What was your favorite candy as a child?

This is beginning to sound like a broken record ( now there's another expression that has probably done the way of the dodo.... does anyone know what a cracked rexcord sounds like these days?... or does anyone even remember 'records'??) but... when I was a child we really didn't have many candies...or 'sweets' It was post war Britain, sugar was rationed and there were very few sweets in the shops. Sugar finally came off ration in 1953... now I do remember that day!

When we were small, in Scotland, I remember a few jelly babies and dolly mixtures, Sheila and I used to wrap them up in handkies and play with them like toys before we actually ate them. They were too precious just to eat and be done with! Actually she used to wrap up the 'babies ' and I used to upset her when I ate their heads first! I wonder if I was acting out jealousy over my baby brother!!?

During the fifties I remember sweets becoming available in the shops, and of being given pocket money to spend at the sweet shop. Liquorice in a wondrous variety of shapes - that was part of the fun of choosin, was a favorite, and liquorice root, stringy and chewy and deliciously liquorice'y. Love Hearts and Sherbet Suckers - little cardboard tubes filled with fine powder that you sucked up through a liquorice ( again) straw. It more often than not exploded over your clothing or choked you as you inhaled the powder.

Confectionary companies suddenly vied for a market share and a myriad of new candies hit the market, Spangles - a boiled 'fruit flavour' candy, or Polo Mints - the mint with the hole, it was always a challenge to see how much you could suck away the candy and get your tongue into the hole before it cracked and broke up in your mouth. Aniseed balls and gob stoppers.......Rowntrees fruit gums were a big favourite - I'm not sure how they would get away with the 'fruit' nomenclature these days.... you could buy them in a roll for 3d - a very plain round candy but if someone bought you a gift of a small box of them, they came actually made in the shapes of the fruit they were flavoured as.

I remember the strawberry ones, the shape was very pleasing in the mouth! Rowntrees also made Fruit Pastilles but I didn't like those as they were rolled in what to me seemed a very gritty sugar which took away from the meltiness of the candy. I also remember the sweets my grandpa used to keep in old honey jars on the dresser in the living room in Alyth. He bought a quarter of a pound of each every week, to last him the week.

Mint Imperials - 'sookers', and a candy which I have not seen since, about a 1/4' in diameter and thickness, pink and yellow and green, powdery in texture and frighteningly clove' y. We were sometimes allowed to reach up and get the jars down off the dresser and take them to grandpa and get a sweetie! Joel Rowntree fruit gums are still the best