Marks & Spencer’s beloved Colin the Caterpillar cake – guest of honour at children’s birthdays and office leaving parties since, ooh, the beginning of time – has been given yet another makeover, just in time for Halloween 2019. And it’s… well, it’s actually incredibly creepy.

For years, we’ve lamented the fact that Colin is just too cute for our annual 31 October party. His little white booties and innocent smile just don’t scream Halloween, quite frankly – and don’t even get us started on the cutesy smarties all over his back. 

“If only,” we used to moan, “if only there was a dark, dark version of our favourite cartoon chocolate cake.”

Thank goodness, then, that M&S has heard our plaintive cries. And the people in the cake-making labs (they probably exist) have responded by popping their most famous cake into his very own Halloween costume.

Check it out:

This isn’t just a Colin the Caterpillar cake. This is a spooky, bone-chillingly Halloween-y Colin the Caterpillar cake… and we’re already obsessed.

Gone are all of Colin’s sugar-sweet qualities of old. Instead, we have a leering red-eyed caterpillar, all covered in syrupy red ‘blood spatter’ and sugar-coated ‘maggots’.

His white choc antenna and boots have been swapped out for Frankenstein green versions – and, yes, those are a pair of tiny red fangs glistening inside his mouth.

His white choc antenna and boots have been swapped out for shiny black versions – and, yes, his cheery little face has been swapped for a colder, more monstrous one.

To paraphrase Taylor Swift: “We’re sorry, old Colin can’t come to the phone anymore. Why?

“Oh, ‘cause he’s dead.”

The aptly named Creepy Crawley Colin (available in M&S stores from 23 September) costs £7 – which means he’s not a penny more than the original. Bargain.

If you don’t have room for a full-sized Colin, the miniature versions of the classic cake have been given a ghoulish makeover, too. We recommend stashing a pack in your desk, for all of those cake-based emergencies that tend to crop up during the working day.

Note to colleagues: if you hear us rustling, we don’t have cake hidden away in our drawers, OK? Or, rather, we don’t have any cake for you.

Image: M&S