Child Of The 1980’s

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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To start with let us clear up some things. The picture illustrating this post is not one of actual Peanut Treats, it is just your common or garden chocolate peanut. Secondly, Peanut Treats are not the same thing as Peanut M&M’s. Granted they are very similar, almost identical, but to a lover of Treats they are not the same. Thirdly, and I’m less sure of this one, I don’t think they were actually called Peanut Treats - I’m fairly sure they were just called Treats. At any rate, I shall refer to them as such from now on.

As the M&M reference might suggest, Treats were peanuts coated in chocolate which was then in turn surrounded by a crispy outer shell. I have no idea who the manufacturer of these sweets actually was. I’m certain it wasn’t Cadbury’s, and I don’t think it was Mars or Rowntrees either. If anyone out there knows for certain I’d love to know! Please add a comment to this post to put us all out of our misery.

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Another variety of penny sweets available from your corner confectioner were those made from chocolate. As with jelly sweets the chocolate versions were usually also shaped in several fancy ways, making choosing all the more difficult. At the end of the day they may all have tasted similar, but choosing whether you wanted your chocolate in the shape of a mouse, a football or a DIY tool was a dilemma for a six year old.

Chocolate penny sweets were normally either milk or white chocolate, although you did occasionally come across yellow banana flavour chocolate and pink strawberry flavour chocolate. Strictly speaking only brown chocolate can truly be called chocolate, but since there doesn’t seem to be a better name for white and the other colours we’ll stick with the term here as calling it something like white block candy isn’t very descriptive!

Here are some of the types of chocolate that I fondly remember from my childhood.

Chocolate Footballs - Little spheres of milk chocolate wrapped in foil printed with a hexagon and pentagon design to make them look like footballs. Getting the wrapper off was usually a lot of fiddling about, and when you did finally get it off there was a 50-50 chance of the chocolate being a tasty variety or not. Some makes used what I called “cheap chocolate”, which was the kind that usually didn’t taste like anything much, least chocolate.

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The image here shows the Barratt’s Sherbet Dip Dab as it is today, but it doesn’t seem a million miles away from the packaging I remember. I’m pretty sure the colour scheme is the same, and the image and logo aren’t much different either. I’ve always preferred the Dip Dab to that other classic the Sherbet Fountain simply because I don’t like liquorice.

The Dip Dab consisted of a little paper bag full of sherbet powder and a strawberry flavoured boiled sweet lollipop. Some countries know sherbet as an ice cream or sorbet style food stuff, but for us in the UK sherbet will always be a fizzy white powder that looked a bit like icing sugar, that made your tongue fizz when you ate it. The Dip Dab was therefore aptly named, as you are it by dipping the lolly in the bag, dabbing it in the sherbet, then licking the lolly clean and repeating.

Personally I loved the sherbet much more than the lollipop, so would often purposely eat the lolly as quickly as possible so that I could spoon the rest of the sherbet out of the bag straight into my mouth. Mmm, lovely!

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Everybody loves Love Hearts, don’t they? Those little fizzy sweets with a little message in red text embossed on the side and surrounded with a heart are just as popular today as they always have been. The sweets were made in different pastel colours, although I think they all had the same flavour - I certainly couldn’t tell any noticeable difference between them anyway.

It was the messages that were the best thing though. You couldn’t eat a Love Heart without reading what the message was first, which was normally something like “LOVE YOU” or “CUTE BOY” or “BE MINE”. For todays modern world they’ve apparently also added some more slogans written in SMS Text Speak, like “LUV U 24/7″, and even regional versions of the sweets, though I believe this was a Valentine’s Day special edition. For example, the Scottish packs featured “BONNIE LASS” as one of the messages!

The sweets have become so engrained in peoples minds now that the manufacturers, Swizzels Matlow (also creators of the Parma Violet) have even created a dedicated Love Hearts website. Here you can buy a wide range of Love Hearts merchandise, including personalised packets for weddings and other special occasions. There is even a little trinket box lined with red satin and containing a single sweet with the message “MARRY ME” on the side, perfect for those wishing to get engaged, although I suspect your intended would like it more if there was a ring inside as well.

It doesn’t end there though, as Firebox have a Silver Love Heart that says “I LOVE YOU” on one side, and the other side can be engraved with your own personal message. There’s also several different Love Heart pendants available, which can be purchased from Amazon (follow the link at the end of this post for details). With Valentine’s Day only a few weeks away, perhaps one of these might solve the problem of what to buy for your sweetheart this year?