Remember when penny sweets actually cost a penny? You're favourite day of the week was a Sunday when you got 50p from Mam or Dad or the rare time you were extraordinarily good and got a whole punt was the best day in your short little life. We're really showing our age now.
You could buy 100 sweets with one single coin - AMAZING. As the years went on, the days of penny sweets turned to two cent sweets with the introduction of the euro and all of a sudden your big bag of diabetes-inducing sweets was cut in half. Nowadays shops charge extortionate prices for similar sweets with the cheapest being five cent for the one sweet. Outrageous
Ok, so not all the sweets in the bag were 'penny' sweets but they went into the penny sweet bag so they still count, so join us in reliving our youth and remind yourself of the best sweets from the good old days:
Cola Bottles
The most basic of penny sweets but a classic. You can't go wrong with a cola bottle, unless of course you don't like cola flavour, in which case you're weird. The fancier brothers of the classic cola bottle, were fizzy cola bottles, with the sour sugar coating making you feel like you were living life on the edge.
Milky Teeth
Looking at them now they don't look very appealing but the fun that was had pretending you had false teeth in brings back fond memories. Imposters such as soft jelly teeth without the chalk-like powder tried to weasel their way into the mix but thankfully without success.
Fizzy chips
Just looking at these in your plastic bag of goodies would make your mouth water. If you managed to suck all the sour sugar off you were one of the braver kids, fair play.
Fried eggs
Another staple in any penny-mix bag was the fried egg. Obligatory method of eating: bite off the yolk first then eat the white separately, never eat as a whole.
Fizzy dummies
These were another big tester of who's steely face would last the longest before crumbling under the sourness. Too many of these left the roof of your mouth feeling raw and fragile.
Chocolate mice
Not the most popular choice when stuffing your little bag with sweets, one would imagine the look of them had something to do with it. Having a fear of mice clearly doesn't help here but why would you want to bite their head off unless you were trying to exact some kind of twisted revenge on all real mice who haunted your childhood.
Friendship rings
Marrying your best friend was never so easy, or covering your entire hands in rings and feeling like you were the queen of bling. Trying to bite them off your fingers proved difficult at the best of times though, nearly shoving your fingers down your throat just to eat the bloody jelly.
Golf balls
If you didn't try to fit as many if these into your mouth as possible all at once, your childhood was a shambles. This of course led to a mild case of lockjaw from all the chewing.
Fruit Salads and Black Jacks
Seeing who's tongue was the blackest out of your friends was a never ending competition while the fruit salad provided a means for the removal of your teeth.
Refreshers
Nicely chewy, but not the worst for pulling out your teeth although if you managed to inhale from the centre of the sweet or swallow it the wrong way, you ended up choking for a solid five minutes. Should have come with a health warning.
Candy watches
What a great fashion accessory. That was until you started gnawing into it and your arm ended up a sticky mess covered in the colour that ran from you slobbering on each ring.
Chalk Lollipops
These horrible creations were somehow loved by many a child in the good old days. It was literally like eating a piece of chalk which is not in the slightest bit appealing.
Candy sticks
Or fake cigarettes as they were widely known made us feel so grown up and sophisticated. This was obviously before we realised smoking was not cool and is in fact bad for your health but in our naivety these 'cigarettes' were the coolest sweets you could have.
Yellow bellies
Similar to the whole mice scenario, there was something slightly uncomfortable about biting of a jelly snakes head but these were nicer tasting so you just closed your eyes and got on with it. The things you do for a sugar rush!
We could go on for days about all the different sweets from our youth but let us know what your favourites were in the comments below.
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