21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff)

by Steve Stack

  Dodo Rating:

  Sweet Tobacco

  It may be hard to believe now, but the thing I am about to describe really did exist. And it was sold to kids.

  Strands of coconut, dusted with cocoa powder and sugar, wrapped in a cellophane wallet, and designed to look like a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco.

  And it was bloody great.

  You would take a pinch, pop it into your mouth, and see how long you could resist before chewing. Once you had scoffed the lot, a damp finger could excavate any last remaining crumbs or grains of sugar from the packet.

  Sweet tobacco vanished from our sweet shops once some jobsworth with a bit of clout noticed that encouraging children to purchase anything remotely resembling cigarettes was probably not a great idea. This may be an unpopular view, but I am not aware that the banning of this delicious tobacco-imitating foodstuff has actually led to any decrease in the numbers of smokers.

  Unlike candy cigarettes, which simply changed their name to candy sticks and stopped colouring one end in red, sweet tobacco was not able to rebrand itself and smuggle its way back onto the sweet shelf, probably because it looks, well, just like tobacco.

  But rejoice, fellow pretend smokers, there are a few select places that you can still get hold of the stuff. It now comes loosely packaged, no more Golden Virginia wrapper, but tastes just the same. It is well worth tracking it down.

  And then feeding to your kids.

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  Mandy

  Mandy was one of many popular comics from the D. C. Thompson stable and was around, in the form of weekly comics and later as an annual, for 40 years from 1967 to 2007, which is quite an impressive run.

  In its early days, Mandy was primarily a collection of serialised stories, often with recurring characters, taking the form of comic strips and text stories. Many of the plots would be seen as very clichéd and old school nowadays – nurses with a heart of gold, tragic orphans, etc. – and this was definitely no place for boys, but it clearly holds fond memories for many women across two, and possibly three, generations.

  After going it alone for nearly 25 years, Mandy joined forces with the Judy comic in 1991 and they were both subsumed by the bigger, beefier Bunty in 1995. Mandy annuals continued to be published every year until quite recently, but without a weekly comic to support them, one can only assume they were purchased by original Mandy readers for their offspring. Or perhaps purely for nostalgia.

  Of course, there is nothing wrong with that.

  Dodo Rating:

  Marathon

  Packed full of peanuts, and with a solid, dependable name that suggested you could run for 26 miles and a handful of yards on just one bar.

  And then it went all international on us and changed its name to Snickers.

  Which is just plain silly.

  (See also Jif and Opal Fruits.)

  Dodo Rating:

  Opal Fruits

  From 1959 to 1998, they were made to make your mouth water.

  Since 1998 they have been called Starburst.

  Which is just plain silly.

  (See also Marathon and Jif.)

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  Playhour

  Sonny and Sally of Happy Valley were the stars of Playhour, a comic for younger readers that ran from 1954 to 1987. These two happy kids with their little pet lamb featured in a comic strip told in rhyming couplets, just like the original Rupert the Bear annuals, and also replied to any letters sent in by readers.

  The rest of the comic was a mixture of original strips such as ‘Norman Gnome’, ‘The Travels of Gulliver Guinea-Pig’, and ‘Leo the Friendly Lion’, as well as stars of the small screen, including The Magic Roundabout and Pinky & Perky.

  Unlike most other comics, Playhour avoided the use of speech bubbles in its stories, using captions above or below the panel instead. It also adapted classic children’s books in cartoon form, one of the most popular being a version of Wind in the Willows.

  By the late ’80s, the children’s magazine market was beginning to be taken over by the big TV franchises such as Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and Pokemon, and the somewhat quaint and old-fashioned Playhour was removed from newsagents’ shelves.

  It is an inevitable side effect of our modern culture, I suppose, but it is a shame nonetheless. My own children have seen copies of Playhour and other similar comics and annuals, and have enjoyed and devoured them as vigorously as a Dr Who magazine. Good storytelling never ages, and Playhour certainly had that.

  Dodo Rating:

  Texan Bars

  The Texan is probably the chocolate bar that people get most nostalgic for nowadays; it has become the touchstone retro sweet and memories of it can bring a tear to the eye of grown men and women. Providing that man or woman is over 35 or so, otherwise they won’t have clue what a Texan bar is.

  It was actually quite a simple confection, nougat and toffee covered in chocolate, but was, as the slogan suggests, somewhat chewy, taking a long to time to finish. A fact that the advertisers made the most of in the commercials. The most famous of which featured a cowboy tied to a stake while a horde of Indians danced around him.

  ‘Hold on there, Bald Eagle’, the cowboy says to his captors, ‘you wouldn’t fire a man till he finished his Texan bar, would you?’

  The Indian – or Native American, as I think I should refer to him now – gives a gasp of surprise and/or assent and then the cowboy pipes up again.

  ‘Just bite through the chocolate, and chew. Real slow.’

  The Indians keep dancing. The cowboy keeps eating. The Indians wear themselves out and fall asleep. The cowboy prises the stake out of the ground and walks out of the camp, commenting: ‘Someone should have told ’em a Texan takes time a-chewin’.’

