When I Was a Kid: Traditional Sweets are back!

Nostalgia and sweets go hand-in-hand and at the moment “retro sweets” are a food marketing phenomenon. Look at the carnival poster typography of M&S’s new range, or the “tuck shop favourites” in a new line that Waitrose has decided, for reasons best known to itself, to call “Monty Bojangles”. Billy Bunter is back — and supermarkets such as M&S are relaunching Pick’n’Mix stalls to please him.

Marks & Spencer confirms that sales of retro sweets such as foam shrimps, cola cubes and rhubarb and custards at its shops are up 70 per cent on a year ago: it believes the phenomenon is recession-related. Encouraged, M&S has taken retro into other lines — relaunching roly-poly pudding, apple strudel and Battenberg cake; later in the autumn it promises a range of “retro sandwiches”, which may or may not include corned beef and Dairylea.

When I Was a Kid has just launched it's own range of Traditional Sweets including Anglo Bubble Gum and Spearmint Chews that somehow transport you back to your childhood on flavour alone!

Another old-fashioned aspect of the boom is that jobs are actually coming back to Britain, where there is still knowledge of how to hand make traditional sweets. Tangerine is closing down production in Eastern Europe and hiring staff in York, where it currently employs 250 people.

How far can the nostalgia sweet go, I ask? Tony Wade has been looking at the original recipe books that the factory used in the 19th century: before long he may, once again, be producing the Victorian bestsellers: mint imperials, sugared almonds and sugar mice. With, you hope, real string for their tails.

The Top 20 Sweets

(according to an M&S poll of 4,000 adults in September 2009 )

1. Fizzy cola bottles

2. Cola bottles

3. Rhubarbs and custards

4. Wine gums

5. Black jacks

6. Jelly babies

7. Bon bons

8. Chocolate raisins

9. Chocolate éclairs

10. Turkish delight