They brought the pun back
Ten years after the Diamond Jubilee jar, Marmite did the obvious thing and reissued Ma’amite for the Platinum Jubilee. Same pun. Ma’am as in how you address the Queen, mite as in Marmite. It worked just as well the second time, partly because everyone had forgotten it the first time and partly because it is, genuinely, a good pun.
This was spring 2022. Seventy years on the throne. The first British monarch ever to reach a Platinum Jubilee, and almost certainly the last for a very long while, given the ages involved in the line of succession. The country did the bunting thing again, the long-weekend thing again, all the commemorative tat again, and Marmite produced its jar.
The jar
Different design from the 2012 one, and to my eye the better of the two. A deep purple oval, the Union Jack running through the centre, “MA’AMITE” in white across a red banner, and the dates picked out as “1952 · 70 years · 2022”. A yellow lid this time rather than the red one from the Diamond edition. Round the bottom of the oval, in white, “Toasting the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee”. There was a royal-warrant neck tag too, the proper “By Appointment” wording that Marmite was entitled to use.
The Marmite inside was, as ever, the standard recipe. Nobody has ever made a commemorative jar with commemorative Marmite in it, and nobody should. The whole appeal is that the jar is special and the contents are exactly what they always are.
The bit that turned it poignant
Here is the thing that nobody could have planned. The Platinum Jubilee was in June 2022. The Queen died that September, three months later. So the Ma’amite Platinum jar turned out to be the last commemorative Marmite of her reign, produced for a celebration of a reign that ended almost immediately afterwards.
That has done something to how the jar feels. The 2012 Diamond jar is a cheerful object. The 2022 Platinum jar is, in hindsight, a small full stop. The same yellow-and-purple design that looked festive in June read quite differently by the autumn. I did not expect a Marmite jar to carry that, but it does.
Royal warrant footnote
The “By Appointment” royal warrant on the neck tag is worth a word, because warrants do not survive the monarch who granted them. When the Queen died, the warrants she had granted entered a two-year wind-down. Whether Marmite holds a warrant from the new King is a separate question, and not one the brand has made much noise about. The Platinum jar may therefore be the last Marmite to carry a royal warrant for some time, which is another small reason the 2022 edition is more of a closing-of-a-chapter object than it first appeared.
What they are worth
Less than the 2012 Diamond jar, for now, because the Platinum run was larger and more recent. An unopened Platinum Ma’amite currently sits around ten to twenty pounds on eBay, against twenty to forty for a clean Diamond. That gap will close. The Platinum jar has the better story attached to it, and collectibles markets eventually price in the story.
If you have a Platinum jar in the cupboard, treat it the same way I am treating my Diamond ones. Leave it sealed. The Marmite 125th anniversary in 2027 will lift the whole commemorative-Marmite market, and the last-jubilee-of-the-reign angle gives this particular jar a reason to climb that the others do not have.
Source: Marmite 2022 Platinum Jubilee release; eBay completed listings.
