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

Time has always marched on. Things come and go. Not everything that was there when you a kid is going to be there when you get old and you have to accept that, although the pace of change these days often makes it seem like change for the sake of it.

Spangles are no more, Opal Fruits, the Mappin and Webb Building, my secondary school, London Transport, British Railways, The Topper, The Beezer, the Brooke Bond chimps, Watney's Red Barrel (thank Bob), Top of the Pops. Hell, even Doctor Who went away for a while.

But Tunnock's are still around, they're still making Caramels and Teacakes, they haven't changed anything about the recipe or the packaging (which still has the very 1950s-looking Tunnock's boy on it), and best of all - they're still a family business and haven't been swallowed up by some corporation. Which would almost certainly mean that I wouldn't be writing this now, nor would they have been featured in the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-28499415

Whenever a friend from here is returning from a visit to the UK, or a friend from the UK is coming here, I always ask them to bring me some Tunnock's Caramels

So now you know

ohhh spangles - i loved the Old English flavour.

That's weird and a little Because not long after I posted that I thought of Olde English Spangles, which were also my favourites... well, maybe also the minty ones with the green speckly bits in, and I started wondering what flavours they were, because they had a very distinctive taste that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike, any other sweets. To the best of my recollection it was a sort of aniseedy, barley sugary flavour. I ought to know it, having been a professional sugar boiler in the past, but I suspect it might have been a compound of flavours, like the cough drops I used to make at two different companies, both of which were based on a 50/50 mix of aniseed and peppermint, which made up about 50% of the mixture, and then a mixture of things like cherry, cassia bark, wintergreen, capsicum, sarsaparilla and other fine pharmaceuticals and extracts.

They reincarnated Spangles a few years ago, but the flavour was different. There was definitely something particular in the original flavours, but I can't really remember the taste well enough to be able to say what it was.

I wonder of there's a definitive list somewhere of all the (original) Spangles flavours? I suppose mixed fruit Spangles would have been the first. I think they must have also made single fruit flavours too - I'm sure I remember Blackcurrant Spangles, And there must have been both peppermint and spearmint, but the white ones with the green bits I mentioned above were called something like Ice Mint, and they really did feel cold in your mouth. I wonder how they did that.

one was butterscotch, one was barley sugar and one was black and aniseedy. More than that I can't remember. But I really would like a pack right now, I loved them.

Spot the Spangles
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Btp5rQ5IAAEJLJX.jpg:large

Okay, so it was Old English, not Olde English
http://robertjhorton.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mars_spangles_old_english.jpg

"The tube was black, white and purple, and designed for a more mature and sophisticated clientele than the regular variety."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spangles_%28sweets%29#Old_English_Spangles

Well, naturally

really - given that I only had access to them in the UK, and I don't recall eating them anywhere apart from Windsor I would say that I only ate them between the ages of 7 and 10. before my time?

No, I think it just means you've always been a classy dame

Aha! http://flashbak.com/10-revolting-packaged-foods-that-taste-of-regret-3044/ By the way, does anyone know what this is about? It's this very h2g2 page but it's not on h2g2 http://www.catsindrag.co.uk/news/news.php?href=/dna/h2g2/classic/F50359?thread=8309978&latest=1 I came across it when searching for this conversation so that I could post that link above.

Obvious, isn't it? It's a parallel universe where you are not logged on.

And where "car" gets changed to "cat"

You have to log in to parallel universes now? Blimey, the cosmos is getting security conscious. Must be because of that Apple iCloud actresses-in-the-nip thing from a few days ago

Here's another one! http://www.catsindrag.co.uk/news/news.php?href=/dna/h2g2/plain/F66559?thread=110865&latest=1 Who are these people?

in the machine.

I don't believe in . I think they're something far more sinister. I think I'd better go and buy in a stock of tinfoil and decide what kind of titfer I'm going to make out of it this time.

Well, they've definitely got a thing about - they even use it as their logo. Except that it's this way round:

*Just checked again* - no it's the same way round, but the tail's straighter.