Which Are The Best Retro Sweets Ever?
Although not widely available, many retro sweets classics like liquorice sticks, gobstoppers, anglo bubbly bubblegum, pontefract cakes and toffee whirls are still being made today.
Many Retro Sweets Like Anglo Bubbly Are Still Available To Buy Today
But other retro sweets favourites have unfortunately become victims of time and ‘progress’.
3 Retro Sweets That are Gone But Not Forgotten
Here is our top 3 list of retro sweets that will make you go all misty eyed but which are no longer manufactured:
Pacers
Think mint Opal Fruits (we won’t call them Starburst – we like retro sweets with their proper, original names!) – white in colour with three stripes of green. They were soft, cool, chewy, and incredibly moreish.
And then Mars ceased production in the 1980s for reasons that no-one seems able to fathom. Such a shame to lose these classic old fashioned sweets!
Texan Bars
Texans were chocolate sweets that were brought back for a 6 week spell in 2005 but, despite proving incredibly popular, that did not convence the manufacturer Nestle to restart production.
It was a chewy nougat bar covered in milk chocolate. It was made by Macintoshes, which became part of Rowntree Macintoshes and is now a division of Nestle.
Launched in the mid 1970s, Texan bars enjoyed massive success until the miners strike the following decade. The issue was that the miners blockages of major roads and sites made it impossible get the ingredients to make the Texans to the factory and so production was stopped, never to restart. Quite how true that is no-one appears too certain.
Spangles
Spangles, like Pacers, were made by Mars and were launched in the 50s. They were wrapped square boiled sweets in a tube in a range of flavours.
Individually flavoured Spangles tubes were also launched with flavours including Tangerine, Spearmint, Peppermint, Barley sugar and, perhaps most notably, Cola.
There were a number of varieties of Spangles. Spangles themselves came in a tube of 5 flavours – strawberry, orange, lemon and lime, pineapple and blackcurrant. Old English Spangles were an eclectic mix of retro sweet flavours including butterscotch, pear drops, mint humbug, cough candy and liquorice – true old-fashioned sweets favourites..
Other retro sweets that are consigned to history include Mint Cracknell, Liquorice Pipes and Frys Five Boys.
Retro Sweets Live On
But don’t think that this means that all of the retro sweets that you remember from your childhood have disappeared… Anglo Bubbly, Sherbet Lemons (you can even still get them in their jars), Aniseed Balls, Space Dust, Double Lollies, Mighty Imps, Floral Gums, Cola Bottles (both fizzy and non fizzy), Traffic Light Lollies, Drumstick Lollies and Chewing Nuts… many of the old favourites are still around today.
650 Retro Sweets at www.AQuarterOf.co.uk
In fact the leading online sweetshop www.AQuarterOf.co.uk stocks around 650 retro sweets favourites. Even they can’t bring Pacers, texan Bars and Spangles back to life… but their motto is “if there are retro sweets that they still make, we’ll stock them!”