...with or without ruining your appetite!
Vintage confectionery has long been a potent subject for nostalgia: Robert Opie’s excellent books are full of spreads of chocolate bars you’ll never see or consume again, and you can barely turn on Channel 5 without stumbling across yet another retrospective of sweets and chocolates we’ve ‘loved and lost’. But what of the nostalgic sweets that are still with us? Those chocolate bars that, like certain members of the acting profession, have continued into their nineties – and in some cases, beyond? There is still a surprising number of confectionery items available today whose pedigree goes back a hundred years and more. So let’s hear it for the sweets you can still eat (with or without ruining your appetite)...
Mars has been with us since 1932, when Forrest Mars Snr. began manufacturing the iconic bar in the United Kingdom. It had, in fact, been introduced by his father, Frank Mars in 1923, in the United States where it was known (confusingly to us Brits) as Milky Way (and is still sold there under that name today). Like many of the long lasting chocolate bars, Mars has changed little in appearance over the years. Its black, red and gold packaging is still recognisably similar to the bars I first unwrapped back in the 1960s, and the bar itself, whilst having suffered to some extent from ‘shrinkflation’, is the same creation of nougat and caramel, coated in milk chocolate. As can be seen in this vintage TV ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOJZoDZpVmQ the bar was originally deeper and less elongated than today’s iteration. The chocolate was also a good deal thicker: commercials frequently reminded us that ‘there’s glucose, sugar and thick, thick chocolate in a Mars.’ The well-remembered slogan ‘a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’, though essentially meaningless, appeared throughout the 60s and 70s and was even printed on the wrappers. Jasper Carrott famously equated consumption of Mars bars with overnight acne: ‘eat a Mars bar, next day, bloody great zit’ ('zit' being a Carrottism for an eruption of acne which he tried to popularise in the 1970s).
Unlike Mars, which was aimed at a wider demographic, Milky Way has always been promoted as a bar for children, with the oft-repeated claim that it was ‘the sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite.’ This debatable claim hails from the era when advertisers could make grandiose claims for their products (eg ‘Mackeson does you a power of good’) without any supporting evidence. How does one measure ruined appetite, anyway? Did Mars test Milky Way on groups of children in between meals, with a control group given other sweeties, then measure how much of their dinners they were able to eat?
Milky Way is, essentially, a Mars bar with less chocolate, no caramel and a lighter, fluffier centre. Curiously, in light of the encouragement to be consumed between meals, they’re often sold in double packs, with two bars originally presented on a kind of cardboard slide. The packaging was always blue with a white logo surrounded by stars, and hasn’t changed much to this day. The bar itself still has the same sculpted chocolate exterior but the fluffy filling is now a light creamy colour as opposed to the original brown. Today’s Milky Way is a shadow of its former self: I’d estimate it to be less than ¾ of its original width. It still comes in packs of two, while the individual bar must rate as one of Britain’s cheapest chocolates, priced at less than 50p in the convenience store I visited today. The double pack was a pocket money-friendly 89p, so you can guess which one I went for…
The same store provided me with an example of a chocolate bar I’d previously thought defunct, Nestlé’s Crunch (formerly known as ‘Dairy Crunch’). This chocolate and crisped rice confection first hit sweetshops back in 1938, but didn’t make it to the UK until the mid 1960s, and was one of the first ‘new’ chocolate bars I remember seeing advertised on television. The blue white and red colour scheme of its packaging remains the same today, as you can see. In the 1990s, the bar’s name was shortened to simply ‘Crunch’. Today's bars are somewhat slimmer than they used to be but otherwise unaltered.
Another ‘newcomer’ as far as I was concerned was Marathon, known to the rest of the world as ‘Snickers’ since its inception in 1930 – the name came from a horse owned by the Mars family. This side of the pond, we didn’t get to try Snickers until 1968 when it was belatedly introduced to Britain and Ireland under its new name – allegedly chosen because the American name sounded too much like ‘knickers’. Marathon advertising always emphasised how it was ‘packed with peanuts’ – rather too many for my liking, and even today I find one bar goes a long way, which probably bears out Mars’ claim that ‘it’s so satisfying’ .Above left is a wrapper I preserved back in 1995 just before the name change.
The internet is full of misleading rubbish. Google Quality Street and its AI overview will try to convince you the brand was ‘created by Nestlé in 1936.’ Cobblers. It was Halifax sweet manufacturers Mackintosh’s who introduced Quality Street, and Nestlé didn’t have any association with the name until 1988 when they bought Rowntree Mackintosh. Today’s tins (or, rather, plastic boxes) still contain many of the familiar or seemingly familiar varieties from the original, but appearances can be deceptive. The so-called ‘purple one’ which formerly contained a brazil nut has been downgraded to a hazelnut. I’ve not looked inside a packet for some time, so I’ve no idea whether the truly horrible toffee brittle is still part of the line-up. These were always the last to go from our family tins at Christmas, along with the opal-fruit shaped toffee and the famously sticky toffee penny. I’m fairly sure that the ‘Chocolate ABC logo’ is still in there: a green-foil wrapped triangle which, when unwrapped, presented as a chocolate version of the logo that used to appear on ABC cinemas and their television channel; whether by intent or design I have no idea. Quality Street tins were originally adorned with romanticised artwork of a soldier in dress uniform and an elegant lady. I still have a small example in my garage (of the tin, not the elegant lady).
Vintage 1lb tin of Quality Street, circa early 60s. The tin is small, just 5" diameter.
