Childhood Sweets (Candies)

Whats in a Humbug? Sounds kinda dreary.

One of the most interesting of the ones i mentioned would have to be Zotz. A hard, fruit flavored, "suck-on" candy on the outside, hollow inside and filled with a powder like substance. When you get to, or bite into the center, the powder foams up and virtually "explodes" in your mouth!
 
Slumgullioneer said:
Wasnt asking for a definition, was hoping for a description . lol Ah well.
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Duck59 said:
"A boiled sweet, especially one flavoured with peppermint."

This seems remarkably like a description to me.
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It is true that it is a description. But it is a rather generalised description which could apply to other types of mints (for example, Fox's Glacier mints). One distinctive thing about a humbug is the fact that it is striped black and white (sometimes brown and white). It is hard boiled on the outside and gives way to a soft chewy interior. They are a cross between a toffee and a hard boiled sweet and do not have a very strong mint taste. Sometimes they are lozenge shaped but there is also a 'twisted pillow' shape which I remember from childhood. Turning the pointy ends of the pillow in one's mouth had a certain tactile pleasure.

Here is an image of the twisted pillow. I think they also came in a pyramid shape but I'm not sure.

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Here are some lozenge shaped:

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Here is another quote:
The use of the word humbug for a stripy peppermint-flavoured boiled sweet seems to date from the nineteenth century: the Oxford English Dictionary notes it as being 'remembered in common use in Gloucestershire' in the 1820s, while Elizabeth Gaskell in Sylvia's Lover's (1863) explained: 'He had provided himself with a paper of humbugs for the child — "humbugs" being the North-country term for certain lumps of toffy, well-flavoured with peppermint.'
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The Glutton's Glossary, John Ayto
 
Thank you Morning Glory. That was a SUPER description, complete with historical nomenclature and even a couple of pics. LOL. Much better than my Zotz description even, which by the way, comes in several different fruit flavors.
As to your Humbugs, I like the twisty pillow (TM) version...we had a candy here very similar to that, so I know that "tongue-tactile-texture" of which you spoke well!
Although I can't for the life of me remember the name of ours.

A couple more I forgot to mention that were sold here at baseball parks quite a lot were Pixie Sticks, basically a sealed paper straw with flavor powder inside-- you just rip off the top and dump it in your mouth, and one that was banned for public sale in the 70s....Candy
Cigarettes. They came in a realistic looking Cigarette pack, and you could "tap one out" just like real cigarettes. I suppose they reasoned that it encouraged our youth to take up smoking. lol
 
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Slumgullioneer said:
my Zotz description even, which by the way, comes in several different fruit flavors.
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Well your Zotz description intrigued me! I now want to try them. It sounds a little bit like a lemon sherbet which has a hard lemon boiled sweet shell with fizzy sherbet in the middle.

We also had the candy cigarettes here. I can remember them very well. They even had red tips as if they were alight!
 
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morning glory said:
Well your Zotz description intrigued me! I now want to try them. It sounds a little bit like a lemon sherbet which has a hard lemon boiled sweet shell with fizzy sherbet in the middle.

We also had the candy cigarettes here. I can remember them very well. They even had red tips as if they were alight!
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I had forgotten those! Isn't it amazing how much things have changed in just a few decades? I am now trying to put into context the changes to diet, nutrition, health etc. over say the past 50 years, given the age of mankind overall. It's making my brain hurt.
 
jennyb said:
There are so many. - there is a tradition of hard boiled sweets. Here are some I remember:

Army and Navy
Rhubarb and Custard
Pear Drops (these are strange as they taste like nail polish)
Pineapple cubes
Winter mix (these tasted like cough sweets and used to be my favourite as a kid)
Humbugs (the black and white striped)
Sour Apples
Kola cubes
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Rhubarb and custard, black currant and liqourice a couple of favourites.
 
Anything (black) liquorice especially liquorice comfits, orange and lemon drops (the tiny ones), Murray mints, slabs of butterscotch, slabs of honeycomb, sugared almonds, sherbet fountains, shrimps, sugar mice, nearly any halfpenny sweets except banana ones, flying saucers, and those strips of toffee.

Before the sweet shop opened at the very end of the 1950s, we used to have to go to the local haulage yard to get sweets! The guvnor's wife opened a sweet shop in their front room. Can you imagine it now - kids trailing across a haulage yard in amongst all the tipper trucks?!?

My daughter loved rhubarb and custard too, so much so that she named her hamsters rhubarb and custard. I can't remember which was which, but I do know they had loads of babies, which supplemented her pocket money so she could buy more sweets!

Mum and Dad used to get Fox's glacier mints all the time. I hated them. Only Murray mints for me, far milder.
 
I'm afraid that I have never lost my enthusiasm for sweets. Texture plays a big part in my choices.
Particular favourites include:
nougat,
soft liquorice and liquorice all sorts,
strawberry laces
jelly sweets like snakes, jelly babies, fruit jellies, jelly tots, jelly beans, midget gems,
boiled sweets like sherbet lemons and pear drops.
 
Kake Lover said:
I'm afraid that I have never lost my enthusiasm for sweets. Texture plays a big part in my choices.
Particular favourites include:
nougat,
soft liquorice and liquorice all sorts,
strawberry laces
jelly sweets like snakes, jelly babies, fruit jellies, jelly tots, jelly beans, midget gems,
boiled sweets like sherbet lemons and pear drops.
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I had a sweet tooth when I was younger, not so much now.
 
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