Sweet memories: the confectionery of our youth

Nothing conjures up the bittersweet memories of childhood more keenly than the often vanished confectionery of yesteryear.

There were Spangles, translucent sugar squares in butterscotch, Old English’, cola and dozens more varieties; Nutty bars, scrumptious knobbly chocolate logs, and Pacers, white slabs of minty gorgeousness with green go-faster stripes that tasted like sweet toothpaste and had a similar consistency.

Opal Fruits (‘made to make your mouth water’), now incomprehensibly called Starbust; Funny Feet, a self-consciously wacky dollop of moulded strawberry ice cream; Golden Nuggets that came in a pouch; and Kola Cubes, which it was impossible to eat without removing the skin off your soft palate.

Black Jacks were, along with Fruit Salad and Flying Saucers, a sticky stalwart of the 10p mix-up bag.

I loved the stiflingly perfumed Parma Violets, despite their soapy aftertaste; and the equally perfumed and nearly impossible to chew, Cherry Lips. In the un-PC 1970s, we liked to ‘puff’ on sweetie cigarettes, and risk dental cavities on scarcely manageable gobstoppers and leathery Wine Gums.

We supped Creamola Foam, a lurid glistening powder which when added to water created a hyperactively sweet drink.

I loved Sherbet Dip Dabs, radioactively-coloured Wham Bars and Refreshers (“the fizz that gives you whizz”), liquorice bootlaces, space dust, and Bazooka bubble gum.

Every child’s dream was going to a sweet shop with a tinkling bell as you pushed open the door and a tantalising array of shining glass jars crammed with multicoloured delights.

A tabard-wearing lady would weigh out your sweets, which clattered satisfyingly into the metal scoop of the scales before being adroitly bagged up and swiftly closed with a twist.

For Roald Dahl, the sweet shop was “the very centre of our lives. To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk, or a church is to a bishop. Without it, there would have been little to live for.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Grim nutritionists may scoff at confectionery, but sometimes a quarter of Midget Gems is all the medicine we need when life isn’t so sweet.

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