Retired Chocolate Bars, Some Old Friends Remembered.

Hi everyone.

I've just been listening to food writer and Chef Nigel Slater reading his book Eating for England to me via Audible while I ate my dinner, as I do most days. It's a lovely book that celebrates the delights and dreadfulnesses, the oddities and the O M Gs of British eating. Best of all it's a book that is wonderful for reading and re-reading, dipping in and out of, always finding something new to learn, to remember or to chortle over, to let your thoughts meander on while you munch on a chicken leg or tuck into a dish of pasta.

So today I was hearing about chocolate bars, more specifically, about the chocolate bars that didn't make it, that didn't stand the test of time and that are now definitely defunct. The more I thought about this, the more the list grew in my head and the more my mouth began to water. There really were some wonderful bars that we just don't have or see around much anymore. What if there was a retirement home for the chocolate bars that got past their prime? There they'd all be, sitting in their armchairs, just waiting for someone to remember and celebrate them once more.

Well this idea tickled me, hence this blog entry. Before I start, I have to say that a lot of these names I've never seen written down, so if I mis-spell any, please hold me excused. The second thing to say is, you never know when a sweet or chocolate has been retired or just moved to the "retro sweets" market. I mean, I thought the dear old curly wurly was long gone, and then hey presto, one turned up bright as a button in a retro sweets hamper I had for my birthday. So, a little googling will take place, but this is a wander down memory lane, not a PHD thesis. Right, enough kaveats, let's get on.

1. Secret. Who remembers this fragile concoction that reminded me a bit of a beehive, the chocolate was wound around a moussy kind of centre, I loved them, but apparently I was in the minority and they didn't last long.

2. Cello. Now I've done some research, there are lots, I've discovered, of "fifty choc bars that need to come back" articles, and no one, no one mentions this that I can find, though you can find them on do you remember forums. It was a thin, white chocolate bar rather larger than a Milkie Bar, studded with delicious flaked almonds and I was obsessed with it. Another eighties child that didn't pass muster.

3. Nestles Crunch. Now according to the Nestlé website, these are still in production, but when did you last have one? I certainly haven't seen them for years. When I was at secondary school I adored this chunky milk chocolate bar with its crispy cereal bits.

4. Welcome. Now, here's one for you. I can't find this anywhere, I've never heard it mentioned, but I distinctly remember having this one in the seventies, as far as I recall it was a bit like a Mars, but I rather think it had fruit in it. The reason I remember it is that every time I had one people kept telling me how lovely it looked and asking if they could have a bite.

5. Cabana. Oh how I loved this yummy bar with its delicious coconut and cherry filling. It had more body than a bounty and the cherries gave it a lovely tang to counteract the sweetness.

6. Old recipe Boost. While we're on the subject of coconut, when I went for my guide dog training in 1987 I used to buy Boost bars from the training center tuckshop. I'd never tried this thick bar with its milk chocolate, gorgeously chewy caramel and a center of wonderful, creamy coconut. I know now that it was actually pure creamed coconut, the kind you can buy for cooking, if I'm any judge. Life moved on, I went home and didn't have a Boost for years. The next time I bought one I bit eagerly into it, expecting the sublime coconut center. Imagine my disappointment when all I got were some nasty little biscuit bits that had all the flavour of rabbit pellets! Shame! Shame!

7. Lion Bar. Well here's another Nestlé bar that's apparently still in production, but I haven't seen it in years. Unwrap one of these little beauties and you find something all rugged and nubbly and, when I was small at least, quite hard to get your mouth around. Now you have your mouth around it, try biting it, it's quite resistant to the teeth with that thick chocolate, really chewy toffee and lots of crispy cereal. But once you do have a chunk off it you have lots of nice chewing, and a Lion lasts a nice long time. Just watch out if you have any loose teeth or fillings!

8. Snowflake. In my view, the Cadbury flake is a stroke of something between pure inspiration and absolute genius. Therefore, as someone who loves, reveres and adores white chocolate, I thought the Snowflake was rather like summer holidays, a pay rise, Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one. So, just tell me this: Whose damn silly idea was it to stop producing it, huh? Come on, own up! I'm waiting, I can wait all day if necessary!

9. Daim Bar, pronounced Dyme Bar.

Well what do you know? Here's another of my great bars which is still in production, and yet I haven't had one in forever, and it's probably just as well. There was a time when I could not get enough of this small, thin bar with its lusciously tasty chocolate over a deliciously crisp, buttered almond center. It's wonderful on its own or bashed up, by hand or with a rolling pin, never ever ever in a food processor, and used in home made ice cream or as a decadent topping for a chocolate cream pie. I'm glad they're still around, but I don't know where. My local shops don't sell 'em, that's for sure.

I could go on forever about old bars, or ones I haven't had for ages: Aztec, Summit, Golden Cup, Mint Cracknel, Five Centres, Picnic, Fuse, Applause, Texan, Caramac, Freddos, Taz, there's a thing called Golden Nugget swimming around my head and something with the word King in it. Of course, all these are UK based chocolate confections. If you're reading this in another country maybe you have your own favourites of bygone days. But I have to save the last slot for my tiny childhood favourite, the one and only, the bar of bars, the one I always, always spent my tooth fairy money on, and the one I most mourn and miss.

10. Pink Panther Bar. Oh how that name comes back, mixing memory with desire! This was a bar from the seventies, and the early seventies at that, I remember it from when I was really small. It was a thin bar from Nestlé, along the lines of the Milkie Bar, but it had a strawberry cream flavour and of course it was pink. I wonder if that's where my preoccupation with that colour started. Hmm.

Anyway. When I was a teeny girl, any money I had went on Pink Panthers, but buying one was a serious matter. The bar came in two types. One had the racing car from the cartoon embossed on it and the other type had the Pink Panther himself, but you didn't know which picture you had until you opened the bar up, as far as I remember. If I got a bar with a car there would be a serious tanty in the wind, so I always used to try and tell what type it was by surruptitiously feeling the wrapper very carefully, you didn't want to break the chocolate or you'd have to pay for it. I still remember coming outside Mr Thorne's sweetshop with my bar in hand and butterflies in my stomach, waiting to see if I'd' guessed right. First open that delicate wrapper, mustn't tear, and now unfold the fragile thin foil, absolutely must not shred it, and the pure thrill of joy when you find that creamy pink chocolate with the right picture on inside! Woo! And then, of course, I adored the taste! Just yum!

I wonder if I'd still like that Pink Panther so much now. I know I still love to suck the candy shell off a Smartie, to bite a Malteser in half and feel the honeycomb melt on my tongue, to lick the chocolate off a Snickers before eating the filling, now I'm really giving away my secrets! So perhaps that strawberry cream taste would still be as good. after all, there's a little bit of our childhood selves that stays behind in each of us.