The 10 best (and strangest) sweets, snacks and treats from your childhood

They don’t make snacks like they used to – how many of these classic (and often bizarre) tuck shop treats of the last century do you remember?

Things were different in our day. We didn’t have wall-to-wall, multiple channel children’s TV or iPads, or any of the other instant gratifications our kids enjoy. No, our treats came as sweets and lunchbox fillers. Perfect. Instant. Pleasure. But some of them were decidedly odd. How many of the following 10 retro treats do you remember – and which of your favourites have we left out?

10. Smith’s Salt n Shake Crisps

Originally invented in the 1920s and available again as Walkers Salt & Shake, these iconic crisps took a break from the shops at some point in the 1990s. Inside every packet there was meant to be a little blue sachet filled with salt which you added to the unsalted crisps. You would then hold the packet tight and shake it up and down to distribute the salt. Reports of six sachets of salt finding their way into packets were relatively common, with the record standing at eleven. There were, briefly, spin-off lines of Flavour n Shake with a choice of cheese and onion or salt and vinegar flavours.

9. Pan Yan Pickle

This fruity form of Crosse and Blackwell’s Branston was a staple of cheese and ham sandwiches and featured, according to its ingredient list, apple, curry and a quantity of an exotic turnip alternative called the rutabaga. Rutabaga turns out to be really just another name for ‘swede’ (that’s the root vegetable, not the Scandinavian).

Pan Yan fell from favour during the 1990s and was discontinued in 2000. Following a 2008 radio appeal by DJ Chris Evans to bring back Pan Yan, the owner of the brand were forced to admit that its secret recipe had been destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004.

8. Fruit Salads

Not the healthy aberration, but the penny chew, wrapped in greaseproof paper and available in multiples for a penny, the more you could get, the older you are. There was only one flavour available – Raspberry and Pineapple – but that was OK, because it offered the ultimate in sweet refreshment.

Fresh out of the wrapper, the Fruit Salad was the approximate hardness of a frozen bakelite plug, but with a bit of tentative molar work you could maul it into submission and let that juicy sweetness free.

7. Spangles

Boiled fruity sweets sold in paper tubes, Spangles shared their shape with the still-extant cough sweet ‘Tunes’. These rounded square lozenges with thumb-sized circular depressions on both faces were produced until the early 1980s and came in a variety pack with a selection of fruit flavours. Individual flavour packs  – orangeade, barley sugar and blackcurrant, among others – also found their way to market.

The heyday of Spangles was undoubtedly the 1970s, where its packaging sported a variety of the funky font ‘Bell Bottom’. Phased out in 1984, they were re-introduced in 1995 in Woolworths, so that went well.

6. Cadbury’s Snow Flake

Less like a Flake, more of a Twirl, only with white chocolate flake inside a milk chocolate coating, the Snow Flake was the dream marketing combination of an awesome concoction with spot-on branding.

They spoilt it all when they decided to re-brand it as Flake Snow in 2003, which makes no sense whatsoever. The public were apparently also mystified as this amazing treat was discontinued just five years later.

5. Sweet Cigarettes

Undoubtedly a controversial treat, the appeal of these was the ciggie-style soft-pack wrapping and the amount of suaveness it would confer upon its user (in its user’s mind). What was best about these sweets was the edible paper which surrounded the slightly-too-sweet cheap chocolate or chalky sugar sticks contained within.

Contrary to popular opinion, they weren’t banned in the UK, just quietly tut-tutted off the market.

4. Texan Bar

Officially one of Britain’s most beloved chocolate bars, the Texan was a toffee/nougat bar in a relatively thin layer of chocolate. It was hard, slow work to finish one and there are many reports of teeth failing in the process. It was so popular that Nestlé briefly brought it back for a lap of honour in 2005 and then it was gone as soon as it had arrived. 

3. Bird’s Apeel

A powdered orange-juice made by the acknowledged kings of custard, a packet of Bird’s Apeel could be made up into a pint of OJ which, according to the advert, ‘tasted just like orange juice’. It didn’t. It tasted of powder.

Kellogg’s had their own version – Rise & Shine – that came in five flavours: orange, grapefruit, pineapple, lemon, and blackcurrant. If you fancied your E numbers unsullied by water, you could always moisten a finger and lick the powder from the packet.

2. Sherbet Fountains

With packaging that looked like nothing so much as a dusty firework, Sherbet Fountains came in long yellow paper tubes with red printing and a liquorice fuse. You were meant to bite off the end of the liquorice, which then served as a straw to suck up the fizzy powder. The inevitable drool would quash any chance of getting very far with this approach, so most just chugged down the sherbet in one. Without eating the packet, it was not possible to eat all the powder and any quantity of it would send you into a state of explosive spluttering.

1. Space Dust

Like nuclear-powered Rice Krispies, Space Dust intensified snap, crackle and pop into an oral firework display. It came in small foil wraps decorated with a cartoon moon belching Saturnian rings from its face.

Space Dust was wildly popular perhaps not only because of the unique experience but because there was also a whiff of danger around the product. A persistent urban legend grew up about children who had eaten it with cola or lemonade subsequently exploding – but sadly we haven’t been able to verify any of these reports.
 

At the Children’s Furniture Company we believe kids’ furniture should be practical (which is why we coat it with three layers of paint to make it sweet-sticky finger-proof) but with a sprinkle of magic dust. Browse our children’s furniture here.