitas).

Le Popcorn actually sounds better and is slightly easier to say, but as someone pointed out on another thread there is already a brand using that name.


La is also Spanish and Italian, all three med countries so there is a connection though not a good one. It was Nick who assumed La was French, even though the flavours were Spanish, Italian and Greek.

Never mind which buyer placed the highest order, the success of a product goes on sales not orders. If the public don't buy the product it matters not how many the buyer purchases as they're unlikely to place an order for any more if they're all sat on the shelves after a week.

What they should have done was combine it with the amount sold over say a week. A one off order is not a measure of a product's success cos if the product isn't liked by the public they aren't likely to buy any more are they? The sales are the only way to tell if a product is successful. I bet Empire State would have sold far more of their orders than the other team's disgusting flavours. We can all sell goods based on false promises like James made when he promised he could improve the flavours. No he couldn't! I don't think so James that's underhanded cheating and their sales were based on false claims to promise something he wasn't allowed to do. Harry H should have won and Harry M should have been booted along with James and the other team who in my opinion don't deserve to be in the final over much stronger candidates.

Too true when you have cheats like James winning orders on lies and false promises which he couldn't keep.
If you buy our product we'll improve the flavours. I don't think so. Those flavours were not negotiable at that point and by saying he was able to improve on the product conditional on an order he was breaking the rules. How about if you buy our product we'll give you a free gold watch with every order? No because that would be lying.

What kind of message does this send out to young people when it's says nice folk don't win but if you're willing to lie and cheat you can talk your way to the final.

I hope Lord Sugar realises what a total cockup he's made by allowing Harry H, a strong candidate and potential winner, to get fired over someone who lied his way to the final and doesn't deserve to be there.

This show has become a total joke!

Thats never been a set rule and some years the complete opposite rule has applied. Yasmina beat Kate with inedible chocolates.

Its not clear either that it tasted bad - obviously some people thought it tasted alright both at the dactory stage and in the sales tasting. It may as Zara said just be some people don't like Mediteranean taste.

Too many variables. a long haul Airline to the states might have bought lots more of Harry's wheras a short hall to the Med might have bought James's. They can't angle their pitch more without knowing more detail.

James's popcorn seems to have hit the line of being exotic enough but not too distinctive as you say to put Morrisons off?