Favourite sweet - probably if you’re over 40

[AnotherDrearyDayInParadise]

DP & I have just been reminiscing about 1/2p sweets & sweets in the 70s in general.
Favourites were :
Black Jacks
Rosy apples
Fruit Salads

Bars of highland toffee that you had to break into pieces

Hang on hang on @Howzeaboutye - so if you did trebor basset did you do the liquorice all sorts. That was another one I loved. But so lovely to hear Sherbet fountains came from Sheffield. What a lovely post - thank you

I think liq all-sorts was Sheffield too. I don't remember that smell, and it would have been very stinky!

Jelly babies were made there too. And the pipes for each colour of jelly baby were painted that colour. It really was like Charlie and the chocolate factory! Heavenly smell!

You had every childs' dream job !

Yep! It was fab

Me and my sisters used to get 20p each on a Saturday to buy some sweets from our local post office. We used to get 2oz of something out of a jar for around 12p.

Sherbet pips, Yorkshire mixture, sherbet, cola cubes and chewing nuts were our favourites. If we were feeling flush we would get liquorice and black currant they were 18p.

We would spend what we had left on Penny sweets.

I remember you could get Football shields that were basically love hearts with football team names on instead or A Team bars that were chocolate with a strawberry flavour filling.

Happy days

I used to work in Pontefract and you could smell the liquorice from the Haribo factory. Bliss.

What are these Sherbet pips ?

Love hearts I do remember so can get that with football teams.

Sherbet pips are little boiled sweets that are pink, yellow or white coloured and sherbet flavoured. You can get all sorts of flavours these days.

Sweet peanuts. So bloody nice.

@Geekster1963 - you see I have no recollection of Sherbet Pips - whereas Sherbet Fountain - I remember that in almost forensic detail

"Ha ha HankNPat - you are the Breaking bad of sherbet and aniseed balls - I never saw it either but I reckon you could have given the chap a run for his money . You are wasted in whatever you do - liquid sherbet and aniseed - it's got to make sense."

@BasiliskStare, your ^ comment has brought it all back to me - I was pretty useless at physics at school, but I did enjoy chemistry. My parents bought me a 'junior chemistry set' once and I made a crystal - it was a beautiful turquoise colour (I think it might have been a copper sulphate crystal?). I cried when it finally broke! I've wasted my life, haven't I?!

Sorry for the derail!

Oh very much No @HankNPat I do believe you are the Breaking Bad of Sweets. No - one at my school had the wit to dissolve sherbert in water. & we had a proper chemistry lab.

But yes it is possible you have wasted your life. The sherbet - well yes. roasting and boiling aniseed balls - well you must have had something of a vocation by then.

Oh I am joking and you know I am , but I would not like to get between you , a retro sweet internet ordering site and a bunsen burner

I did love a good bunsen burner and test tube!

I remember sherbet fountains in a cardboard tube with a liquorice straw in it

Were the liquorice sticks in a Sherbert fountain a straw then?? 😲 We used to dip them in the sherbert and lick it off. Forty odd years and I never knew the stick was hollow, all those wasted years......😭

Wethers originals

The liquorice stick was a straw? How did I have so many sherbet fountains and not know that? Unless they changed? My main sweet consumption was between 1965 - 1971 when I stopped off at the newsagent on the walk to primary school and back. We’re they straws back then?

I loved Spanish tobacco
Fruit salads
Black jacks
Toffee poppets
Highland toffee
Flying saucers

I still regularly buy hard Refreshers and Fizzers from Asda ...

I miss Pacers and Toffos.

I'm convinced Topics used to have cherry in them too. I never ate Topics when I was a child, and I hated cherries. Now they're my favourite nutty bar.

Most other sweets listed can still be bought, just from specialists such as the companies linked by previous posters. I'm lucky - where I work, a 'candy man' comes in on one day every month to sell pick-n-mix and quarters of sweets He's back on Wednesday!

My main sweet consumption was between 1965 - 1971

Mine was mid 70s to early 80s but wasn't aware it was a straw 🤔

OK does anybody know what these sweets were.

They were individually wrapped in a tube, cola flavour, cherry flavour, (these two were fizzy) then strawberry and cream flavour, strawberry boiled sweet outer with soft white inner. And toffee apple flavour - they were like the strawberry and cream ones but apple and toffee.

Mid 70's.

Texan bars, come on!

Spanish tobacco, so nice!

I used to use McGowan’s toffee chews to get loose teeth out painlessly. Absolutely guaranteed.

I bought tins of sweets for the kids at Christmas, there were Parma violets, double lollies, drumsticks. Very nostalgic.

@Applesaregreenandred Omg yes!!! Just had a flashback, no idea what they were called but you'd find the wrappers all over the place. Greaseproof wrappers if that makes sense.

Sooo many of these !
Love pacers , Choc lick ,double dip & pyramint!

Also ,those tiny little crisp piglets ,especially the beef ones ,OXO Crisps & hedgehog crisps !

Maelstrop they are made by swizzles mattlow. Still family owned and operated. Which is probably why they haven't been taken over, and the range of sweets is still the same.

And they are in the Gregg Wallace inside the factory show about making sweets. (he is awful but I like seeing inside factories)

It costs many thousands of pounds to change a product, that's why they do mostly stay the same.

@applesaregreenandred were they Toffos? I loved United Biscuits, Treets and Banjo bars

To PPs questioning whether the liquorice 'straw' in a Sherbet Fountain was actually a straw, the answer is 'yes'! It had a small solid/filled-in bit at the top which you were supposed to bite off and then reveal the hollow interior making it into a straw.