Sweet Bygones

An homage to the sweets, lollies and candy of our earlier lives

Friends, I need to take a minute. My eyes just fell on a packet of Jaffas and in an instant, I found myself on a magic carpet ride, whisked back through time to my childhood. [Note: a jaffa is a type of lolly as we call them in Australia, candy as you say in the U.S. and in the UK - and colonial Hong Kong where I grew up - we called them sweets. AKA confectionery!]

Born in Australia in 1931, Jaffas are like a round M&M (or Smarty) with a bright red hard sugar shell covering a ball of orange-flavoured chocolate. They are named after the city of Jaffa in Palestine (as it was back then), famous for sunshine and oranges.

My grandmother in Australia would post us brown paper packages filled with knitted pullovers, jaffas and dog biscuits for the canine of the house. To me, Jaffas were magic. I liked to pop a handful into my mouth, sucking on them until the red outer shell turned white. Then I’d bite into the chocolate with a hard crunch. Bliss!

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When we ask people to reminisce about old times, we might ask about the soundtrack of their lives, their education, treasured holidays, favoured clothes, stamps, pets or best-ever meals. But if you ask me about sweet memories, I can summon those flavours in a heartbeat. And, I can tell you how eating them made me feel. They felt like childhood.

The film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang starring Sally Ann Howes [I originally wrote Julie Andrews. She was probably already booked] and Dick Van Dyke was a bittersweet favourite. The sweet factory made my jaw tingle with delight, and the evil Childcatcher with his greasy black hair and ridiculous nose was the stuff of nightmares. In England on our holidays my brothers and I found new varieties of sweets that weren’t available in Hong Kong. Brother Stephen adored Gobstoppers and arranged for his godmother to post them to him. My other brother swore by Bassett’s Wine Gums (and still does). And I fell in love with the simplicity of a crumbly Cadbury’s Flake. I once hand-carried an entire box home with me. They took many months to finish.

My dad recalls MacRobertson’s Tip Top Toffee from 1940. I just love the name! Tip Top Toffee was made in Australia by MacRobertson's Steam Confectionery Works. Macpherson Robertson has a great story you can read about here.

MacRobertson’s produced Tip Top Toffee

My final offering is the iced confectionary produced and sold by the Dairy Farm Company of Hong Kong. An army of men drove motor-scooters filled with boxes of iced-lollies and ice-creams all over the colony. We called the ice-cream seller, Popsy Man. We children learned the sound of his motor scooter as he pulled up near the bottom of our driveway, our coins jangling in our pockets. From the fruity Tropical Sundae to my regular choice, Choc Frost. Happy days indeed.

The Dairy Farm Popsy Man arrives (copyright unknown)

Friends, writing about sweet bygones brought me much pleasure. Thank-you for indulging me. For family story-tellers, you could do a whole project on memorable candy. I bet your kids and grandkids would love this one too.

Yum!