Top 5 Popular Retro Sweets!
Top 5 Popular Retro Sweets!
What is a retro sweet?
These are old fashioned sweets. Did you know that historians have reported that society’s sweet tooth dates back as early as 8,000BC? From the 1700s onwards, hard candies and boiled sweets, many still recognisable today, were sold as medicinal cough drops by apothecaries.
Remember those sweets your nan would have in her handbag, that would line the sweet shop shelves in jars, that would keep you quiet for hours? We’re talking about the confectionery classics like Rhubarb & Custards, Sherbet Lemons, Chocolate Limes, Parma Violets, Love Hearts, Pear Drops, Acid Drops, Barley Sugars to name a few. Proper traditional sweets in very British flavours. Here are our Top 5 Popular Retro Sweets!
1. Barratt Shrimps
Known also as Barratt Candy Foam Shrimps. Barratt Shrimps are traditional retro sweets that are made by Tangerine. They look like ears! These are small pink foam shrimp shaped soft foam sweets with a very unique taste and are pink in colour. These shrimps are one of the best selling lines of the retro sweet selection. However, they are now much, much bigger. They are great for party bags and in fabulous candy buffets. These are good old favourite and still remain the same. Flavour is as super as ever.
Pink Shrimps were originally created by Barratt’s in the 1940s. Pink Shrimps come from the same Barratt family as Flumps, Milk Bottles and Strawberry Milkshakes. They do not contain shrimps or taste like shrimps. In fact, they are soft fruit flavoured chews that are only shaped like shrimp. What’s more, Pink Shrimps are even Gluten-free!
No other shrimp comes close to a Barratts shrimp. These are definitely one of the definitive nostalgic, childhood sweets… one of the ones that almost everyone takes a mental trip back to their childhood sweetshop and list off the sweets they loved.
2. Kola Cubes
Also known as Cola Cubes. These will bring back happy memories. Good old Kola Kubes if you wanted to be completely correct! These surely were kings amongst boiled sweets. A chunk of cola flavoured boiled sweet that has been covered in an outer sugary layer for good measure, they last ages if you suck them and taste delicious, although couldn’t really be considered that great for your teeth.
Kola Kubes was one of those sweets that were generally bought from jars stacked on shelves behind the counter in your local sweetie shop. Normally sold by the quarter pound. As a child back in the days, you simply asked the shop assistant for the sweet of your choice and they would tip them out of the jar into some scales, then tip the sweets into a little white paper bag.
There was one problem with Kola Kubes though. They were just so tasty that one was never enough. Once you had finished one cubic chunk of sweetie heaven another invariably popped its way into your mouth. ÂWhy was this a problem? Â Well, after 4 or 5 sweets the top of your mouth could easily become quite sore thanks to a combination of the acidic nature of the sweets and the fact the edges of the cubes could become quite sharp once you had sucked the sugary layer off.
The sweets were not only available in cola flavoured varieties. There was a pineapple variety which was just as nice. You may not realise however that there were actually two different types of Kola Kube. The cheaper type was just solid boiled sweet throughout, but the original Kola Kube manufactured by Pascalls (now part of Trebor Basset) had a chewy centre in the middle which was absolutely brilliant at sticking little bits of boiled sweet to your teeth in many hard to reach places.
3. Drumstick Lolly Sweets
The classic, retro Swizzels lolly loved by so many. Enjoy the smooth and creamy combination of raspberry and milk that makes the Drumstick flavour so nostalgic! Original raspberry and milk flavour. It is a unique combination of a chew and a lollipop on a stick made by Swizzels. Drumstick lollies have been enjoyed for 60 years. The distinct chewy texture and dual flavours have made Drumstick a firm favourite with sweet lovers for generations.
In 1957 Drumstick lolly launched, the only chewy lolly available. Did you know The Drumstick lolly is said to have been invented by accident in the 1950s, when Trevor Matlow, the son of one of Swizzels-Matlow’s founders, was experimenting with a new machine and discovered it was possible to create a lollipop with two flavours. Milk and raspberry were chosen, though there have been many variants since, including strawberry and banana and cherry and apple.
4. Flying Saucer Sweets
Flying saucers are a flying saucer-shaped candy, about 2 inches (5 cm) wide. The flying saucer is formed from crisp, edible rice paper, or foamed corn starch. This shell is coloured, but flavourless. The sherbet-filled varieties are particularly popular in Belgium, Canada, England, France and Germany. The hollow inside is filled with a small amount of sherbet candy powder with a tart but sweet taste that is otherwise unflavoured.
Each one is quite light, weighing only about 1 1/3 grams. They are sold unwrapped in boxes in candy stores.
In America, where they are often called “Satellite Wafers”, you are likely to find variations that have teeny, hard (often) unflavoured candy balls in them instead of the sherbet powder. In eating them, some people like to bite off an edge and fish out the powder with the tip of their tongue. Others like to put the whole thing in their mouth and wait for it to dissolve.
Flying Saucer Ice Cream Sandwiches are made by the Carvel Company. They consist of two soft chocolate biscuits with a filling of soft ice cream in between them; they are sold in freezers, wrapped.
Flying Saucers as candy may have originated as a medicinal item, created in 1900 by a company called Belgica in Belgium. Belgica invented a flat, round starch-shell capsule to hold pill powder in, to make unpleasant-tasting medicines easier for patients to swallow. The Astra Sweets company of Belgium, which bought out Belgica in 1992, claims that this was the predecessor of the candy.
Flying Saucer candy seems to have been made since at least the 1950s in both America and the UK. Flying Saucer Sweets also are known as UFO Sweets. The release of a sweet made from sherbet packaged in an edible paper in the shape of a flying saucer was bound to be a hit in an era where the space race had captured the popular imagination.
5. Rhubarb & Custard
Ironically they contain neither rhubarb nor custard. Apparently, their history is based on a rhubarb and vanilla custard pudding that was popular, then when candy making became popular due to the importing of sugar, this pudding was made into a hard sweet. Manufactured and sold by Brays Sweets since 1867. Traditional Rhubarb & Custard Sweets of generations from an old Welsh recipe. Rhubarb & Custard is a hard-boiled sweet, crystallised in caster sugar with a traditional boiled sweet with fresh rhubarb & custard flavouring.
Jim Banard a sweet factory worker at John Bull Rock Factory invented the sweet. This was over 50 years ago and the sweets are still very popular to this date, there even was a children’s cartoon named after them, ‘The Rhubarb and Custard Show’. Jim is still alive and healthy and has taken up a career as a solo singing artist.
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