The absolute very first time I ate a wagon wheel was at a friend’s party when I was 6 or 7 years old. I wasn't offered it - I just stole it from the biscuit tin when everyone else was playing musical chairs - but it was a big as a frisbee and took so long to eat that I was caught red-handed by the host's mum.
I wasn't allowed any birthday cake as a result but cakes in those days weren't shaped like caterpillars or filled with cookie dough & chocolate pieces so I wasn't too bothered. There's only so much excitement a Victoria sponge and a few candles can generate.... especially when they accidentally get blown out before the birthday girl gets to have a go. Revenge is sweet.
The manufacturers were called Burtons Gold Medal Biscuits and I worked there when I grew up. By then, I'm pretty sure their wagon wheels had shrunk since the first time I'd eaten them although, to be fair, I no longer played with a frisbee nor had the hands of a 7 year old (just the sense of humour apparently) so couldn't be sure. They used to be staples of the school lunchbox before the government passed a law which said they had to be replaced by an apple. By the time it was my job to sell them to the Great British Public though, I think I ate more of them off the production line than I actually managed to flog to Tesco.
Penguins were made in Manchester by United Biscuits and I worked for them too (are you sensing a theme to my career choices?). It wasn’t me that instructed the advertising agency to tell kids to p-p-p-pick up a Penguin but the girl who did had a stutter and wasn’t expecting to be taken literally. Club was the big competitor, made by Jacobs for people who were keen on joining a club and liked a lot of chocolate on their biscuit. They eventually sold us the brand but, by then, although people still seemed to want a fair bit of chocolate on their biscuit, that club wasn’t one they were particularly interested in joining anymore.
When it came to pure chocolate, I was never a big fan of Milky Bars (I had a sweet tooth but these were off the scale) but how many of us knew some boy at school who was short with fair hair and glasses, probably with the frames held together by Sellotape, and so was nominated as the classroom Milky Bar kid? In our defence, it really was hard to avoid the adverts with the little geek in the cowboy outfit who told us the milky bars were on him so often that we wished the next ad would include a red Indian with a sharp tomahawk.
We soon aspired to an altogether more grown-up chocolate-loving gunslinger though; the one who looked like a cartoon Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns and spent most of his time biting through the chocolate on his Texan bar and chewing reeeeeaaal slow (‘A last request, gringo?’ ‘Guess I’ll just finish this here chewy Texan bar’). Yes, we got the message. It was very chewy and lasted for ages ....although if it was still around today, I bet I could get through it in less than 60 seconds, even if it took half my teeth out at the same time.
In the 70s & 80s, when the only Galaxy you ever wanted came in a foil wrapper and couldn’t connect to the internet, Birmingham-based Cadbury’s became the No.1 chocolate-maker by getting Frank Muir to tell us we were all fruit & nutcases before teaching the whole country to chant “nuts whole hazelnuts uh” at each other.
Nestles, which rhymed with ‘wrestles’ until we joined the Common Market and were forced by EU law to call them Nestlé instead, tried to take advantage of our membership by sending truckloads of Swiss chocolate over the border. In solidarity with our Brummie confectioners, we sent them all back again (we kept the Milky Bars as a friendly gesture) but those sneaky cuckoo clock makers went and bought our Rowntree Mackintosh factories, meaning they were able to sell us Kit Kat instead.
Cadbury fought back by coming up with adverts for Caramel which featured that sexy bunny and her beaver (to clarify, that’s another cartoon character, as in ‘hey, Mr Beaver, why you beavering around”). Despite the weird West Country accent, I always pictured her as Raquel Welch (if Raquel lived in Yeovil rather than LA) but I’ve just found out she was voiced by Miriam Margolyes which puts a rather different complexion on things.
For nut-lovers, there was Topic with its hazelnut in every bite (yes, I know, 'just like squirrel poo'). Other options included Banjo (previously Trophy) and Marathon until Mars, who produced both bars, played a sick joke on us by first discontinuing Banjo and then changing the name of Marathon to Snickers, just so they could save money by rehashing the adverts from the States. It meant the end of those British ads with the dance troupe who had the letters of the brand spelt out on the tops of the guys & girls as they ran around a giant model of the bar. Sadly, they moved around so much that they rarely spelled Marathon correctly – in fact I’m sure there’s a moment when ‘R’ disappears behind the giant bar with ‘A HOT MAN’ charging after her (yes, I know it's a shocker - sorry - but I’m getting you in the mood for Xmas crackers).
My mum believed in good old-fashioned home-cooked food (no Vesta curries for me) which meant, if you declined second and third helpings, you were basically saying it tasted disgusting so you tended to shut up and eat up. From some reason though, she also had a cupboard full of chocolate bars and I was allowed three every afternoon when I got back from school (Double Decker, Turkish Delight and Treets which were deliberately mis-spelt to mess with kids’ heads and piss off their teachers). This daily calorie intake coupled with multiple helpings of dinner would’ve made a little fatty out of me nowadays but, back then, I was expected to go up to the playing fields for a few hours everyday after school and burn it all off. If it wasn’t pitch black by the time I staggered home exhausted and ready for a bath (we didn't have showers in those days and we'd certainly never heard of shower gel), my mum would turn me round at the door and send me back out again.
With that in mind, forgive me for questioning the government’s response to rising obesity levels in children which basically consists of treating sweets, crisps and chocolate as though they were cigarettes and trying to penalise kids for eating them. Wouldn’t it be better to encourage them just to exercise a little more instead?
So look, here’s the answer for the parents, teachers and law-makers of today. If those sneaky buggers at Burtons keep shrinking your wagon wheels, only buy them on BOGOF and hand one back for a refund. Force schools to dress the kids up with letters on their tops and make them dance round a giant chocolate bar – this helps with their spelling too. Encourage games of cowboys & indians and nominate the least fit child as the Milky Bar Kid so they get the most exercise being chased around the playing field. Don’t let them do anything reeeeeaaal slow and never criticise them for beavering around. Lastly, never advise them to work for a biscuit company when they grow up – the pay’s crap and the perks are fattening.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...XMAS IN THE 70s & 80s
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