I KNOW this is going to be a controversial stance to take, but I don’t want a cheese Easter egg.

Not this year, anyway.

Given that I used this column to drop hints that all I wanted for Valentine’s Day was a heart-shaped cheese, you might think it a given that I would swap my Dairy Milk for some savoury dairy instead at Easter too. But I can’t say I am that excited about the cheese Easter egg that seemed to take the internet by storm last month when it was announced. Almost every regional newspaper in the country ran a story on the joint venture between Asda and blue cheese favourite Blacksticks Blue.

Even the New Zealand Herald picked it up.

But this egg isn't the first of its kind. The Clothier family at Wyke Farms created two 24 inch cheese Easter eggs as part of a competition back in 2014, while the term Cheester Egg has actually now become a trademark of food blogger Annem Hobson, whose solid Wildes Cheese egg last year was a smash. In the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday not even the Bunny himself would have been able to track down one of these eggs for you dreamt up by the creator of So Wrong It’s Nom.

Understandably I was excited to hear there would be a cheese Easter egg on the shelves this year, and from the marketing campaign it sounded as though I stood a chance of finding one.

But I’m not sure what the thinking behind using a blue cheese was for an Easter egg – given how divisive it is among people. Don’t get me wrong – I love Blacksticks Blue. I think it’s an amazing blue cheese, and I love the colour of it, not to mention its rich flavour. But not everyone is as keen on blue.

I was still excited to track down my own cheese egg though, until I picked it up off the shelf. Most disappointingly is that it is only half an egg. The other half of the plastic mould contains a sachet of chutney and a few crackers. While I appreciate no cheese sitting should be without crackers and chutney, giving over half the space in the packet is a little disappointing, and the £5 price ticket starts to look a little steep.

The egg also doesn't look the most appealing. Blacksticks is a beautiful amber colour, broken up by blue/grey veins that create the delicious tang that only a well-rounded blue can deliver. But this egg looks more like the plastic container found inside the chocolate of a Kinder Egg, even having a band mid way around its middle.

And then there’s the packaging. It’s just, well, not very Eastery. In fact, I would hazard a guess that purple, orange, turquoise and white have not been seen together on the same sheet of paper since the bedroom wallpaper of a French teenager, circa 1982.

That said, it's great that there is real excitement for a cheese egg alternative, which fills me with high hopes for next year. In the meantime though, I am hoping the Bunny will get the message and bring me the normal triangular wedge of Blacksticks Blue instead!