Everybody
has had a quarter of something haven’t they? Someone, at some point, decided
that a quarter of a pound (4 ounces or 113.398 grams) was the perfect measure
of any kind of confectionary kept in jars.
I don’t know if kids these days go into a shop and ask for 113.398 grams
of cola cubes but if they don’t, they should.
The shop keeper would grab the jar from a high shelf, unscrew the top
and empty the contents into a large silver gravy boat attached to a series of
numbers with a red needle which would crawl up the scale the more sweets were
decanted into said handleless-gravy-boat.
They’d take a sweet out, then put it back in, take it out and put it
back in because the needle wouldn’t settle on exactly four ounces. Then they’d pour the meticulously measured
sweets into a white paper bag, fold the top and write the price on it in black
crayon. Buying a quarter of Trillions
meant you got hundreds of sweets whereas a quarter of Raspberry Ruffles
resulted in barely three or four. You
had to choose wisely! In order for you to do so (should you ever find yourself transported
back to the 80s via an elaborate accident) here’s a guide to the worst
of all the confectionary the 1980s had to offer.
Candy Cigarettes
Adults
who want to give up smoking have nicotine patches and gum but what if you want
to start smoking? How do you begin gently and make your way up
to filterless cigars? Look no
further. There were a few different
kinds of candy cigarettes. There were
the ones that looked exactly like cigarettes in boxes labelled almost
identically to the real thing too.
Marlboro became ‘Marboro’, Camel became ‘Acmel’ and some even had a
picture of a bloke on the front puffing away on his carcinogenic ‘treat’ with a
smiling boy gazing up at him lovingly, laughing and longing for the days when
he can have emphysema and a mechanical device with which to speak with the
slogan ‘Just like Dad’ in gold letters.
The 80s
however toned it down slightly by plying us with simple white candy sticks with
a blob of red colouring at one end to make it clear which end was ‘lit’ and
which end to eat it from. Then we had
the chocolate ones which were wrapped in paper.
Nobody ever told us whether the paper was edible; it didn’t taste edible
but we’d eat it anyway. Maybe it was
carcinogenic to make us feel just like the grown-ups?
Sweet Tobacco
Not
hooked on smoking yet? Go further back
in time to a period when pipes and roll-ups were all the rage. Sweet Tobacco (or Spanish Gold) was made of
coconut strands dipped in chocolate powder and sold in small foil pouches just
like the real thing! I never tried to set fire to it but it would probably have
singed my eyebrows off.
Old Jamaica
Now that
you’re a 40-a-day smoker, why not start drinking too? How can children legally ply themselves with
alcohol though? With chocolate covered raisins absolutely dripping in rum! If that’s not enough then you could wash it
down with a can of Top Deck. This was a
brand that included flavours such as Limeade and Lager and Lemonade and Lager. This was a soft drink for kids which
contained actual alcohol – the can proudly stated that the drink was ‘not over
0.2% proof’. After downing six cans of
this during playtime, it was common for everyone to start slapping each other
on the back, attempting to remain upright and declaring that everyone present was
their best friend.
Turkish Delight
What
exactly was this abomination? If you’re one of the weirdos who actually likes
Turkish Delight, please close this browser and never return. The worst kind of this was the one covered in
dust, probably icing sugar, trying to disguise the jellied wasp stings
beneath. At least the chocolate covered
one masked the horror of what it contained, slightly. The thing that makes The Lion, The Witch and
The Wardrobe so outlandishly implausible and far-fetched is the fact Edmund
asks the witch for more Turkish
Delight. That. Would. Never. Happen.
However, being met in a forest by a faun is quite possible.
Liquorice Allsorts
Has anyone ever put one of those bobbly blue liquorice Allsorts in their
mouth and swallowed it? It tastes of being punched in the face, being
electrocuted whilst simultaneously
gargling with hot vinegar. Why would
they make these? Why would they put them in bags and charge us to eat
them? Why?
Flying Saucers
Two
discs of sugar paper, joined around the rim with intolerably fizzy sherbet in
between. You put them on your tongue,
let the paper melt and wait for the sherbet to fall out, stinging your salivary
glands and causing water to jet from your eyes like a drinking fountain.
Dairy Milk Dispenser
Christmas
wasn’t Christmas as a child without a personal mini Dairy Milk vending
machine. This red plastic tiny replica
of a vending machine ejected bite-sized nuggets of dairy milk chocolate every
time you pushed a two-pence-piece into one of the two slots. Part toy, part money box, once all the
chocolate was gone, the apparatus was rendered useless. Unless you also had some…
Terry’s Neapolitans
I know
I’m about 35 years late with this life-hack but these rectangular bite-sized
variously flavoured chocolates were the ideal size to fit into the Dairy Milk
Dispenser. These tasty little chocolates
came in dark, milk, orange and coffee flavours but none of them actually tasted like any of these flavours.
