Nostalgia: Candy from my youth

Today my Chibi Robo found a mentos candy role in the Zip Lash game, it was so funny to see something so familiar from the real world in a video game. I’ve always had a sweet tooth, so I can appreciate some mentos from time to time. Thinking about sweets, I still have fond memories of my youth, when my grandpa brought over a bag of candy every week. Very reprehensible, looking back on it, but I guess my mother didn’t dare to intervene. But we did have the rule that the candy would go in my candy jar, and I had to space it out over the week.

Searching the internet I found a lot of candy from my youth, most you can’t buy anymore nowadays. Still, I thought it fun to share them with you. Some are very typically Dutch, some you might recognize.

1.Schuimblokken. No idea what you’d call them in English, but that goes for most of the candy on here. They were sweet, firm and yet they melted in your mouth. And they are still in stores.

1. Zoethout. Literally translated as Sweet Wood. Must seem very strange, but you just kept biting on it for a long, long time. Tasted of licorice, a flavor that is very popular in the Netherlands. Us Dutch eat a lot of what we call “Drop”.

1. Bazooka Bubble gum. Just one of the examples of the large pink gum that only tasted good for a couple of minutes.After that, it didn’t taste of much more then rubber anymore. But the pictures or little comic stories that where packaged with them were cool!

1. Chocolate Koetjes Reep. Very Dutch, including the Delft Blue wrapping. It was a very milky chocolate, tasted yummy. They were fairly small, but just right for us kids.

1. Ijs bonbons. They were called ice candy, though I could never find any ice about them. They came in several flavors, most of them fruit flavors. I always like the wrappers so much, a bit old fashioned, they all had a saying or an advice on them.

1. These days it is called Borst Honing, but they used to be known as Jodenvet. A very, very wrong name but a great tasting candy. It was a block of hard, dense, a bit fatty and sweet stuff with a bitter tang to it, and there was no other way to enjoy it then to graze it. For days!

1. Rang, a roll of hard candy flavored with fruit, each candy was wrapped separately.

1. 3 Musketeers, caramel coated in chocolate. Very chewy, tasted great!

1. Zwart wit poeder, literately translated as Black and White powder. In it was a salty and yet at the same time a bit of a sweet substance, that was the perfect combination. I seem to remember packages with dolfins on them instead of bears, but I can’t find them anywhere on the net.

1. Stimerol chewing gum. Another gum, this one the taste of mint. And what I remember best was the commercial on the telly, with Rob de Nijs singing the lyrics!