Child Of The 1980’s

Jacob’s Club have been around for years and are still going strong today, but the 1980’s was a particularly popular time for them thanks mainly to the advertising campaign for them, of which more in a moment. The bars themselves come in a number of different flavours, the most common being mint, orange, milk chocolate and fruit, although I’m sure there have been others over the years. They consist of a biscuit, normally topped with a layer of flavoured cream, which has then been thickly coated in chocolate, and very tasty they are too.

Anyway, in the 1980’s Jacob’s had a very strong TV advertising campaign for the biscuits which centred around the jingle “if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club“. There were several different adverts made around this theme, but they followed the pattern of having one person start eating a Club biscuit and somebody starting to sing the above line. When they got to the end of the line somebody else would join in and start singing it too.

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Upon doing the grocery shopping the other day I happened to notice a packet of Rainbow Drops on the shelf, so remembering them from my childhood I picked up a packet to see if my memories of them still held true.

Well, my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me, and they are just as I remember, except for being sold in a packet which I’m sure must be at least twice the size it used to be. I’m sorry to say I was never the biggest fan of these, and I still don’t find them that appealing today truth be told. Rainbow drops are, to quote the packet, “sugar coated puffed maize and rice”, which translates to “sugar coated pieces of polystyrene” in my book. They need to be sugar coated as well because without this sweetening layer they would be incredibly bland.

There are two issues I have with Rainbow Drops. Firstly, and albeit a minor point, they may have rainbow in the name but they only come in five colours, these being pink, orange, yellow, green and violet. Now, pink certainly isn’t a colour of the rainbow, and what’s happened to red, blue and indigo?

Secondly is the fact that Rainbow Drops have always tricked me into thinking they must taste much nicer than they do. They look appealing, being brightly coloured and with an interesting knobbly look, and you get loads in a packet, but they always seem so disappointing to actually eat…

Now these bring back memories, and I’m pleased to say that they are still readily available today. The Jacob’s Happy Face is a biscuit whose closest comparison is probably the Jammie Dodger, but in my mind they are far superior.

The Happy Face biscuit consists of two shortcake biscuits sandwiched together with raspberry jam and a dollop of vanilla flavoured creamy stuff. The biscuits have comical faces stamped into their surface, with the eyes and mouths being holes through which the jam and cream innards can be seen. The faces differ from biscuit to biscuit, so you can’t help examining each biscuit before you chomp into it. Whilst the Jammie Dodger is still a favourite, I feel the Happy Face wins overall due to it being a far more jolly teatime treat.

One thing that Happy Faces and Jammie Dodgers share in common is that the jam has a tendency to go a little hard and chewy. I don’t know what the cause of this is, but when it happens it makes biting into the biscuit quite difficult. You end up having to bite into the biscuit then wiggle it up and down to get the jam to snap. The cream in the Happy Face does help prevent this problem to a certain extent, but it doesn’t completely eliminate it.

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Texan bars consisted of a huge slab of tasty caramel wrapped in chocolate. They were extremely popular in the 1970’s, and I’m fairly certain they were still around in the 1980’s. They were very briefly bought back for a couple of months in 2005, but sadly this was a real limited edition offer. The picture illustrating this post is from one of the rerelease bars, but the wrapper is just as I remember it (minus the Blast from the Past logo anyway).

The caramel used in Texans could be incredibly hard to bite into, and was incredibly chewy once you did manage to lever off a piece with your teeth. Indeed, the advertising slogan for the sweet was “sure is a mighty chew“. The advertising was based around cowboys, and featured an animated Clint Eastwood style character defending the wild west with the help of his trusty chocolate bar.

I guess the image of cowboys chewing tobacco must have been the reason why the western theme was used for Texans. I believe another slogan used was “a man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew“, paraphrasing John Wayne somewhat, although I may be wrong and that particular slogan was actually used by Toffos, as they also used a western theme back then.

I also seem to recall that there was a chocolate flavoured caramel version of Texan as well, which came in a brown wrapper rather than yellow. It’s possible that this version may have been the same flavour caramel, but with dark chocolate, but I’m pretty sure it was chocolate caramel.

Why is it that you always find out about things just as they are about to finish? An exhibition entitled Sweet came to my attention today, which unfortunately comes to a close on April 24th. It’s been on show since November last year, but this is the first time I’ve seen anything about it.

