.
.
It was Ken that gave me the idea for today's post. Thanks Ken.
Sweets we had as children in the forties and fifties.
Sugar had been rationed during and after the war, so sweets were a real treat for children.
We were rationed to 2oz a week! (about 50 grams in 'wonky' weight).
Even though we could only have two ounces, there was quite a lot of variety. Too many to go through here........but here's a couple I remember:-
“Peace babies”
A soft, slightly flavoured sweet which came in a variety of colours.
They were launched by Bassett’s 1918 in Sheffield to mark the end of the First World War. Production was halted during World War Two due to rationing and when they reappeared in 1953, they had become Jelly Babies.
There were lots of gob stoppers and ‘Ogo-Pogo Eyes’, large round sweets which as you sucked, would reveal coloured spot resembling a eye which would spread until the whole sweet became that colour, only for another eye to appear and so on.
.
.
And an unusual song to suit.
In order to keep us quiet my mother would resort to making her own sweets. I still have her original cook-book, well over sixty years old now. They were usually based on Golden Syrup and sugar to make toffee, but she also added milk powder and flavouring like peppermint and cocoa.
.
.
A tired old cook-book.
Sweets were put on ration in 1942, the year I was born. They were off ration in February 1953.
So my first eleven years of life were virtually a "Sweet Free Zone".
.
.
February 1953
The children of today......don't know they're born!
.
We often reminisce at work about the sweets that we used to be able to get but can't now.
ReplyDeleteThat cook book looks wonderful. My mum never made boiled sweets or toffees, but she did used to make sweets out of marzipan sometimes.
I expect the whole sweet industry is driven by what sells best!
ReplyDeleteChildren today seem to like totally different things...like 'football' shaped sweets and 'jelly dinosaurs'!
We only went to town to the market once a month, the rest of the time we lived off the farm (and quite well). When we went to the market, we got to choose a candy bar. My favorite was a Cowboy. It was just coconut and brown sugar, I think, but it was big and it was only a nickel (5 cents). There were maybe 15 different candies to choose from. Now there are 2 whole aisles of candy alone and another aisle or two of manufactured cakes and cookies. Soda was also an occasional treat, not a substitute for water.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they need to be rationed again! I'm sure my vanishing (vanished) waitline would agree!
ReplyDeleteHi Jan,
ReplyDeleteIt all seems too much, don't you think? Too much choice to start with, and then too sugary things high in calories. And what about their poor teeth?
The supermarkets here have several aisles just for chocolates and sweets.
Hi Eliza,
ReplyDeleteNice of you to drop by.
I'm not sure if sugar goes to the waistline....doesn't it just provide energy?...I thought it was jacket potatoes oozing butter and topped with cheese, that was the cause of vanishing waistlines!
Cheers.....Bernard
Oooooh, I am sure sugar iincreases the waistline.
ReplyDeleteI am too young to have experienced rationing but I remember a lot of sweetes from my past that I don't see now,mainly because I haven't looked for them. There was a time when the sweetie shop had open boxes and you could just put all you wanted in a little bag (or straight into your pockets or mouth if no one was looking!. It was sometging like 2 white mice for 1p or 4 fruit salads or 4 mojos for 1p. Were mojos the black ones? We had little jelly snakes and discs with little coloured balls on them. When you got older you moved onto the ones from the jars - pineapple chunks, kola cubes. Not ergonomic so they really hurt your mouth. I remember sourapples, fizzy cubes that you could take home to make into a drink or eat on the spot, bags of sherbet that would colour you r tongue etc etc. I remember the colour-changing gobstoppers too.If you put one in just before class you had to make sure you didn't get asked a question. I think I remember a boy getting hit or pushed in the back by a teacher (when they still could) for not asnwering a question and this gobstopper flew out so of course he got hit again for eating. He wasn't asked to pass it round so we could all have a lick. Sherbet fountains that exploded up your nose when you laughed. Ah... tehm were the days!
The V&A Museum of Childhood has loads of interesting things, like sweet wrappers here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/images/image/16215-popup.html
As it shows 1923... it is a bit early for both of us!
You must do some posts on this Foody.
Your comments here are real gems.