Gob stoppers

There was a comedy sketch on TV this evening about someone buying sweets, and one of the things they bought was a gob stopper, a single gob stopper. Do they still make them? I’m not really a sweety person and I wouldn’t buy these sort of things anyway, not being a child!

It made me think back to other sweets you could buy… not that we did very often, we had 3d pocket-money – that’s 3 old pennies which is just over a penny in value now. Gob stoppers seemed huge in those days, enormous, and it was wonderful the way they changed colour as you sucked them… of course this meant you had to keep taking them out of your mouth to look at them. Another favourite was the sherbet fountain; sherbet in a cardboard tube with a liquorice straw to suck it through – if you sucked too hard the result was explosive as the fizz hit the back of your throat. I know some people used to have dib-dabs – a similar sort of sherbet thing except there was a toffee lolly to dab in the sherbet… I don’t remember them.

Dolly mixtures, I loved dolly mixtures with their lurid colours, Smarties were very brightly coloured – they look like dull pebbles now because all the exciting colouring agents are deemed dangerous so ‘natural’ colours are used… dull, dull, dull. There were chocolate bars, Cadbury’s, but I don’ remember ever buying one… maybe they cost more than 3d! There were small chews which cost ¼d, individually wrapped, black jacks and fruit salad, and tubes of refreshers, fizzy sucky sweets, and love hearts, which they still make but have modern messages on them now…

I must have a look at sweets next time I go in our local shop, not to buy any but just out of interest!