The Phantom Chocolate Covered Peanuts - an Update

An update on the Tesco Metro chocolate covered peanuts situation.  After my failed attempt to buy a packet of the aforementioned peanuts, with a Tesco Metro employee telling me that they couldn't be sold as they didn't exist - despite being on their shelves in their packaging - I decided to check out the current situation on this front.  OK, in truth, I simply happened to be in my local Tesco Metro buying a newspaper the other day and remembered the peanuts fiasco, so decided to see if they were still on the shelves despite not existing.  Anyway, the shop seems to have gone all in on their contention that the item is non-existent.  They have vanished from the shelves, their place taken by a second box of packets of chocolate covered raisins.  There is no mention of them anywhere.  It is as if they are trying to convince shoppers that the chocolate covered peanuts never existed and anyone who claimed to have bought them in the past is suffering a delusion.  This instant rewriting of history is like something out of Orwell's '1984'.  Just what is it that the chocolate covered peanuts done to deserve being written out of Tesco history like this?  It makes you wonder just how many other products have suffered a similar fate?  Is this why I can't find anyone else who remembers various now defunct confectionery and snacks of my childhood, like the Tingle Bar or Rancheros?  

As noted in my earlier post, it is entirely possible that the non-existence of the chocolate covered peanuts is confined to my local Tesco Metro and if that I went to the main Tesco on the edge of town, or to a branch in another town, I might find them still on sale.  But, as ever, I just can't be arsed to do so.  Plus, the fact that I can get them from Lidl for twenty pence cheaper even than the 'reduced' price Tesco were claiming that their chocolate covered peanuts could be bought for, if they existed, means that I'm not actually interested in buying them from Tesco any more.  Nonetheless, the whole bizarre episode still fascinates me - I've never before had the experience of trying to pay for something and being told that it doesn't exist.  Perhaps I should simply have replied 'OK then, if they don't exist, I'll just walk out with them - I can't shoplift something that doesn't exist'.  I have a feeling that had I done so, alarms would have been going off, security guards trying to detain me and the police been called.  I'm still intrigued by the fact that the non-existent peanuts had an on-shelf price label exclaiming 'Chocolate Peanuts - New Lower Price', implying that they must have existed prior to this to have an existing price to be reduced.  Maybe it was that reduction that triggered their non-existence?  Actually, I did notice that the wine gums are now labelled similarly, maybe if I tried to buy a packet of those, I'd find myself going through the same conversation at the till as to whether or not they exist.  Luckily, though, I don't particularly like wine gums.