Fry’s Turkish Delight was a sweet I avoided during childhood, probably scared away by an early encounter with the fragrant, chocolate-coated jelly which bears only a passing resemblance to genuine Turkish Delight. The adverts were all over television at one time, and featured an Omar Sharif type, in a tent in a desert, with a harem of belly dancers, accompanied by some eastern-sounding music and a voice-over declaring the chocolate to be ‘full of eastern promise’ whatever that was supposed to mean. The ‘Fry’s’ name is deceptive, as the bar has been manufactured by Cadburys since 1919, when they acquired Bristol confectioners J.S. Fry & Sons. Today, it’s still sold in more or less the same form as I remember from the 1960s, a flat slab in a magenta foil wrapper, with a logo that has hardly changed if at all. I do occasionally partake of the odd Turkish Delight bar – they’re sold in supermarket multipacks – and of all the surviving sweets of earlier eras, it’s probably seen the fewest changes. The chocolate coating seems thinner than it used to be, but that’s about it.
Also bearing the Fry’s brandname, and of an even older vintage – dating back 150 years, no less – is the famous Chocolate Cream, still available and still more or less the same product that was once humped around in crates by future James Bond George Lazenby in a series of mid-60s TV commercials. I’ve recently consumed a 2026 Chocolate Cream (purely for research purposes, you understand), and can offer the following observations (based on the supermarket multipack version): the bar’s dimensions are somewhat reduced; you can no longer break the segments apart without shattering the bar; the chocolate is a shade thinner, and the fondant filling slightly smoother. Otherwise, it’s business as usual. I never cared much for Chocolate Cream as a child, finding the combination of dark chocolate and sweet fondant rather too rich for my taste. There was once a companion bar, ‘Fry’s Five Centres’, which contained separate segments of orange, raspberry, lime, strawberry and pineapple fondant. I never ate one, and don’t even remember seeing it on sale, although it was apparently available until 1992.
No roundup of chocolate favourites would be complete without Kit-Kat, arguably one of the most famous chocolate bars in Britain. It’s been around since 1935, which probably explains its ‘jazz era’ nomenclature – there were plenty of ‘Kit Kat Clubs’ around in the 1930s. Kit-Kat was created by Rowntrees and originally sold under the prosaic name of ‘Chocolate Crisp’, with the more familiar brand name arriving in 1937, a year after the ‘two finger’ Kit-Kat was introduced. The packaging has always been red and white except during 1945, when a blue variant appeared (illustrated as a 1995 reissue). I believe the blue wrapper indicated a temporary change from milk to dark chocolate, although the 1990s version contained a normal Kit Kat. Television advertising for the brand arrived in 1958, with the famous slogan ‘have a break… have a Kit-Kat.’ In 1980s America, this was coarsened somewhat to ‘gimme a break.’ Typical…
Numerous Kit-Kat variations have appeared over the years, including the tooth-loosening chunky version; but the original is still popular and, I’m sure most would agree, the best. Last time I looked it was also still recognisably the same dimensions it’s always been, so hats off to Nestlé for not going down the road to shrinkflation.
Also still with is is Nestlé’s Milkybar, famously promoted on television by a speccy kid in a cowboy outfit. The commercials, which began in 1961, have been running with variations ever since, originally accompanied by a song extolling ‘the goodness that’s in Milkybar.’ That’s goodness as in a load of sugar, and the slogan was, unsurprisingly, revised in later years. Those old adverts also remind us of an era when nobody in Britain understood French pronunciation, and ‘Nestlé’ was always pronounced as if it were the English word ‘nestle.’
White chocolate tastes sweeter than milk or dark chocolate on account of its lack of cocoa solids, and the sickly sweet taste is probably why Milkybar’s advertising has always been aimed at kids; although this particular kid was immune. Even as a child, I hated Milkybar – a Milkybar egg filled with Milkybar buttons was one of the worst things you get given for Easter. Outside of the UK, Milkybar is known by the meaningless name Galak.
Other sweet ‘chocolate’ bars I couldn’t abide included the short-lived Pink Panther bar of the 1970s (which was, of course, Pink, and a sickly strawberry flavour), and Caramac, which was made using similar ingredients to vanilla fudge, but was far too sweet for my palate. Never mind the taste, I didn’t even like the smell of it! Caramac was introduced in the UK in 1959 and was only discontinued as recently as 2023 , although it reportedly enjoyed a short-lived revival in July 2024. Its modern equivalent is Cadbury’s Caramilk, which I have yet to experience...
One facet of these vintage chocolates that’s interesting to observe is how little the packaging has changed across the decades, with only minimal design tweaks, and iconic colour schemes enduring over generations. A very good example of this is Cadbury’s Flake, which has been sold in a yellow wrapper as far back as I can remember and possibly for a lot longer. The bar was developed in 1920 when a Cadbury’s employee observed how the chocolate run-off from moulds set into a distinctive flaky pattern. It became equally famous in its ice-cream incarnation, instantly transforming any ‘ordinary’ cornet into a ‘99’. Why ‘99’? Nobody seems to know for sure, and various theories have been put forward. More famous still was the series of TV commercials from the 1960s onwards with a decidedly adult theme, suggestive of… well, I’m sure you know. One of them featured actress Dolorez Mantez, taking a furlough from working on the moon for Ed Straker’s SHADO organisation. The ad’s famous song was composed by top jingle writer Ronnie Bond (not the identically-named drummer from the Troggs).
Six of the best again for Wikipedia who insist that the ‘dipped flake’ variant (a standard Flake bar covered in chocolate so as to offset the messy process of eating one) was launched in 2003. Once again, cobblers. I had them bought for me as early as 1972 and they almost certainly existed before this time. What actually happened is that the original bar disappeared in the wake of the very similar ‘Twirl’ and was relaunched in 2003. All Wikipedia employees will write out one hundred times: ‘I will not publish inaccurate information about chocolate bars.’
We're not done yet... next time, we'll look at a few more 'still with us today' items. and one or two we've lost along the way.