Sunday night nostalgia
Sunny Sundays are some of the best cure-alls for a grumpy mind and today is no exception. Part of the reason for the grump may be because I’m fresh out of Easter Eggs. It’s been a week since Easter day and I am a lifelong supporter of Cadbury’s chocolate eggs. Why are they so good? Why are they so much better than the Cadbury’s chocolate available year round?
The Cadbury’s egg as a constant in my life as a 10/10 sweet treat got me thinking of the snacks that are no longer with us. I know this can feel like a bit of a tired conversation, but these foods are often tied to such strong memories and associations, and it’s nice to remember!
Here’s mine:
Wispa Bite.
Now, I know that bite-sized pieces of Cadbury Wispa are now available in a packet and you might think that is what I mean, but I’m talking about a Wispa bar It was a Wispa (aerated chocolate), with added caramel and biscuit pieces.
It apparently was only on sale for three years until 2003, but it was my absolute favourite during that time. My parents smoked when I was a kid and on Sunday nights if they needed more cigarettes I would walk down to the off licence, usually with my dad, and get a Wispa Bite as my Sunday night treat. Bring it back, Cadbury.
Echo Bars
There’s absolutely a pattern here. I like different textures all in one place and one of those textures should be biscuit and another should be aerated chocolate. Echo bars had a biscuit base, white aerated chocolate and were covered in milk chocolate. They were the perfect lunch box treat. Sometimes hard to bite into, and the chocolate would get stuck in your teeth when you finally did, they were elite. I don’t know how kids are getting through lunch times these days…
Fruit Polos
I don’t like chewing gum, which means I’ve always been a mint girly when it comes to fresh breath. I also love a hard-boiled fruity sweet. I have really fond memories of both sets of my grandparents having Fox’s Fruits readily available for little Victoria. My fancier grandparents would keep them in a little glass jar with a lid on their coffee table and my grandad on the other side would just keep a load in his pockets!
I was a Polo fiend at school, I’d always have them on me, and my affinity for fruity sweets meant that I would often have fruit Polos. Not minty, so didn’t help with my breath at all, but so delicious. They’d get so sticky in the packet in my school blazer pocket and sometimes I’d have to pry them apart with my teeth. That’s probably why they were discontinued.
Fizzy Jerkz
Staying on the sweet theme these ‘Fizzy Jerks’ from Wonka were incredible, they’re also known as Bottlecaps in the US, and I managed to get a tube a few years ago in California. They were fizzy hard sweets, shaped like bottlecaps that were supposed to taste like fizzy drinks - cola, lemonade, pineapple & grapefruit, ice cream soda. They were so good. In fact, I’m going to try and get some Bottlecaps from the US now, brb.
Micro Chips
One savoury snack for the nostalgia list although I don’t think I’d like to eat these again. Micro Chips were microwavable chips/fries that came in individual boxes and, from what I remember, where a revelation in chip technology. A quick and easy afterschool snack, I can see why my mom loved these for us three kids. I must’ve eaten so many boxes of them. Looking back, they were soggy and way to hot, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, my household was very much on board with the microwave cooking craze.
Honourary mentions for: Fuse bars, Barcardi Breezers (I wasn’t drinking these until I was 18, promise), Refresher sweets, Frosties and penny sweets.
Thanks for coming down (my) memory lane - tell me about your most missed treat and the memories that you associate with it.
Love and nostalgia,
Victoria x