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  • An era fizzles out…

    April 27, 2009 @ 9:21 am | by Tom

    Many of you will be distressed to hear that Sherbet Fountains are to lose their liquorice tube through which the fizzy powder is supposed to sucked. The makers, Tangerine Confectionery, are going to start using a plastic straw instead. Already, there is uproar from sweetie traditionalists who are browned off that Smarties no longer come in those curiously satisfying tubes and that KitKats are no longer wrapped in foil. Personally, I was never a great Sherbet Fountain user but I still miss one of the great sticky treats of the 20th century: the Bobby Bar, a tooth remover that used to put Bounty Bars in the shade.  By the way, Tangerine bought the Sherbet Fountain brand from Cadbury’s last year for  - well, guess how much. Click on the link to find out. There’s clearly gold in old-fashioned confectionery, even when plastic takes over from liquorice.

    • 10 Comments »

    1.
    April 27, 2009
    12:35 pm

    Bah! I don’t even like liquorice, and I object! And I see your Bobby Bar and raise you Big Time, the teeth-robbing joy of my childhood that caused all of 5p. Not to mention Stingers, which came in about thruppence dearer, but with a whole rake of e-numbers thrown in. Swooooooon!

    Comment by Fiona
    2.
    April 27, 2009
    3:17 pm

    Big Time passed me by but I’m now dreaming of Fizzle Sticks, Trigger bars and penny snakes…. Bliss!

    Comment by Tom
    3.
    April 27, 2009
    5:51 pm

    Fizzle sticks - ooh they were a strange breed. The consistency got me. But here’s one that really reveals my age - Peggy’s Leg anyone?

    Comment by Fiona
    4.
    April 27, 2009
    11:55 pm

    I don’t know what the world is coming to. I spit on the plastic straw. I sowed some licorice seeds but they haven’t come up yet.

    Comment by Mads
    5.
    April 28, 2009
    12:51 am

    and in due course people will bemoan the passing of the sherbet fountain with the icky plastic tube in favour of a vick’s sinex type inhaler or a transdermal patch or something. Nothing like the good old days hey. Which in their time were generally nothing like even earlier good old days. I used like Hunka-Chews.

    Comment by Kynos
    6.
    April 28, 2009
    12:53 am

    and those disgusting pink hard sweets with the occasional old coin stuck in them. Perhaps they were peculiar to my part of the country but they were called “Money Balls” and for a penny or tuppence you were given to believe you might win a prize of some disgusting old coin baked into the hard sugary sweet. Can you believe it in this day of EU H&S regulation but I remember winning tuppence once. Might even have it still about the place this is Cavan.

    Comment by Kynos
    7.
    April 28, 2009
    12:55 am

    Now that I think of it they were similar in taste and consistency to peggy’s leg, only round and covered in pink bits of something that should probably have only been used for painting marine engineering.

    Comment by Kynos
    8.
    April 28, 2009
    8:54 am

    Such things made us what we are… Which is a worrying thought, perhaps…

    Comment by Tom
    9.
    April 28, 2009
    4:22 pm

    Am I the only one who used to throw the liquorice straight in the bin before emptying the entire sherbert contents into my gob? I’m not sure, either, that you could actually suck the sherbert through the liquorice, but I could be wrong, given that I gave it such short shrift in the first place.

    Big Time’s were great and regularly had me dribbling like a teething infant.

    The mothership, however, was the Wham. So chocked full of fizz and e number-ery goodness that it mattered not when you had to eat half the wrapper to get at the bar.

    Comment by padjo
    10.
    June 10, 2009
    11:36 am

    Does anyone know the company that used to make Fizzle Sticks…..long shot i know but hey nothing ventured nothing gained…..

    Comment by Debs

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