Crisps and Sweets R.I.P.

ozpass

I can picture it now.....

The dread of Wednesdays circa 1984. I'm seven years old and Wednesday means swimming lessons at school. 20 minutes on a crapped-out bus followed by an entire hour of freezing water, stinging chlorine and getting my legs whipped by John Heathcote's wet towel :eek: (you're a marked man Heathcote, you b*stard!)

Then it's all over.....

.... I've got 30p in my pocket and I'm stood in front of the Swimming Bath's sweet & snack dispenser. 30p gets me a Gorgo Bar, packet of Frosties and a bag of Skydivers.

Problem is, WHERE ARE THEY NOW???

Teeth rotting junk-food that defines an era: what's yours?:D

Makaveli

You can still get frosties.
Never heard of the other two.

I want them to bring back hi-sours. 2p each and lovely.

ozpass

Gorgo bars were the sister sweet to the mighty Wham! bar. Basically a 'strip' of hard, sticky, sour green toffee(?) with black fizzy bits embedded in it.

Skydivers were the ultimate cheap-ass crisps. A tiny bag of equally tiny salt + vinegar corn snacks that were supposed to resemble parachutists/skydivers. Think Chickadees, but cheaper and nastier.

I'm delighted that Frosties still exist though- are they hard to find or readily available? Gotta track some down this lunchtime.:p

Makaveli

Ah now I remember gorgo bars.
Actually I remember skydivers now too.

AFAIK you can get frosties everywhere. They are about 18c and I am nearly sure they are smaller than they used to be. Then again it might just be because I'm bigger, but they do look smaller.

ozpass

It's the same stunt that was pulled with Monster Munch. I reckon some similar shenanigans took place during the great Marathon --> Snickers switch over too.

Seraphina

ah you people you're missing out! there's a shop around the corner from my house where you can still get most of the stuff you mentioned. i dont think the place has changed in 20 years. there's about 4 shelves behind the counter of cheap penny crap, from the days when you had a pound and you were rich, rich i tells ya. a pound would have fed me for 3 days!

Lucutus

Jaw breakers



Luc

Gaz

What where they called ....arhhh .... Like little flying sauzers full of fizz .... remember them ?

ozpass

Yeah! I always asked for 'fizzy flying saucers'- like cardboard with lemon sherbet when they melted in your mouth! Lush!

Gaz

Thats them ... like flavoured paper with fizz !

Gordon

mmm
Pez
Maceroon bars
Chocolate cigarettes
Space dust that popped and cracked in your mouth
(scratch and sniff stickers, yum)
Ye those jaw breakers, I use to love this green one called a watermelon I think
Hedgehog crisps
Curly wurlys
Those crisps that had flavour in a small bag and you shake the bag over the plain crisps.

Ahe ye oldene dayse ehe?

ozpass

I ate Pez incessantly when I was in Indonesia- they do really cool Nintendo themed ones. Does anyone remember Nerds?

Gaz

Nerds ? A box with different coloured ones in seperate sections of the packet ?Green and red and ehh something else , that them ?

ozpass

Yeah- them's the ones! They were the sweet when I started secondary school! I seem to recall they were taken off the shelves due to having glass pieces maliciously added. There are sweets available called Nerds under the 'Willy Wonka' branding but I can't confirm/deny they are the same sweets.

P.S. The purple/orange ones were my favourite.:p

smoke.me.a.kipper

time bars
frosties

and these little red bars that were like 5p and you could get a sweet version of them too. cant remember the name. there was a green(minty) version aswell.

Jak

Candy cigarettes

Good god imagine trying to get them marketted and sold now.

Gorgo bars were absolutely great as were chomps and burger bites - the staple diet of any growing child.

I remember doing the maths :rolleyes: and a few of us working out that if we saved up £5 we could buy a full massive jar of penny sweets - shortly after I lost my taste for the proper sugar coated cola bottles for many years.

ozpass

I had a similar nasty incident after purchasing 322 'Ball bearings'- those little silver sweets. My lips actually went silver.

Michael Collins

hm yeh I remember those flying saucers, you can still get them in select parts of wicklow...if you dare

curly wirly - yeh they were so good, the shop where i use to buy them from was run buy this scottish guy who'd give me some free and the way he used to say "here's a free curly wirly for ya" in a mad scottish accent...ah takes me back...