Chocolate cups
Coming
in at a princely 3p per cup, these were chunks of chocolate contained in
brightly coloured foil fairy-cake cases.
The odd thing about them was the fact they tasted cold (they were also
sold under the name ‘icy cups’) which was just witchcraft to an eight year
old. Turns out however, that it’s just
the hydrogenated coconut oil stealing your body heat and clogging up your
coronary arteries. So it was all fun, wasn’t
it?
Fizz Bombs
Remember
the days when you didn’t want your taste buds to work for a few weeks? When you wanted the inside of your mouth to
resemble the back of an Armadillo? When
you wanted to pull faces your face couldn’t ever hope to pull? When you wanted the outer layer of enamel
stripped from your teeth? Then fizz bombs
were for you. They were nonsensically
fizzy round coarse sweets just small enough to pop into your mouth; the level
of fizz was such, they’d be in a tub under clear supervision by the shopkeeper
on the counter in front of them in order to enact the one-per-customer rule
enforceable by law (or at least it should have been).
Foam Shrimps
Only in
the nightmares of Tim Burton has anything so foul existed. Not only were they a ghastly shade of pink
but they had an embossed impression of a dead shrimp printed into them. This, however, wasn’t deemed disgusting
enough so the manufacturers decided to make them out of packing material (or
possibly asbestos). These were on sale
for a great numbers of years, which means someone was eating them. Who was eating
them? And their sister product, the foam bananas. They were even worse and I
think I’m right in saying there was also a product made of the same foam-stuff
which looked like a set of false teeth.
This only supports the theory that kids will eat anything. Bogeys. Ear
wax. That stuff you find in your belly button.
The worst of all though is the foam shrimp. I’d rather eat someone else’s ear wax.
Screwball
All of
the sweets mentioned so far are riddled with memories of childhood, but in the
harsh spotlight of adulthood, the products themselves are actually a bit
scary. However excited you might have
been to get a screwball as a child, I defy anyone to remember actually enjoying
one. Forget the ones you’d get from the Mr. Whippy Ice Cream Van, they had actual
ice cream in. The ones I’m talking about
came pre-packaged in a cone shaped piece of opaque plastic. They’d usually been
lying at the bottom of a chest freezer in a dark corner of your local sweet shop
for a good few months past their sell-by date. You’d eagerly grab one (having to lean into
the freezer so far, you were in serious danger of falling in and becoming a
human screwball) with a sense of excitement unparalleled in your short
existence. Even if you’d already been
through the horror of eating one, the allure was still the same because at the
bottom of the ‘ice cream’ was a secret. A tempting cheeky secret. A bubble-gum
ball which was frozen solid. They’d cost
you your entire pocket money so they also held the same prestige as a pair of
Dunlop trainers do these days.
They used
to be a laughing stock in the 80s, being the cheapest of all the branded
trainers and to make it through an entire day at school in a pair of Dunlops
without being given a purple-nurple was an achievement.
Dunlop then slapped a £70 price tag on their trainers and all of a
sudden, they’re prestigious and cool and everyone is wearing them with normal
coloured nurples. My point being, the
10p price tag of a Screwball elevated it into the elite of all confectionary
and therefore, like caviar or Foie Gras, you were never allowed to admit that
they were disgusting.
The
cardboard lid would come off and reveal a tiny shovel with which to eat the Ice
Cream. However, it wasn’t Ice Cream, it
was curdled milk which tasted like a blended Woodlice milkshake the likes of
which wouldn’t even be offered on ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’. After forcing the gloopy non-Ice-Cream down
and fighting back the tears, you’d discover the treasure of the Sierra Madre. A
glacial sphere of pseudo-bubble-gum. Once you’d managed to warm the bubble-gum up
to mouth temperature, you’d still crack a molar on the outer shell. Should you manage to make it pliable enough
to chew, blowing a bubble with what now resembled crab paste, was
impossible. My advice, save your money
up then buy a pack of Hubba-Bubba and a Vienetta.
Bone Shakers
There’s
nothing like a replica plastic coffin and candy bones to bring the harsh
reality of the transience of human existence home to a six-year-old child. Sweets were too colourful, too much fun and
too tasty to teach you of the impending doom lurking in your future so Swizzels Matlow decided to redress the
balance. Inside the coffin you’d find
various candy bones which you could clip together to make a skeleton with one
arm and one leg. To make a full skeleton
you needed to buy at least two.
Recently, an empty coffin (which originally cost about 8p) went on e-bay
for £48.
Caramac
One of life’s
biggest unanswered questions. For what reason does this quasi-chocolate-tribute-act
exist?
