Top 5 Popular Retro Sweets….Ever!

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Top 5 Popular Retro Sweets....Ever!

Everybody has got their own favourite sweets. There is truly something for all tastes and palettes out there.

But the excitement really ramps up a few notches when talk turns to retro sweets. Not the reproductions you see in your local stores. Oh no, we’re talking about the real deal from the much-missed Great British sweetshop. From the tongue-twisting tang of the Cola Bottle to the sugary whizz of the Flying Saucer, for many of us, the golden age of confectionery came during yesteryear.

These vintage classics conjure up wonderfully nostalgic memories of trips to the sweetshop, the cheeky 20p mix that your grandma bought you but told you not to tell your parents about, the rewards for cleaning dad’s car or doing the washing up. Each sweet has its own story; its own place in history.

And like all good things from the passage of time, the popularity of retro sweets seems to be increasing, not dwindling. Whether it is to relive those school days (they really are the best years of your life kids) or simply because of the lip-smacking taste, the demand for classic sweeties lives on in abundance. The most Top 10 Popular Retro Sweets….Ever! 

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1. Aniseed Balls

Aniseed balls were created in the 1910s and are made from aniseed oil. Aniseed balls were popular with children during the first and second world wars. Hard shiny balls of rich, strong aniseed flavour that are weighed straight from the jar, just as they used to be at the sweet shop down the road. One will satisfy for a good five minutes if you’re a sucker and not a cruncher. Aniseed Balls are traditional British delight.

Aniseed balls were popular with children during the first and second world wars. Aniseed balls used to be the staple in every schoolboy’s bag or pocket. Aniseed balls were also used as a time delay for setting off explosives in Limpet mines during World War 2, giving soldiers an edge against the Nazis. A Limpet mine was an explosive weapon meant to be attached to the bottom of a ship by a diver. They only problem was, the Limpet mines kept going off too quickly not leaving enough time for the diver to swim away. The solution? Aniseed balls! Because Aniseed balls dissolve slowly in water, it allowed the diver enough time to escape before the Limpet mine exploded.

Dark reddish-brown marble-sized sweets with a highly polished exterior. A strong aniseed flavour which dissolves slowly leaving a tiny little seed of anise in the mouth.

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2. Black Jacks

Black Jacks was one of the best classic British sweets ever! Black Jacks was originally part of the Barratt family, the Black Jack sweets, one of the most iconic sweets ever,  are made with a natural, distinctive aniseed flavour. Blackjacks were little chewy sweets wrapped in greaseproof black and white paper wrappings and a favourite for the old mixed-bag selection. They are famous for turning your tongue black which goes back since the 1920s!  Because of this, it wasn’t a good sweet to sneakily eat at playtimes. Blackjacks often used to be mixed with Fruit Salad a chew sweet or around the same size with a distinct flavour and bright yellow and red wrappers.

Black Jacks were called Black Jacks because the original 1920s labels pictured a grinning gollywog (a golliwogg or golly is a fictional character created by Florence Kate Upton that appears in children’s books in the late 19th century and usually depicted as a type of ragdoll). Back then images of black people were used to advertise Liquorice. However, by the late 1980s manufacturers, Trebor quite rightly scrapped the Black Jacks golly logo as it was racially offensive, replaced the logo with an image of a pirate with a black beard and eye patch and rebranded the sweets as Black Jack. And by the early 1990s, Trebor disbanded the pirate logo altogether in favour of the black and white swirl design we all remember.

In 2008, a confectionery company called Tangerine bought out Trebor and decided to change the design once more to the current plain black with red writing. Now the swirly black and white packaging we all remember is gone forever, although they still taste the same.

Image: Black Jacks

3. Fruit Salad

Small chewy sweets, Fruit Salads tasted of… well, fruit. Fruit salads are raspberry and pineapple flavoured chews first created by Barratt’s in the 1920s. Their iconic yellow and pink wrapper became synonymous with pick ‘n’ mix throughout the decades making Fruit Salads a staple British sweet. Once part of the Barratt family, the Fruit Salad range of retro sweets is made with a natural, distinctive pineapple and raspberry flavour. They are often linked with Black Jacks. Oh, how this retro sweets combination works! Fruit Salad fare famous for their zingy orange wrappers and juicy fruit flavour whilst you chew happily away.  A great pick and mix for decades.

4. Fizzy Cola Bottles

A favourite amongst the children. Fizzy cola bottles are sour, chewy cola gummies made from gelatin dipped in sugar. They are an essential part of the classic pick ‘n’ mix selection and were first produced in the 1930s. A sweet that children big and small absolutely love is shaped like a cola bottle of course. Now they come in all different flavours and sizes including fizzy cherry cola bottles, cherry cola bottles, giant cola bottles and giant fizzy cola tubs!

Image: Fizzy-Cola-Bottles

5. Parma Violets

Parma Violets are little blue discs. They are named after the violet flower of Parma, Italy, which it takes its flavour from. Parma Violets were launched in the 1940s by Swizzels-Matlow company although Internet rumours claim they were invented by the scientist Michael Faraday. Not containing ham, but remarkably, tasting of a purple flower. These hard tablet-like sweets are still popular with old ladies perhaps unaccustomed to modern confectionery. A British violet-flavoured tablet confectionery manufactured by the Derbyshire company Swizzels Matlow, named after the Parma Violet variety of the flower. The sweets are hard, biconcave disc-shaped sweets, similar to the Fizzers product from the same company but without their fizziness.

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