Wild Thangs? anybody remember these? they were the you'd-really-feel-you-were-wrecking-your-teeth type of sweets

seamus

Originally posted by Jak
I remember doing the maths :rolleyes: and a few of us working out that if we saved up £5 we could buy a full massive jar of penny sweets - shortly after I lost my taste for the proper sugar coated cola bottles for many years.

Friend of mine was given £10 worth of penny sweets for his birthday by his brother once. Yes, thats 1000 penny sweets. We were in heaven.........

yellum

Originally posted by ozpass
Yeah! I always asked for 'fizzy flying saucers'- like cardboard with lemon sherbet when they melted in your mouth! Lush!

Friends gf is from Clonmel, he went into some sweet shop and bought a whole container of these jobbies. Ate 3/4 of em in one go, gave the gf two.

Nostalgia is great.

Carbiens

PUSH POPS!!

anyone remember those?
and when the sour ones came out i was in heaven!!

Occidental

Fizz Bangs or if I was feeling really cultured (and rich) a Two & Two bar.

Can you still get Big Time's

Or better still Dracula Icepops, with the Ice Cream in the centre

ozpass

From the icecream van:

Two-ball Screwballs with jawbreaker-esque bubblegums in the bottom.

Chief

A certain type of chewing gum sweeties... they were damn expensive then as well (2 or 3p i think)
you had a lemon, an orange and a strawberry one, shaped and coloured like the fruits they were named after with sour fizz in the middle. DAMN i miss those, been trying to source them for years...

Stinger bars.. yum (they still make em) Desperate dan bars, Tangy bars(!)... i even (at the limit of my memory, and i am only 25!) remember aniseed balls which were a half penny each and had a pip in the middle.. double dips (which still exist) doctor pepper tastes like a liquid form of the cherry fizz which were in them double dips to.. honeybee bars.. JAYSUS! the list could go on forever..

ozpass

Double Dips were, are, and shall remain into perpetuity "The King of Sweets"- do they still exist?

blackadder

swizzel sticks... dear god, please bring back swizzel sticks

Guy Incognito

Originally posted by smak
and these little red bars that were like 5p and you could get a sweet version of them too. cant remember the name. there was a green(minty) version aswell.

Were they called Woppas? For a while "back in the day" I would only buy green woppas when I went to the shop, nothing else, no chocolate, crisps, drinks, just green woppas.

Originally posted by ozpass
I had a similar nasty incident after purchasing 322 'Ball bearings'- those little silver sweets. My lips actually went silver.

I have a vague recollection of eating a metal ball, I knew such a sweet existed. No one in my school would believe me though.

smoke.me.a.kipper

Originally posted by Guy Incognito
Were they called Woppas?

yep. i lived for 2 days in school only on 15 red woppas.

Dr. Dre

Does anyone remember 'Texans' ???? They were a chocolate covered nougat bar.
I haven't met anybody who does and it's starting to worry me !!!

Mercury_Tilt

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Mercury_Tilt

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strat

anyone remember them cheap 5p bananna flavour chew bar jobbies ?

Bananna skids or some such

they were nyom

festivala

Originally posted by blackadder
swizzel sticks... dear god, please bring back swizzel sticks

Yes indeed. Apparently they are still available in Malta or somewhere.

Even my own friends don't remember them any more and have wiped the fact of their existance from their memories.

Ryo Hazuki

'fizzy flying saucers'

Still available from a shop in Laois.

telecinesk

Tayto Crisps at 7P.
Space Dust.?

fisty

Originally posted by our man in moscow
time bars
frosties

and these little red bars that were like 5p and you could get a sweet version of them too. cant remember the name. there was a green(minty) version aswell.

tangys?

whoppa bars?

I think you mean the whoppa bars,
remember those chewinggum bars for 5 p aswell?
i loved them time bars,

conZ

lmao, Bubble King's, remember those?
They were about 5p each and were strips of cola-flavoured chewing gum.

lordsippa

about 85% of what was just mentioned is available near to me. AND although small frosties are the most common <i mean damn tiny ones> you CAN get the big ones some places. Flying saucers aren't too hard to find usually... burger bites have been repackaged! :eek: and... yeah... gobstoppers really disappeared. As did vice-versa's... candy popcorn... remember when fudges were REALLLY cheap? Ah... those were the days. 52p for 2 litres of red lemonade <and i'm pretty young dammit>. Those were the days.

