h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Which sweets can you think of that they just don't make any more? I was overjoyed when they brought back the Starbar (peanut butter, wrapped in toffee, covered in chocolate), but I still miss the gorgeous Cabana, which I seem to remember as being nougat with chopped glace fruit in it, wrapped in the inevitable milk choc.

Anyone else remember sweets that you just can't get any more?

Nutty Bar - brown cellophane-wrapped thing.

The Texan - surely banned on advice of British Dental Association?

Quirks - sort of Smarties but mint.

But nobody ever seems to remember this toffee popcorn stuff called Hanky Panky that was advertised using old ladies on swings.

Most of all, what happened to the Secret bar? Nice chocolate basket thing with marshmallowey stuff in it.

I'm hungry!

Spangles. Where did they go? Square boiled fruit sweets witha dimple in the middle.

They revived Spangles but they weren't the same. They were all one flavour per packet, for a start - and they didn't have the dimple (also pioneered by Tunes). The whole fun of Spangles was that the colours and flavours were all different and engineered from whatever was lying around - my memory may be failing me but I remember encountering mauve and beige Spangles.

Oh and in the old days the font on the packet was the same one the Goodies used (white on black or white on orange) and made out of that stuff they put on the space shuttle.

Modern life is rubbish!

Jimster has typically remembered not only Hanky Panky, but the complete script from the advert...

Spangles did come back recently, but they were all wrong and the same colour ratehr than multi-coloured (oh, what a terrible error!).

I remember Hanky Panky though.

Man: Would you care for a little Hanky Panky?

[Woman is outraged, turns and slaps him across the face]

Man: (shocked) But I only offered you a little nibble!

[Slap!]



We are working in the office, I promise! I can type and recite old adverts at the same time, me!

i remember wigwags. taffy woven into a flat open braid and covered in chocolate. mnnnn.

still, what i wouldn't give for a good old fashioned cinamon bun the way the ladies back home made years and years ago: as big as a house, yeasty and dripping buttery caramel. ...the true old fashioned treat is the lost art of homemade downhome baking in my books. sigh. i'm too young to be so nostalgic.

Ah taffy - we don't have that here, is that that chewy stuff from across the Atlantic? I remember eating a box or two and wondering what it had to do with salt water...

You can still get Space Dust in Turkey, you know - it's not called Space Dust, obviously, but the picture is great, a rocket exploding out of a small child's mouth. Which was more or less why they banned it here, as I recall - does anyone remember when? I know this plays a very small part in any reckoning of good reasons why Turkey shouldn't join the EU, but it's actually more sensible than most...

We had some candy in Australia im not sure if you got them over where you are called War Heads they were the best you had a choice of very sour or very hot flavours and it was so funny to watch anyone who tryed the sour ones faces as they ate them or ran for water becouse there mouth was burning becouse of the hot ones.

Saltwater Taffy has about as much to do with salt water as cricket has to do with insects, I'm afraid. It's basically just partially carmelized sugar which has been stretched and folded to work air into it until it turns opaque white, usually with a little flavoring and coloring worked in. It's simple to make yourself, but very labor intensive as it takes a LOT of "pulling", as the stretching and folding process is called. They have fascinating machines to do it these days.

Hell, maybe I should write an article about it.

Blimey, shows what I know. Many taffy recipes do have some salt in them now that I look them up--though none of the ones I've ever used did. Maybe there is something to this saltwater business.

My Gran used to make Taffy or stretched Toffee herself - She had a nail banged into the back of the kitchen door and she used to throw a loop of Toffee over the nail and pull it till it grew longer and then fold it over and throw it over the nail again.

She kept going till the toffee went white. She used to do ropes of different colours from white to mid to light brown and then plait them.

Very nice!

Aghh I want some! You can't beat home-made sweets! I like the idea of having a nail for the purpose as well! I will have to look out for recipes.

Trin, you will be delighted to know that you can still get Space Dust in the UK as well. In doesn't seem quite as explosive as it used to be. That would be an interesting argument for the EU and perhaps a good way of resolving those tricky disputes over weights and measures and common currency. I'm from a Polish family and I worry that the confectionary haul I remember returned from foreign holidays (particularly the chocolate) now throws their bid for EU entry into jeopardy as well.

Venom - I've had the pleasure of trying those War Heads as well. What were they thinking of?

Wig wags? That sounds like the still extant (in the UK) Curly Wurly (Terry Scott in a schoolboy's cap saying "My bruvver...")

I miss the Texan bar too My abiding memory is of greedily trying to eat one in a single mouthful while walking along a street and a driver stopping his car to ask directions I believe I was less than fully comprehensible.

Was the by-line for the Texan bar "A Man's gotta chew what a man's gotta chew" or was that for Toffos?

Pimms

Blimey you did well to survive that Texan incident Pimms. The texture was something else. (I think that *was* the Texan slogan!)

Oh we haven't mentioned Pacers yet!

What became of the Trio & 5,3,4,2,1, bars of the '80s? Remember those ads with the little girl with the enormous cakehole who went around yelling about how much she wanted a Trio and what about all those not V PC 54321 parodies that flew around the school playground. You don't see many Jawbreakers or Super Sour Meteors about now either do you.

sherbert dabs do you still get moon dust or was it space dust

oops didnt see post 9

No I've checked that one was for Toffo's - Texan bar was "Time sure goes slow when you're chewin' a Texan bar...." And the adverts involved a cowboy escaping from his captors after he says "You wouldn't shoot me until I finish my Texan Bar, would ya?" and they all fall asleep.

Apparently on one site the Texan bar is the most popular bar voted for (http://www.chocolatereview.co.uk/data.asp see also http://www.lazystuff.com/features/sweets/texan/)

(As someone else said on that second link) the top layer of a Double Decker is about as close as you can get to a Texan bar nowadays.

Pimms