Post War Sweeties

Hello Jean
Before I moved to Summervale in 1954, I lived in a children's home in Bucks with my brothers David and Paul. At that time we had a shilling (1/-) a week pocket money, half of which went on sweets and half had to be saved. Sweets were rationed then and we had to use coupons to buy our restricted amount of sweets. Then, when we moved to Summervale in 1954 sweet rationing was abolished. This meant more sweets and a greater variety of them - when we could afford it.
There were some marvellous sweets around then.One of my favourites was Fry's Five Boys chocolate bar, with pictures of a boy with various expressions on his face, ranging from despair to ecstasy; presumably despair when he didn't have the chocolate to
delight when he could. I remember studying the pictures closely and thinking how odd they were.
I also liked Rowntree's fruit gums, especially the blackcurrant ones which were much fruitier than the others. Palm toffee was really delicious, tough and sticky, but I can't remember who made it. Sometimes we would ask our mother to make toffee on a tray. That too was delicious but usually very hard. We had to take a hammer to it sometimes!
We also had lots of penny chews, blackjacks (lovely!), Spangles (Derek Drayton seemed to like these), and aniseed balls. Rolos were very tasty but never seemed to last long, unlike pear drops and barley sugars which could be in your mouth for ages. Was that why they made your mouth sore?  Gobstoppers and humbugs were tasty too and usually came unwrapped if I remember.
Does anyone remember eating the Horlicks tablets? We got ours in small, metal tins, with each sweet individually wrapped. Does anyone know if you can still buy them?
I remember Clive Williams introduced me to Barratt's sweet cigarettes. These were white, shaped like a cigarette with a red end. They were a bit sickly so I never bought them very much.
We would also have dolly mixtures, raspberry drops (gave me a sore mouth!), sherbet dabs, with a liquorice straw to suck out the sherbet, Fry's chocolate cream (sickly!) and occasionally we'd have some Turkish Delight. As an occasional treat our mother would get us a wagon wheel - large and scrumptious. Years later I remember being disappointed when I saw that they had become much smaller.
We bought a lot of our sweets from the shop opposite the school.

 ( Which school – Ditton Street , boy’s Grammar ?)

I can't remember the name of it. Any ideas anyone?
These are some of the sweets I can remember. There must have been many more. What were your favourites in the 1950s?

I remember chocolate éclairs that had real chocolate inside and I liked liquorice allsorts.

I was very fussy with chocolate – hated anything other than Cadbury’s or Terry’s plain. I still prefer plain to milk but rarely eat any as I find it too sickly nowadays.

We used to use the sweet shop  on the main road opposite Brewery Lane. I assume it must have been Whites. The shop shown here on the right. The other was a grocery store. Best Wishes
Peter Westmacott.