Pigman

'Alien Spacers' were the crisps I'll remember from when I was a kid. The were pickled onion flavor, vaguely cut into the shape of aliens and spacemen and if that wasn't enough you even got a science fiction comic strip on the packet to read.

Kali

ahh 10p mixes full of postpan pats and black jacks and apple jacks. yay

Phryxus

i love eye-poppers, they were so sour and i think they're still around somewhere but not near me, (i was a king for a very short amount of time while putting three eye-poppers in my mouth)

pickarooney

Barry McGuigan's nettle flavoured crisps?

sunbeam

Anyone remember Prairie (?) bars from the late seventies? They looked like tiny versions of Fry's Chocolate Creme bars, lots of flavours, always in selection boxes.....

ozpass

'Alien Spacers' were the crisps

I remember these guys, but called 'Space Invaders'. They came in abeef and 'cheesy' flavours too.

Maybe they were different in England.;)

Makaveli

Originally posted by Raziel
i love eye-poppers, they were so sour and i think they're still around somewhere but not near me, (i was a king for a very short amount of time while putting three eye-poppers in my mouth)

The green ones were the nicest because they were the most sour. I used to put the whole pack in my mouth too.
mmmmm sour.

pugwall

Those orange coloured fizzy cola flavoured lollies were quite possibly the greatest treat of all and were a steal at only 5P. The best thing about them was the fact that if the (lucky) number 7 was printed on the inside of the wrapper you won a free lollie instantly.

Also, remember 'shockers' chewing gum........ahhhhhhhhh

Clintons Cat

Walkers Snaps,

they were about the third of the price of a regular price of crisps and thus within the price range of wee underprivillaged bairns like myself.
They tasted like reconstituted potato skins.
But they cost 3p
3p bloody pence for a bag of snaps!!!

i remember when they put the price up to 5p.
It was probally the point i first became aware of the ecconomic concept of inflation.

When they put the price up to 7p i decieded enough was enough and i deceided that i would excersise my comsumer power and boycot their product.

by the time snaps reached 14p i had long moved on to monster munch and smiths square crisps.

i have a theory that the path of ones childhood is paved with the price of things.

For example i remember that with the first 10p i stole from my mums purse i bought both the beano and the dandy,
two comics for 10p!

when they put the price up to seven pence each i faced my first serious ethical delima,Steal 4 pence more and risk detection or buy one less comic and spend the other 3p on sweets.
Actually it wasnt that much of a delima,as i promptly and rather arbitarilly deceided that the dandy was "for kids"and carried on buying the beano.

Clintons Cat

Originally posted by Dr. Dre
Does anyone remember 'Texans' ???? They were a chocolate covered nougat bar.
I haven't met anybody who does and it's starting to worry me !!!

i do,they grace the back issues of 2000ad circa 1981/82 with probally the hardest sell ever for a chocolate snack bar ever seen at that time.the ad campaign featuring a clint eastwood style cowboy depicted in washed out colours as if the artist was to hard to bother colouring it in properly.
for a brief summer the texan ruled supreme until he was unceremoniously swept aside by the all conquering Yorkie bar with their no nonsense TV marketing campaign "he eats cocolate and he drives a truck,if he met the milk tray man he would most likely spark him out,scoff his chocks and shag his bird and still deliver his consignment of yorkie bars in time for the kids".

Makaveli

Sparklers.
Who remembers them? They were 10p forever almost and then all of a sudden they went to 12p then they kept jumping. I think before they were killed they were 20p. I wonder if you can still get them.
Speaking of inflation I remember when Taytos used to be 12p. Now they are 50c.

Illkillya

Mint Crisp chocolate bars... not the common ones by Cadburys or whoever it was, but a cheap 10p think bar in a dull wrapper with 1mm parallel groves running along the length of the top. There was one shop in Schull that still sold them in 1995, but that shop is closed down now.

segadreamcast

Insane. I'm only 15 and I remember most of this stuff on the thread. Dublin 9 (Glasnevin and Whitehall in particular) is a haven within the city for all this stuff, and I reckon most of it is still available here and there...

Frosties HAVE gotten smaller, I distinctly remember when I was 8 how they suddenly put less sweets in (suddenly I couldn't divide them between two friends and I properly) and how they were...well...tiny.

I know this is off topic - but does anybody remember Clear Cola? I think Pepsico did it... not entirely sure though. Only one old friend of mine remembers it at all... Bah to memory.