Candy Watches
Before
Apple watches and FitBits, we had elastic string with candy beads and a massive
clock face which you wore on your wrist (if there was something wrong with you)
and then ate whist it was still on your wrist. I think it was meant to engender
the same level of respect from your peer group as a Rolex does for an adult –
that being, people stare at you with disdain for the fact you value yourself by
what brand your watch is rather than through your societal interactions. At least that's how I felt when I was seven
years old and I saw someone wearing and then eating their candy watch.
They
also came in a necklace version witch was exactly the same but without the
massive piece of candy with the time emblazoned on it. You’d pop the necklace on, bite some of the
candy off, wetting the elastic in the process and then twang the string back in
place, covering your neck in coloured saliva. Lovely.
 |
| Ironically, the time on these watches is exactly what happened to you when you ate too many candy watches |
Now we’re talking. Choc Dips came in a little cardboard pot with a foil lid. Peeling back the lid would uncover a small reservoir of Nutella-style chocolate spread and an arsenal of bread sticks to ‘go at it’ with. There were two ways to eat a Choc Dip. The first was the carefully measure how much Nutella you scooped out with each breadstick to ensure you weren’t either left with too much chocolate and nothing to scoop it out with (your finger usually sufficed) or no chocolate left and a surfeit of breadsticks which were disgusting eaten on their own. Then they went a ruined it by bringing out a cheese version. It was basically fondue for kids.
Toffee
in any format is a bad idea. It’s just
so much hard work for very little reward.
You might remember those presents unimaginative Aunties would buy you
for Christmas; a foil tray containing a block of toffee with a small silver
hammer. The fact you needed a hammer to
eat it, put it up there with crabs and coconuts. Too much hard work, not enough pleasure.
Push Pops
Remember
those huge red dummies you could buy at fairgrounds, suck all day, get most of
the stuff usually found down the back of the sofa stuck to it and then throw
away with the thing almost exactly the same size it was when you bought it?
Well, Push Pops were that condensed into a single stick which lurked inside a
plastic tube until you pushed it and it popped out like the worst brand of
lipstick ever. This product also
suffered from the saliva problem in that your spit would gather in the bottom
of the tube to greet you on your next visit; all cold and congealed like
yesterday’s pizza. Delicious.
Bubble-gum machines
I was
never sure that the money needed to manufacture the metal stand, the glass
container, mechanism for taking the money etc. would ever be made back and
become profitable when all it sold was balls of bubble-gum for one penny each.
They would probably become profitable in year six and in year seven make £3.21
profit.
These
machines stood outside of most corner shops and invited you to slip a penny (or
sometimes, in more affluent areas, a two pence coin) into the slot and turn a
handle through 180 degrees until you received a satisfying clunk. Turning the handle a further 180 degrees
would cause a bubble-gum ball to drop into the dispensing tunnel. You had to lift a small silver door and take
your prize. No hygiene involved at all. Posh towns had these machines but they were
10p and you won (paid for) a small plastic ball containing a toy or something.
Like Kinder Surprise without the chocolate.
Bazooka Joe
Chewing
gum came in several different forms in the 80s.
All of it ended up under the desk at school. This was a standard block of gum but it came
wrapped in a comic, albeit a very small one.
Sadly, Bazooka Joe didn’t own a rocket launcher, he was a young boy who
wore an eyepatch for an undisclosed reason. Maybe it was that day he tried to
eat too many Bazooka Joes at once. The
comic strip was usually four cells long and featured a ‘hilarious’ joke
alongside an advert for a bit of merch which wasn’t worth the wrapper it was
printed on (3p). Probably unrelated and
made by a different company entirely, the kids who used to buy Bazooka Joes
slowly progressed to buying bubble gum which came packaged with a transfer
tattoo. You licked your hand and pressed
it against your skin to transfer the picture of a yellow smiley face. The same children then became entranced by
Acid House music and rave parties.
Pick ‘n’ Mix was only available in very special places in the world. Your local corner shop or supermarket didn’t have one so you usually had to travel to your nearest city and find a Woolworths (R.I.P.) or a cinema. As previously mentioned, the weight of the sweet determined how many you could have, especially if it wasn’t you who was paying for it. You’d find yourself standing in front of a series of plastic containers each filled with a different sweet and each with a plastic scoop protruding from it. The idea was to get at least one of each of your favourites instead of having to buy a bag full of just one type of sweet. However, you reach a pot containing your favourite sweet and scoop hundreds of them into your bag. Regardless of how few sweets you thought you’d stuffed in your bag, once you got them on the scales you’d always have to put at least half back to bring the cost down under £5, then looking in the bag to see you’ve only got three cola bottles and a jelly crocodile.
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