In this week’s column, former MHK David Cretney remembers the high street institution that was Woolworths...

Who remembers the, what seemed at the time, massive displays of pick-and-mix sweets in Woolies?

Come clean with me, did any of the exciting, colourful array of sugary delights ever fall off the open display into your hands so you just had to eat it? No, me neither!

The idea for pick-and-mix came from the USA in 1886.

In the early 1900s, boiled sweets from Barker and Dobson, including Everton mints, were available alongside Liquorice Allsorts and nougat (what is the correct pronunciation for both those treats?).

Chocolate bonbons, toffees, gumdrops, butterscotch, clotted cream fudge, raspberry ruffles, and peppermints. Woolies also had their own brand marketed as ‘Milady.’

They started with 20 varieties at tuppence a quarter pound. Cadbury's also sold its 85g chocolate bar for tuppence - that’s about the equivalent of 56p for 100g at today’s prices.

The other thing I remember as a youngster was the number of ‘tuck shops’ very near schools.

I attended Murrays Road Junior School, and we had two within a couple of hundred yards of each other.

We could pick up our supplies of penny sweets to be enjoyed during the school day when the teacher wasn’t looking.

Gobstoppers, aniseed balls, pink foam shrimps, and yellow foam bananas were favourites.

Then there was the posh foam banana, which was coated in milk chocolate.

Lion Sports Mixtures in different sporting shapes, such as a cricket bat or football, were another ‘must-have’, and I think I remember them being two for a penny.

A special treat was the jamboree bag, with a little novelty and mixed sweets, and the anticipation of what mystery the paper bag might contain.

Another phase that my class went through was buying cherry menthol Tunes - I have no idea why, other than that they were delicious.

We were also spoiled for ‘pop,’ having two local manufacturers in my time, with others previously. Downwards and Qualtroughs produced a good range of soft drinks.

I remember dandelion and burdock, cream soda, limeade, cherryade, as well as the traditional orangeade and lemonade flavours. Can you recall any others? Get in touch and remind me!

I think they also bottled Coca-Cola under license.

A clear memory for me was as a boy during TT, going to the shop at the bottom of Bray Hill, where lots of fans quenched their thirst with their favourite flavour and then discarded the bottles.

I don’t know if they were just being lazy, didn’t want to lose their spectator point, or perhaps didn’t realise you got money back on the empty bottles.

Anyway, the local lads all knew, and we were in keen competition to return the bottles to the shopkeeper and pick up our cash reward.

Perhaps an early inspiration for glass recycling, where the bottles could be washed and cleaned and then used again.

So, what other sweets tempted us in the 1960s and 1970s?

Cherry Lips, Black Jacks, Mojos, and Fruit Salad chew.

Does my memory serve me correctly, and were these two for a penny, or am I just looking back with rose-tinted glasses?

How about Love Hearts, with a love message stamped on each one, such as ‘Be Mine,’ ‘True Love,’ ‘Forever,’ ‘First Kiss,’ and so on?

If you were really daring, you could offer one of these to the person you really liked in the hope that this might lead to a closer friendship. I wonder if it ever really did?

Opal Fruits were ‘made to make your mouth water’ in delicious flavours of strawberry, lemon, orange and lime.

They’re still available but now marketed as ‘Starburst.’ Were they really packed with real fruit juice, as the advert claimed? A sister brand for Opal Fruits was Pacers - soft, chewy mints that started as Opal Mints.

With their green and white stripes, for a short time in the 1970s, they became Celtic Football Club’s nickname, and the club was known for a time as ‘The Pacers.’

What’s in a name? One that changed - and I could never understand why - was ‘Marathon,’ which became ‘Snickers’ in 1990. Answers on a postcard. The advertising slogan for Marathon was ‘Comes up peanuts slice after slice’.

Let’s remember some popular sweets that no longer exist.

Fry’s Five Centres was unique. For the price of one bar, you got five different fondant fillings - orange, lime, raspberry, strawberry, and pineapple - all delivered in smooth dark chocolate.

There had been earlier flavour combinations after it was first launched in 1934, alongside the Peppermint Cream and Orange Cream, which are still available and popular today.

Fry’s Chocolate Cream was actually launched in 1866 and is the oldest chocolate bar brand. The bars are currently manufactured by Cadbury.

There was also a Raspberry Cream bar, but I don’t think that is still available. The Fry’s Five Centres bar ceased production in 1992.

How about Toffo? ‘A man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew!’

Originally produced by Mackintosh’s, there were several variations, individually wrapped in a roll.

Flavours were plain, mint, and assorted. The latter consisted of apple, chocolate, strawberry, pineapple, banana, and mint, but I had forgotten the different flavours.

Always a popular product with dentists (not really!). After 1969, Toffo production was undertaken by Rowntree Mackintosh following a merger, and it was discontinued in 2005.

Who remembers the ‘Texan’ bar? ‘Sure is a mighty chew!’ Known for its incredibly chewy texture, TV ads showed a cowboy escaping death, not by bravery, but by spending so long chewing his Texan bar that the bandits fell asleep.

Nougat and toffee wrapped in chocolate, each bite was a challenge. I have to admit I don’t ever remember sampling one myself. It disappeared in the 1980s, only to briefly reappear in 2005 before vanishing again.

Mars introduced the ‘Topic’ bar in 1962 with ‘A hazelnut in every bite’. Was there?

A good chunky bar with nougat and caramel in which to find them. Sadly discontinued in 2022.

‘Aztec’ from Cadbury was another mix of chocolate, nougat, and caramel.

It was first launched in 1967 but was dropped before the end of the 1970s.

I remember some of the promotional TV adverts which, similar to other confectionery products, were quite big affairs. Briefly relaunched as Aztec 2000 in the millennium, it was gone again before the fireworks were finished.

Introduced in the 1950s, ‘Spangles’ were manufactured by Mars at a time when sweets were still on ration after the Second World War.

The price of sweets had to be accompanied by tokens or points from the ration book. Spangles only required one point instead of the two required for other sweets or chocolates, so they were on to a bit of a winner!

They were very similar in shape and packaging to the ‘Tunes’ I mentioned earlier.

There were several variations, with the assorted pack containing strawberry, blackcurrant, orange, pineapple, and lemon and lime from memory.

Then there were the single-flavor varieties, including acid drop, barley sugar, blackcurrant, liquorice, peppermint, spearmint, tangerine, and Old English. What was your favorite?

They were discontinued in 1984 and briefly reintroduced in Woolies in 1995.

Did you overindulge in chocolate treats over Christmas? Don’t worry, Easter eggs are in the shops now!