Sweet Surrender Part 2

I have had a few responses to Sweet Surrender, my earlier blog on the lollies I scoffed as a primary school kid. Ian McMillan's reminded me that I had forgotten mint leaves, or more formally spearmint leaves. These had the three pluses of a minty flavour, a jelly consistency and a crust of granulated sugar.

Loose lollies were not the only ones that found their way into my mouth. Choo-Choo Bars were one way licorice was okay with me as they were coated with chocolate. The image here is of new packaging that is a tad twee for me; memory is that the image was more naturalistic back then.


Another treat that has had a makeover were Redskins. Wikipedia tells me the original image of a Native American in full feathered headdress was replaced in the 1990s by 'a more neutral character', and now they seem to have dropped any character at all. In 1996, Wikipedia also tells me, the New Zealand Advertising Standards Complaints Board up held a complaint against and ad for these that featured a comedian dressed up as a Native American, and 'assuming an accent'.

I wish I had been able to take out a complaint against the Milky Bar kid whose annoying tag line 'The Milky Bars Are On Me!' post having outgunned some ornery galoot in a Wild West street was excruciating then and still sets my teeth on edge. The milky bar itself however, was splendid. It was probably the first white chocolate I ate and also perhaps the most healthy in that as the label says it was and still is made from all natural ingredients - never mind  that these are mostly milk and sugar, at least there is no artificial colouring or flavouring.

Almost as annoying was the ad for the other Wild West treat, the Wagon Wheel. They seemed huge at the time and were a textural thriller with their combination of crunchy crumbly biscuit, smooth slightly rubbery marshmallow and a coating of chocolate. If I recall, the ads looked like a really bad out-take from Rawhide.

There was nothing annoying or politically sensitive about the last of my wrapped treats, fruit tingles. The pleasure here was the acidic tang and the fizz;  sort of like solid sherbert, which in effect they were sharing the same reactive mix of acids and bases (carbonates).

Ian also mentioned 'some little red raspberry-flavoured hard jelly thing' which I suspect was a raspberry fruit gum, the 'hard' jujube I wrote about in the last blog, and aniseed balls. Can't recall ever trying the latter.