The Times wants your thoughts please

thank the lord it has gone

i used to go in the opposite doors to avoid the eye-level gelatine

Ugh. Revolting. All those grubby hands delving around in the sweeties. I suppose the pick n mix was considered very up to the minute in its heyday? Now old-fashioned sweetie shops with jars are another thing entirely

If you want a laugh at the pic n mix, throw in those polysterene packing pellets you get in large boxes, the multicoloured ones. Tis a treat watching the old dears chewing them and commenting 'they don't taste as good these days do they'

Too expensive, unhygienic and my brother steals them while I'm out shopping with him, then we end up having a row. So not keen. I like old fashioned sweet shops that sell papers too! Not fancy tourist shops that rob you blind because you walked in with a kid looking for postcards

I have fab memories of pick n mix,from when I used to go round Woolies with my Granny[about] 30ish years agoI can still remember being shocked when she grabbed a few sweets to scoff round the shop!
Mind you when she was older she did shoplift quite blatantlY...I think she was thrill seeking or wanting to see how far she could go!

i used it as bribes for sitting still for haircut. it is satisfying to open little doors and go mining with the shovel and paper bag.

i do not like sweets at all so not troubled by how they taste.

I told my DC that they were in those little plastic bins because they were contaminated like the yellow sharps contaminated bins at the doctors.

it always look unhygenic, sorry

I always thought of it as an incredibly expensive way to buy sweets, so never used it - so my DC have no idea how it works and I intend to keep it that way as long as humanly possible.

Our local shop and post office has the big old jars of sweets. We reckon some of them are pre-war (the sausage rolls certainly are ). Anyway those in the big jars are slightly less risky food poisoning wise than the plastic tray of goo in which poo ridden hands of toddlers have been for a fossick

I can truthfully say I have never looked at the pick n mix counter with anything but disdain

that Tobacconists in E Grinstead is fantastic - proper stuff.

used to work at Sainsburys there. But hasn't everyone?

Fab! Thanks mumsnet. I'll happily eat pink mice and jelly babies all afternoon if required for any photo opp. thrown my way

Theres a proper little sweetshop in East Grinstead with jars and jars of different sweets that they weigh out. Fabulously, they are also a tobacconists, and have jars of pipe tobacco similarly dished out. But in a different part of the shop.

I used to get 10p for sweets after school on a Friday. Four fruit salads for 1p, or 2oz of Tom Thumb drops were my favourites

Pick and mix isn't the same any more. It's ££££ and all brightly coloured jelly stuff. Woolies pick and mix used to seem like a real Saturday teatime treat. WH Smith selling it is just wrong. What is the point of WH Smith - how many different types of biros do we need anyway?

My mum used to work in Woolies about a million years ago and was sacked for pilfering pick 'n' mix.

And if anyone tells her I've told you lot I shall deny it.

Actually I was in WH Smiths the other day & wondered whether it was going to turn into Woolies - it seemed to be acquiring that rather jumbled feel that Woolies used to have.

It's nice when a paper actually asks for comments
We all know where we are then.

dd used to steal from our woolies pick and mix
perhaps it was because of my refusal to buy there? ... over priced, and disappointing.

Bumperlicious - do you live anywhere near Reading? Love this shop

Ah yes, that's another thing - just getting the orange smarties....and the round coconut things out of allsorts, and removing the mint toffees (surely the worst of all toffees?)

waves to people from the Times, who may know me from such blogs as Alphamummy

I love the orange creams!

I am another P&M vulture who picks all the nicest ones out of the Roses/Quality Street bins. Also Woolies used to do raspberry ruffles and chocolate mint creams just in their own bins, so I would just ravage those.
And I am equally unbothered by snot and sticky fingers. FFS what do you think your immune systems are for?

I used to work on the pick 'n' mix in Woolies in the 80's when I was a teen. It was so popular it had it's own till. 'Wake me up before you Gogo' always reminds me of standing there all day every Saturday. How I envied the cashiers with chairs.