A father has gone viral after embarking on his own investigation to establish whether consumers of Celebrations are being "mugged off".

Simon Harris, 42, believes enthusiasts of the chocolates are not receiving value for money - and he challenged Mars to get in touch so he can help take their product "to the next level".

His post on X, which consists of 672 words in total, has been viewed more than two million times. Simon has now spoken exclusively to this reporter about what prompted him to carry out his investigation.

He said: "For some reason, I find incredibly mundane things very interesting, and I also can't understand why Bounty gets so much hate, especially when people find it in advent calendars and react like it's the worst thing that has ever happened to them."

With that in mind, Simon, a comedian and social media manager from South Essex, purchased a 550g tub of Celebrations, and attempted to establish whether the proportion of Bounty's was relative to the average preference of the British consumer.

His box contained 59 miniatures and the breakdown was - 10 Snickers, 10 Milky Way, nine Mars, seven Maltesers, six Twix, six Galaxy, six Bounty and six Galaxy Caramel.

However, wanting to delve deeper, he then conducted a snap poll on Facebook, which led to 2,035 answering what their favourite was.

Some 747 people favoured Maltesers, making up 36.6% of the responses, with Bounty in second place at 344, which represented 16.9%. Snickers came in third place, with 284 people (13.9%) naming it their favourite - while Twix, Mars and Milky Way languished at the bottom of the rankings.

As for what this all meant, Simon fumed on X: "Maltesers - It is the favourite miniature for 36.6% of consumers, but they make up 11.8% of each tub, and so consumers are being SIGNIFICANTLY MUGGED OFF."

He made a comparable point about Bounty before asserting that Snickers fans were being treated "fairly-ish", given that 13.9% of consumers ranked it highest while his tub contained 16.9% of the nutty treats.

When it came to the Milky Way, however, he declared: "It is the favourite miniature for 3.0% of consumers, but they make up 16.9% of each tub, and so consumers are being REALLY SIGNIFICANTLY MUGGED OFF."

He did concede that Milky Way tends to be a hit with children, who would not have participated in his poll, and therefore acknowledged his findings may be "flawed".

Nevertheless, his most striking conclusion from the exhaustive study was this: "More significantly, it's clear that Bounty is the nation's SECOND-FAVOURITE and not the 'pellet of unspeakable evil' that it is portrayed as so often.

"Anyway Mars Wrigley, you know where to find me if you're serious about taking Celebrations to the next level."

He subsequently told us that Celebrations customers were being "shafted" and that his "analysis speaks for itself".

And as for what he would do to elevate Celebrations to the next level, he suggested introducing 'Official Swap Meets', akin to trading card or football sticker gatherings.

Once monthly, people could head to their local community centre and exchange their unwanted chocolates, including Quality Street and Roses, until they achieved satisfaction.

Following his post, numerous people accused him of possessing far too much spare time, and we enquired about the most amusing responses.

He told us: "The small but significant number of people who genuinely believed that I was the ex-Prime Minister of Ireland, and their outrage that he would be spending time analysing confectionery in this manner when there are so many more pressing issues facing the country."

While Simon is not the current Minister for Finance in Ireland, we did reach out to Mars to see whether they wished to respond to his research.