I'm not too sure abut the exact ties these items were available - but hey, it certainly a memory jogger!

Fish 'n' Chips - little 8p bag of "fish" and "chip" shaped snacks. Bag had faux newsprint on the front. Came in Salt 'n' Vinegar or - yes! - "Mashed potato flavour"

Horror Bags - bat / ghost / fang shaped blobs in black "spooky design" packets which phased out in the early '80s to make way for the similar Outer Spacers. Usually pickled onion flavour.

Wigwams - triangular, ready-salted crisp/cracker-type things.

Amazin' Raisin bar - (cockney pie and mash type song) "Its amazin' what raisins can do/All that goodness and its all fo' you/You just 'ave ta do what ya gotta do/It's amazin' what raisins can dooooooooo... Oi!" Cadbury concoction of raisins and chewy stuff and rum. Yes, rum! 0% proof.

Aztec - Cadbury's incorrect answer to the Mars bar - a simple concept that didn't last. It was a sausage of fudge with peanuts stuck to the outside. The peanuts usually fell off. No chocolate in that one, which was unusual. Adverts filmed on location on an Aztec pyramid.

Bandit - bog-standard wafer biscuit with Bill Oddie 'gringo' advert. "You can't stand it with Bandit/Get your head off the floor/Great big bar Bandit is as big as a door!" Or something.

Bar 6 - Similar to Kit-Kats. Rather dull. The kind of confectionery product only ever to be found in workplace vending machines and canteens, along with ("Bridge that gap with...") Cadbury's Snack.

Blue Riband - As with Bandit, a dull, dull chocolate wafer, this time with Mike "Mr. Spooner" Berry warbling the tuneless song until distressed wife hands equally pissed-off son the bar in question to take to Dad and get him to shut the fuck up. Altogether - "I got those, can't get enough of those Blue Riband blues/Blue Riband's the milk chocolate wafer biscuit I always choose/When my woman treats me right/She buys me Blue Riband wafer biscuits crisp and light/I got those, can't get enough of those Bluuuuue... oh, thank you!"

Bone Shakers - bone shaped chalky candy pieces that came in different coloured coffin shaped plastic boxes. The sweets were tastless, but the coffins were ace.

Cabana - Cadbury concoction of the sick-making variety. Coconut, caramel and whole cherries encased in milk chocolate - oorgh, no more for me, thanks. Lasted for about a year in the early '80s. Ads, as with Trio, featured the Banana Boat Song, replacing "Day-o!" with "Cabaaaa-na!" to little marketing effect.

Gold Mine - Cadbury's milk chocolate with little Crunchie-like gold "nuggets" strewn throughout.

Gold Rush - Little sacks of gold - small fruity chewy sweets.

Grand Seville - Funny bar full of bits of orange peel. Cadbury equivalent in the same range as their "Velvet Mint", etc.

Soft Drinks that started life in the eighties!

SPRITE (UK : 1989 - )
The direct competition to 7-UP (qv), in that cutting-edge "it's basically lemonade" market. But Sprite had, as a Genesis soundalike session act bawled in the ads, "a squeak of real lemon and lime". Sure. Been around for years in the colonies before it came to the UK, where a mis-print on the original ads said "The refreshing new taste of Sprint"....That's how forgettable it is.

SPORT COLA (1984)
What can only be described as a disgusting cola drink (cf Tesco Low Sugar cola) made a very brief appearance in the mid eighties, but with now advertising campaign to speak of except its association with equally crap cartoon "Sport Billy", it lasted as long as the war would have, if we were fighting just Italy.

SPARKLING RIBENA (1983 - )
The "flat" blackcurrent market was cornered by Ribena and C-Vit, so Ribena and their little berries thought they would take on the big boys, and did pretty well. Even after the Blackcurrent tango arrived, Ribena sales are still high.

QUATRO (1983 - 5)
A sort of "Fruits of the forest" fizz that left as quickly as it came. Orange, lime, grapefruit and... another fruit blended in a futuristic vending machine (see The Core - Drink) to create a rather poor-tasting can of sod all.


IRN BRU (1982 - )
Images of bagpipes and the Forth Rail bridge spring to mind for this odd, medicine-flavoured Caledonian best seller from Barrs. People thought it was actually made from leftover iron girders, but now it has the de rigeur "ironic" new image in the same way that spinach had a new image after the arrival of Popeye. Sort of.



FRESCA (1970s-80s)
Odd grapefruit based drink which was extremely bitter and not very suitable for children. Presumably this was why the advert featured a very sultry couple, sipping "Fresca" and causing their sunglasses to freeze over. All very odd. The packaging was originally a light green-aquamarine background with Fresca in yellow lettering, replaced with the "new" and "updated" styling of the rather less appealing white label with green lettering. Not the hottest seller, apparently. The taste was something like 7-up, Mountain Dew, and some sort of citrus-y acerbic tangy fruit like grapefruit. It was yellow in color.


DR PEPPER (1981 - )
Anyone remember the taste of Benylin, that horrible cough medicine? Well carbonate it and you have Dr Pepper. Disgusting, somehow survives in America, but over here has risen no higher in popular folk myth than "that can of stuff that's the last to go at a local village fete bottle stall because someone won it, decided they didn't want it and surreptitiously put it back on the bench" status. Constant ad campaigns of the "try it! You might like it!" variety have fooled sod all people.

DIET COKE (1981 - )
CAFFEINE FREE DIET COKE (1987 - )
Coke's eighties answer to the health revolution - the drink you can drink while jogging! Early samples had an appalling aftertaste, so the sweetener was changed. Ads very much like normal fat bastard coke but with thinner people in them - "Just for the taste of it!" wheened the singers, and, well, it did have the bonus of tasting nothing like "regular" Coke. Caffeine-free was released around '87 in response to a government health report about caffeine and heart disease being linked. Thus the one remaining bit of fun associated with Coke was obliterated. This literally was brown water.