The price of confectionery in modern-day supermarkets means that you’re almost required to take out a mortgage in order to afford an acceptable amount of sugary snacks, but the eighties kids among you will remember a time when just 10 or 20 pence provided us with enough sweets to last an entire Saturday afternoon. In the days when even a halfpenny piece was enough to purchase a small treat, our local newsagent was full of row upon row of colourful delights that many of us referred to as ‘penny sweets.’
Below are 10 examples that we suspect you’ve completely forgotten you even took the time to spend your hard earned pocket money on.
10. Fruit Salad
Somewhere near the top of our list of priorities when we entered our local corner shop with a fresh batch of copper coins were the gorgeous Fruit Salads, which despite experiencing something of a renaissance during the 1980s have never really gone out of fashion.
Giving us a perfect combination of chewy goodness and succulent, fruity flavour, Fruit Salads remind us of a time when purchasing a fresh batch of penny sweets was the highlight of our week.
9. Chocolate Tools
Alongside the colourful sweet snacks in our nearest newsagents were a selection of delightful chocolates, which in some establishments were dispensed by an actual human being with a scoop and a pile of paper bags.
Chief among these classic choccy choices were the ones that came in the shape of saws, screwdrivers and spanners; simple moulds that somehow seemed to make the chocolate taste even better than it would have otherwise.
8. Flying Saucers
Giving us a serious sugar hit once we managed to penetrate their tough outer shell, Flying Saucers are a retro treat that have been enjoyed by children over many different generations.
Eating one of these space-themed sherbet snacks was a bit like chewing on a piece of cardboard, but that didn’t stop us consuming hundreds of them whenever they were made available at one of our friend’s birthday parties.
7. Mojos
Search carefully and you will still find Mojos being offered online by specialist confectionery suppliers, but it’s been many decades since we saw these fruity chews on the shelves of high street shops.
We remember being able to purchase three or four Mojos for a single penny, and we also recall having a preference for the banana and strawberry flavours.
6. Milk Bottles
In the days when cow’s milk was delivered to our doorstep by a man in a laughably slow van, we also enjoyed consuming copious amounts of milk bottle sweets.
These delicious, dairy-themed delights are still pretty popular, but the modern versions are nowhere near as tasty as the mouth-watering milk bottle-shaped confectionery that we enjoyed during our 1980s childhood.
5. Foam Bananas and Shrimps
Their taste and texture is hard to describe, so someone came up with the idea of referring to these particular retro penny sweets as ‘foam’ bananas and shrimps.
We’ve never yet tried to munch on a portion of foam, but we suspect the taste is a million miles away from the soft, melt-in-your-mouth experience that these yummy sweeties provided.
4. Bubbly
Before we enjoyed the multi-flavoured deliciousness that came within every single packet of Hubba Bubba, another bubble gum brand was responsible for us parting with a large percentage of our modest piggy bank savings.
It may have only been available in one flavour, but Bubbly delivered on its promise by letting us blow some outrageously large bubbles.
3. Liquorice Torpedoes
The taste of liquorice sits alongside the likes of Marmite and Peanut Butter in the way it divides opinion, but personally we could never get enough of these sleek, tasty tubes.
Many of you will remember munching your way through a pack of Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts, but our personal favourites were the Liquorice Torpedoes that were regularly offered as part of penny sweet selections during our youth.
2. Black Jack
A generous portion of Black Jacks usually sat alongside our hand-picked selection of Fruit Salads when we were growing up, and we still can’t decide which of them we preferred.
Black Jacks, which are still available to purchase today if you look in the right place, were unique, aniseed-flavored rectangles that never failed to turn our tongues completely black.
1. White Chocolate Fish and Chips
We’ve definitely saved the best ’till last, because white chocolate fish and chips were, in our opinion at least, the finest tasting penny sweets of them all.
Giving us a lovely, thick portion of delicious white chocolate that was shaped like everyone’s favourite takeaway dish, these timeless treats were ones that we came back to again and again.