Remembering a Time When Candy Sticks Weren’T Called ‘Candy Sticks’ at All!
Funny how times change, isn't it? The world was a different place in the 1970s. The Black and White Minstrels were still on the telly, Bernard Manning was regaling club audiences with offensive ‚¬jokes' that no-one could get away with today, and kids of any age could wander into their local sweet shop or corner shop and pick up a packet of cigarettes for their own enjoyment.
What?!!! Don't panic! I'm talking about ‚¬sweet cigarettes'. You see, before the world became all politically correct in the 1980s, candy sticks used to be sold to children as sweet cigarettes. These delicious long white sticks of hard candy even had a dab of red food colouring on the end to simulate the glowing tip of a real cigarette!
Legendary UK sweet manufacturer Barratts was one of the main producers of these harmless but naughty candy sticks that looked like cigarettes. Theses were packaged in boxes that depicted popular children's TV shows and characters of the day (Joe 90, Thunderbirds, Doctor Who and so on) or general sporting themes, and these packs also contained collectible trading cards, which made sweet cigarettes an even more desirable purchase amongst school kids.
Forty years ago, neither kids nor parents thought there was anything in the slightest bit odd about candy sticks being marketed to kids as cigarettes and, to be fair, the whole enterprise seemed harmless enough. Be honest, how many adults do you know that have become chain-smoking nicotine addicts as a direct consequence of eating sweet cigarettes when they were a kid?
A new name and a new improved version of a classic retro sweet
The world moves on and, perhaps sadly from a nostalgic point of view, the sweet cigarette candy sticks we fondly remember from our childhood were deemed inappropriate for later generations of kids, finally disappearing from sweet shop shelves in the 1980s.
You can't keep a brilliant retro sweet down though, and sweet cigarettes - despite being branded plain old ‚¬candy sticks' in our modern world - live on. There's nothing plain about the fantastic candy sticks we sell at Old School Sweets though: ours still taste absolutely delicious but they're not as brittle as the ones produced all those years ago. Try them and see for yourself - and if you want a real trip back in time to those happy days of your childhood, you can dip the ends of our candy sticks in red food colouring for that authentic glow and pretend to ‚¬smoke' them. Go on. We won't tell anyone.
What?!!! Don't panic! I'm talking about ‚¬sweet cigarettes'. You see, before the world became all politically correct in the 1980s, candy sticks used to be sold to children as sweet cigarettes. These delicious long white sticks of hard candy even had a dab of red food colouring on the end to simulate the glowing tip of a real cigarette!
Legendary UK sweet manufacturer Barratts was one of the main producers of these harmless but naughty candy sticks that looked like cigarettes. Theses were packaged in boxes that depicted popular children's TV shows and characters of the day (Joe 90, Thunderbirds, Doctor Who and so on) or general sporting themes, and these packs also contained collectible trading cards, which made sweet cigarettes an even more desirable purchase amongst school kids.
Forty years ago, neither kids nor parents thought there was anything in the slightest bit odd about candy sticks being marketed to kids as cigarettes and, to be fair, the whole enterprise seemed harmless enough. Be honest, how many adults do you know that have become chain-smoking nicotine addicts as a direct consequence of eating sweet cigarettes when they were a kid?
A new name and a new improved version of a classic retro sweet
The world moves on and, perhaps sadly from a nostalgic point of view, the sweet cigarette candy sticks we fondly remember from our childhood were deemed inappropriate for later generations of kids, finally disappearing from sweet shop shelves in the 1980s.
You can't keep a brilliant retro sweet down though, and sweet cigarettes - despite being branded plain old ‚¬candy sticks' in our modern world - live on. There's nothing plain about the fantastic candy sticks we sell at Old School Sweets though: ours still taste absolutely delicious but they're not as brittle as the ones produced all those years ago. Try them and see for yourself - and if you want a real trip back in time to those happy days of your childhood, you can dip the ends of our candy sticks in red food colouring for that authentic glow and pretend to ‚¬smoke' them. Go on. We won't tell anyone.