South Shields Sanddancers Forum

any one remember eye poppers they were a gobstopper with a sour middle. i think that they also had ones with a hot centre

Wow! I remember eye-poppers!
We used to buy them in droves in year 11 when we snook out to the shop!

Used to go to school round there from 1955 I think the shop which sold toffee cakes was in one of the streets off Hunters Terrace. The older kids used to buy single cigarettes there.

Thats it ! Hunter's terrace. In '55 I was ten and went to Westoe school. Lived in Laygate Lane and was given a penny for the bus fare. Most days I walked and spent the penny on a toffee cake. Another good find for me back then was a little kind of shop across the bombed building site ( flats there now ) Anyway , they sold broken up sugar cones. A whole bunch wrapped in newspaper for a penny! Between those and the toffee cakes I didn't ride the bus too much. Don't want to think what the health inspectors of today would make of such a place as that ' kind of ' shop

The Health Inspectors would probably close them down. In the fifties and early sixties it seemed like there were corner shops on ..well every corner. They were run usually by old ladies and there was usually a cat asleep on the dusty window display. However we all bought our sweeties and toffee cakes there and never came to any harm.
I used to go to St Marys school at Tyne Dock and there was a shop outside the school gates where you could buy sticks of spanish ( a hard liquorice) Tiger nuts, liquorice root and Horlicks tablets. All were considered great delicacies by the local kids and more importantly were very cheap. Still got all my own teeth so they couldn't have been that harmful.

hi Delilah, i still have all my own teeth too,mmmm horlicks tablets

If she had the sniffies you should have given her a "Victory V"

Do they still make Vicky V's ??

and Horlick tablets I remember them but never wanted one much preferred the real thing from Minchellas when I went shopping with Ma Maplin.

Yes they still make them but they are sold in fancy packets as opposed to weighed out from jars . Don't think I've ever had them since schooldays. They were so hot they made your eyes water! And as for Fishermens Friends...they were so strong they should have been sold on prescription

My sister mentions:

Rhubarb rock
Empire mixture
Japs
Fishes in the sea
And yum,yum, - Horlicks tablets

Jerry

Thought I was the only person in the world to remember Fishes in the Sea. No one ever seems to have heard of them. The sea part was green sweets with white candy fishes. Now I know I wasn't dreaming. Don't think they make them any more.

I remember a tube-shaped thing, lightly dusted on the outside with a sweetish white powder. Inside it was mid-brown and rubbery, also sweet, and in the centre a nut running through like the eggs in veal and ham pie. I think it was on a cord. You cut it into segments to eat it. Does anyone know what it was called?

James Kirkup writes of sweets in Shields in the '20s:

Barley Sugar Fish; Berwick Cockles; Acid Drops; Lemon and Orange Slices; Jap Dessert; Pontefract Cakes; Jelly Babies; Raspberry Dewdrops; Genuine Silver Dragees; Nutty Nougat; Bubble Gum; Devil's Dumbells; Sherbet Dabs; Black Jack Toffee; Wigga-Wagga Slabs; Cut Cavendish Plug; Cinder Toffee and Barley Sugar Sticks.

Liquorice Braid; Liquorice Bootlaces; Liquorice Plug Tobacco; Liquorice Pipes; Liquorice Red Hot Pokers and Liquorice Root. There were small, hard, blood-red, translucent crescent-shaped cachous we called Angels' Toenails, and semi-medicinal Eucalyptus Fudge; Horehound candy; Coltsfoot Cubes, Chlorodyne Gums and Curiously Strong Peppermints. There were also little bird-cages made of lacy pink and white sugar, and watches made of coloured candy, whose hands always stood at ten past two .

Kirkup also mentions sticks of rock with HAPPY SOUTH SHIELDS right through - and locust beans, which, as they resembled 'caca', he didn't touch.


Jerry

Locust beans are Carob beans and come from the Carob tree, I remember them and did not like them at all. They can be ground up and used as a cocoa substitute. uugh

Has Spanish Gold gone the way of Candy Tabs. Saw a kid on the bus with what looked like candy cigarettes. They are now called candy sticks to discourage kids from smoking.

I loved candy tabs, did'nt they have a red dot on the end, so you could pretend they were lit?

Barratt's sweet cigarettes, white with a red tip. (This was before smoking became a big no-no,)

average len wrote:Mercy, Memor, mercy!

By the way, does anyone remember liquorice root? (Not really a sweet as such, but I thought I'd ask.)

Liquorice root I love it.U can still by it at most chemists.u can also still buy imps.

silver fox wrote:

average len wrote:Mercy, Memor, mercy!

By the way, does anyone remember liquorice root? (Not really a sweet as such, but I thought I'd ask.)

Liquorice root I love it.U can still by it at most chemists.u can also still buy imps.

I love liquorice too can you remember OROZO sticks of it (like a paddle shape) Boots have started selling liquorice under the PANDA brand from Finland and it is the nearest tasting stuff the what we used to get as kids, it's bleedin' lovely