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Revenge of Nostalgia Rules: Penny Sweets by Blanco |
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They
just don’t do things the way they used to. You
rarely find Sherbet Dib Dabs in the shops these days, or those Hubba
Bubba bubble gum that was like chewing sugary brick. Or
Pear Drops.
Or Sherbet Pips (although they weren’t sherbet, just sour).
Or chocolate cigarettes (complete with rice paper wrapped around
them).
Or proper gobstoppers.
Whatever happened to those? You
can still get the mallow shrimps.
And the vampire teeth.
And the dentures.
I’m sure I’ve seen those lipstick style lollypops that you
used to rub onto your lips in a vain attempt to transfer some colour
there.
You can still track down the flying saucers and the popping candy
if you look hard enough.
You can still get Black Jacks and Fruit Salad chews, and boxes of
dweebs, and packets of Love Hearts, Refreshers and Parma Violets
(whoever liked these?
They tasted like your Nan’s perfume).
You can still find those elusive rainbow coloured puffed rice
(what the hell were they called?). Trips
to the sweet shop were wonderful things.
Clutching on to a parents hand, we’d walk into wonderland, and
tell the Sweetshop Man how much money we had. Then
we’d stand outside and point to the sweets we wanted through the
window and hold up fingers as to how many we wanted, while the beaming
Sweetshop Man fumbled with the big jars, and counted out our sweets. My
mother never tires of regaling family and friends of the time me and my
little sister (aged seven and two) found ten pence outside and toddled
all the way down to the corner shop (across a main road, no less) to buy
sweets.
The backs of my legs were stinging for HOURS when she finally
found us. Sweeties
were incredible when we were kids.
I remember the fizzy cola bottles, and we’d buy huge bagfuls
and hold competitions to see who could get the most of the sour sweets
into their mouths.
We used to adore the jawbreaker sour gobstoppers.
They were huge gobstoppers that rendered you incapable of speech,
and then when you’d sucked off the mildly sour layer, you got to a
bubble gum centre.
Biting into that there was an almighty sour sherbet in it.
Absolute candy bliss. I
remember some company decided to capitalize on the children’s
obsession with sour, almost inedible stuff by bringing out these things
called Cannon Balls.
This was a pack of five black balls of bubble gum, except one had
“a sour surprise inside”.
And you didn’t know which one.
I remember getting a packet of Cannon Balls, then gathering four
friends and handing out one each, then on the count of three, the five
of us would bite the bubblegum simultaneously.
And I got the “sour surprise”.
Except it wasn’t sour, it was salt.
Rancid, vile salt.
I spat out the cannon ball and was promptly sick.
Needless to say, Cannon Balls didn’t last too long. Thus
ended my addiction to incredibly sour sweets, especially ones that
advertised themselves with the words surprise. Except
Kinder Eggs.
They’re cool.
Even to a twenty-four year old. |
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© Blanco |
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