It’s being held in London’s V&A Museum of Childhood (which I didn’t know existed either, and sounds like it might be worth a visit), and it’s an exhibition of model buildings and other structures that have been constructed out of sweets, including some famous London landmarks. For more details check out the information on the Museum of Childhood’s website.

According to Sky TV’s website the exhibition appears to currently be accompanied by various other pieces of artwork created from those little crisp coated chocolate sweets called Smarties, including the pictured recreation of Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe. I think this is a separate exhibit organised to celebrate the return of the blue Smarties, which were dropped a few years back after a health scare about the colourings used in them - or at least that’s how I remember it. Anyway, it sounds like its worth a look if you get the chance.

Like the Jacob’s Trio, here’s another blast from the past chocolate bar that’s no longer available. It was called United, and I’m presuming it was also manufactured by United Biscuits, though I don’t know for sure. I haven’t been able to track down an image at all, but hopefully this description might jog the old grey cells a little.

The bar itself was divided into three bite size chunks, and consisted, if I remember correctly anyway, of a biscuit base coated in fairly thick chocolate. The chocolate contained little bits of that strange crunchy honeycomby stuff. I’m not sure exactly what you call it, but the closest thing I can compare it to that is currently available in the UK are the crunchy bits in a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Mint or Orange Crunch chocolate bar. I suspect it was actually nothing more than lumps of crystallised sugar, but it could have been little biscuit crumbs perhaps?

Anyway, that’s how I remember them. They were very tasty, and available in two varieties. Original flavour (whatever an “original” is), which was in a blue wrapper, and an orange flavoured one (unsurprisingly in an orange wrapper). The only other thing I remember about them is that the TV advert was based around football fans, given that the name of the biscuit is also an often used shortening for football teams such as Manchester United.

Does anyone else out there remember these?

Mmm, Cadbury Mini Rolls. I’ve always loved them, and whilst they aren’t a product of the 1980’s as such (they’ve been around since at least the 1960’s I believe) they were certainly a childhood favourite. What better than your own individual swiss roll, wrapped in chocolate? I’ve always liked the ones with chocolate sponge and white cream filling best, but the plain sponge ones are also nice with their addition of a spreading of strawberry jam. Yum!

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about them today is because they have a rather groovy “Blast From The Past” offer running at the moment. It’s one of those “collect the coupons and send off for a free gift” promotions, but they have some great gifts up for grabs. Each packet of six rolls contains a code which you can redeem on the Mini Rolls website for the following gifts:-

• A Flashing Light Yo-Yo (2 codes)
• Some Juggling Balls (2 codes)
• A Mini Rolls Tin (6 codes)
• A Slinky (6 codes)
• A CD with hits from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s (6 codes)
• A Rubik’s Cube (6 codes)
• A USB Glitter Lamp (8 codes)
• An adult size Space Hopper (8 codes)
• A retro styled Radio (8 codes)

The smaller items are completely free, but the gifts requiring 6 or 8 items require a £2 or £3 postage free respectively. If nothing else, this is a great excuse to gorge yourself on mini rolls!

Have a browse around the above site as well as they have a nice little “relive your youth” section where you can select a year from 1960 to 1999 and it will tell you the top song, TV programme, film, toy and fashion from that year.

First off I hope you all had a nice relaxing Easter weekend, and aren’t feeling too sick now from scoffing too many chocolate Easter Eggs. Today I thought I’d reminisce a little about Easter Eggs past (and present) that have stuck in my mind for one reason or another. So without further ado, let’s get the egg rolling…

Yorkie Egg - I used to love Yorkie chocolate as a child due to it’s seemingly massive chunk size. The current advertising campaign for Yorkie is “Not for Girls”, but the bar as always been advertised in a similar manner. I remember the old TV adverts featuring an array of burly 18 Wheeler Truck drivers, who needed a big bar to keep them satisfied whilst driving their lorry across country.

Stemming from the TV adverts came the idea of packaging the Yorkie Easter Egg as a big truck. The cardboard box was made in the shape of a truck, with the egg being hauled along on the back. Another year they took this a step further and made the cardboard box into a cement mixing lorry, with the egg being the big rotatey mixing chamber on the back.

Cadbury’s Creme Eggs - These were originally launched in 1971, and are still a firm favourite today. To be honest I’m surprised they’ve been around for so long, as I wasn’t around in 1971 yet I seem to remember them being launched when I was little. Obviously not, this fact came from Cadbury’s own website so it must be true.

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