Inside M&S, the lights are up, but the shelves are only half-stocked, a small cluster of people hovering in the bakery section with the quiet intensity of commuters waiting for a delayed train. They’re not here for bread. They’re here for the Speckled Egg Cookies – the ones that are all over TikTok, the ones that sold out yesterday, the ones someone online swore were “by the pastries, second shelf down”. But even though the store has only just opened, there are none to be had.
Across the country, the same scene is playing out, with customers trying multiple stores in one day, asking about restocks, posting sightings like they’re tracking a rare bird. It is, in every sense, a hunt. And yet, what’s so special about them? Not much. They’re thick cookies with white and milk chocolate buttons and a scattering of speckled eggs. Entirely replicable at home with a bag of chocolate eggs and a free afternoon.
But this is far from the most unhinged Easter offering. On supermarket shelves this Easter, you’ll find tiramisu hot cross buns, Millionaire’s hot cross buns, a “dippy egg” cookie cup, a custard cream “biscuity” egg and an Easter-themed spin on the M&S classic Colin the Caterpillar. Around him is a supporting cast that reads more like a children’s TV lineup: Hiccup the Hippo, Ralph the Cavapoo, Shaggy the Shetland, Sunny the Sloth, Toby the T-Rex. Because nothing says Easter quite like biting the head off a cavapoo.
Morrisons has introduced chocolate ravioli, a hot cross bun sandwich meal deal filled with chocolate cream cheese and cherry compote, a foot-long Easter doughnut, Mini Egg sundaes and a Mini Egg cookie pizza. Over at Lidl, the answer is a doughnut-shaped Easter egg. Waitrose has produced a croissant-shaped one. Chocolate fried chicken is arriving in the UK just in time for this peak nonsense consumption. Someone, somewhere, is eating a Doritos-inspired hot cross bun. And if you’re the sort of person who feels Mini Eggs are lacking a certain adult edge, there is now a Mini Egg liqueur.
If there is a single product that captures this shift, it’s the hot cross bun. Once a fixed point in the British calendar, it has now entered its experimental era: tiramisu, Millionaire’s, cherry bakewell, lemon cheesecake, white chocolate and raspberry. All of which sounds ridiculous on paper. Because it is. It is excessive, chaotic and deranged. It is also exactly what supermarkets want and, crucially, exactly what we’re buying.
Scroll through social media and you’ll find it awash with Easter hauls, taste tests, shelf updates. People aren’t just buying these products; they’re documenting them, reviewing them, ranking them, hunting them down. M&S’s Speckled Egg Cookies aren’t just cookies. They’re content. And the people queuing at 6am for this Easter schlock are adults. The ones posting store maps and stock alerts are adults. Easter, like Christmas before it, has long since drifted from its religious roots into something closer to a marketing competition for the most ridiculous product on the shelf.
