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The Ten Greatest Penny Sweets Of All Time

by Joshua Burt
2 August 2014 6 Comments

Remember when penny sweets were actually a penny? Take a trip down memory lane and take a look at the ten best.

Fizzy Cola Bottles

There was a time when racing raindrops down a car window was a genuine source of entertainment for bored school kids on a Wednesday afternoon. It was a different time, a time when you’d count the hours – as in literally count the hours, in a room with a clock, just counting out loud – until TV screens would alight with top class entertainment from trusted showbiz friends like Fred Flintstone and Top Cat and Zippy and Bungle, or Jimmy Saville and his old mucker Rolf Harris, or Josef Fritzl and his pal The Yorkshire Ripper. Such a sunny innocent time, you could leave your front door open. Literally leave it wide open.

Some days you’d leave your car running with the keys still in it, and all of your most valuable belongings would just be laid out on the pavement for everyone to see. The dog would roam free. Anyway, the point of this trip down Memory Lane is that without an iPad to swipe our fingers across, the real high point of mind-boggling sensory-overload came from visiting sweet shops armed with 30p to spunk on cheap confectionery, and with that in mind I shall now list the ten must-haves…

Fizzy Cola Bottles

Hands down the greatest sweet of all time, fizzy cola bottles told you everything you needed to know about a person. Such as, they have a complete disregard for boring unfizzy things like normal cola bottles and that makes them a maverick and therefore very alluring to girls. In some countries you need a leather jacket or a flick knife comb before you can even think about buying these.

Flying Saucers

Flying Saucers

King of The Rocket Men, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers. All great conversation topics if you’ve got a first date with a sophisticated woman, but also the main reason why kids like me would sit cross-legged making bleeping noises and pretending these sweets were actually life-size UFO’s. Only full of cheap sherbert and basically made of paper.

Beer Bottles

Beer Bottles

These, along with candy cigarettes, long uneventful hours sitting in doctor’s waiting rooms, and a general sense of anxious doom about everything, were all pushed on us from an early age to ensure that we grew accustomed to what adult life expected from us.

Fried Eggs

Fried Eggs

Heston Blumenthal has made an entire career out of baffling people with food that looks like one thing but tastes of another. No offense, Hest, but these were doing that decades ago.

Milk Teeth

Milk Teeth

The perfect comedy accessory, you’d just pop these in like false teeth, do a little “WHY I OUGHTA!” or “SUITS YOU SIR!” or “ONLY MEEE!”, and watch your buddies laugh until they puked. Literally puked. Because you were being so funny.

Astro Belts

Astro Belts

Great for sharing, these could be seductively chomped with a girlfriend until your lips came together in the middle, a bit like that iconic scene from Lady and The Tramp, only really really competitive and much less romantic. Or you could just lock yourself in a cupboard and eat them alone.

White Chocolate Mice

White Chocolate Mice

You can find white chocolate everywhere these days, but there was a time when it was considered rich and exotic like an avocado pear or a shiny speedboat. Only a wealthy Arab Prince or a maniac with a steel constitution would add more than two of these to his bounty.

Red Lips

Red Lips

The most ladylike of the penny chews, these were a must-have if you were looking to charm some girls. In comedy terms, pretending these were your actual lips couldn’t even hold a candle to the puky reaction you’d get with the Milk Teeth, but a quick “HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR PRESIDENT” before popping these on might get you a couple of belly laughs from passers-by.

Fruit Salads

Fruit Salads

The rules stated that you had to have at least one “chew” in your bag, just to add a bit of longevity to your feast, otherwise you’d be blitzing through this stuff in nanoseconds. Unlike Black Jacks these didn’t leave your mouth looking like you’d gone insane and eaten a biro.

Jelly Foam Mushrooms

Jelly Foam Mushrooms

These guys only just made it, having beaten off stiff competition from shrimps, strawberry laces, lemon sherberts, sherbert lemons, lemons with sherbert, sherbert beneath a layer of boiled lemon, kola kubes, milk bottles, and love hearts. It was a close call.

Now tell me where I went wrong…

More…

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The Ten Greatest Ice Cream Based Treats You Will Ever Eat/Drink

 

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image descriptionCOMMENTS

Tony 10:37 am, 2-Aug-2014

Yeah whoever made those flying saucers needs locking up as well..

jmax77 11:01 am, 2-Aug-2014

Milk Teeth were 2p.

RB 12:49 pm, 2-Aug-2014

No bananas? This makes me sad.

bryan 3:53 am, 3-Aug-2014

dainty`s were a penny. fruit salads were 4 for a penny as were black jacks. penny bubbly. Refreshers were a penny.

Mike Whitehead 10:46 am, 4-Aug-2014

I know they weren't a penny sweet but Parma Violets will always be king. Some people say they taste like soap. Those people will never be my friend.

Simon Wiiiburg Gunn 9:32 am, 20-Aug-2014

A blackjack and a fruit salad eaten together was like having your balls tickled by the hand of god

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