  So there you go, the perfect chocolate bar if you are captured by a hostile tribe and need to bore them to sleep.

  The Texan was manufactured throughout the ’70s and part of the ’80s, but Rowntree’s discontinued them for reasons unknown, presumably lack of sales, but given the huge public excitement when they announced their return in 2005, one would have thought there were sales to be had.

  Unfortunately, the comeback was for a limited period only; they are once again confined to the shelves of that newsagent in the sky.

  I am reliably informed that if you stick a Double Decker in the fridge, wait for the top bit to go hard and then slice off the nougat layer, it does taste a bit like a Texan. I haven’t tried it, though.

  Dodo Rating:

  Bunty

  Bunty was an exception to the overwhelmingly middle-class magazines and comics for girls from the ’60s and ’70s, in that it went out of its way to appeal to a working-class reader. Characters and strips, such as ‘The Comp’, set in a comprehensive school, were targeted at just that audience.

  And it must have been deemed a success, as it ran as a weekly publication for over 40 years.

  Regular features included ‘The Four Marys’, a cartoon strip set in a boarding school (one of whom was on a scholarship, before you pull me up on the whole working-class thing), two different ballet series, puzzle pages, and a cut-out doll with different outfits.

  Bunty absorbed fellow comics Judy and Mandy in 1995, but the weekly edition moved to a monthly, and in later years there was just a hardback annual at Christmas.

  However, having entertained over four decades of girls, there are more than enough mums passing old copies down to their daughters so the tradition kind of lives on.

  Dodo Rating:

  Cheeky Weekly

  One comic from the ’70s that has yet to benefit from a nostalgic reprint is Cheeky Weekly. It ran from 1977 to 1980.

  Our eponymous hero was a kid with massive teeth who punned his way through every page, often accompanied by a pet snail. Readers were fond of scouring each panel to see if they could spot the snail that was often hidden away in hard-to-find places, a forerunner of Where’s Wally? perhaps?

  Cheeky Weekly was unique among Bri
tish comics in one major respect: Cheeky himself featured in many strips in each issue, in a sort of linking narrative. Cheeky would get up to some scrapes, make a few jokes (often really cheesy puns), and there would be some tenuous link to the next story.

  And what stories they were – classic comic book fare with a few characters that you wouldn’t see published today. There was Gunga Jim, an Indian kid with a turban, and Ah-Sew, an Oriental tailor, but also less contentious regulars, such as Herman the traffic warden, Flash Harry the newspaper photographer, and the imaginatively named Butcher Boy who was not, sadly, a graphic interpretation of the Patrick McCabe novel, but was, instead, a boy who worked in a butcher’s shop.

  Cheeky himself had started out as a character in the strip ‘The Krazy Gang’ from Krazy Comic. He proved so popular with readers that he was soon given his own strip, ‘’Ello It’s Cheeky’, but was further promoted to star in his very own comic which ran for three years before merging with Whoopee!

  Dodo Rating:

  Candy Cigarettes

  Two types of candy cigarette were common in the UK right up until the mid-1980s, when the powers that be dictated that making cigarettes fun (and tasty to boot) wasn’t the best way to discourage children from smoking.

  The most popular version was a small chalky sugar stick, with one end coloured red to resemble a lit cigarette. They came in packs of ten or so, with the box itself looking more like a matchbox.

  Less common, and also more expensive, were larger chocolate sticks wrapped in paper. The paper was, rather stupidly, inedible and hard to peel off. Even as a seven-year-old, I knew they were missing a trick there – a bit of rice paper would have saved a lot of hassle and avoided the chocolate under fingernail problem. These came in a box about the same size and shape as a packet of fags, and were branded to look as much like cigarettes as possible.

  Although it is sad to see any element of one’s childhood disappear, it is hard to imagine this concept getting past the planning stage nowadays. Can you imagine the uproar?

  Both types of candy are still available, but have wisely changed somewhat to avoid the wrath of parents and health authorities everywhere. In the case of candy cigarettes it was as simple as losing the red end and rebranding as candy sticks. Although whether kids today can actually see the point of them is another matter entirely.

  Dodo Rating:

  Nestles

  OK, so when did Nestles stop being pronounced ‘ness-ells’ and start being called ‘ness-lay’?

  This isn’t France, you know!

  Dodo Rating:

  Nougat

  And while we’re at it, who decided that we had to say ‘noo-gar’ instead of ‘nuggat’?

  Well?

  Anyone?

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  Look and Learn

  I have a particular soft spot for Look and Learn, an educational magazine for children that ran from 1962 right through to 1982. I think it is because of the idea that kids would happily pay money for what was essentially a school textbook just because it looked a bit like a comic. The past was a quaint place.

  I managed to dig out some old copies to see what sort of articles they featured. Highlights include a history of the Gypsy way of life, including a guide to the signs they would chalk up outside ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’ houses, a piece on cut-throat razors, a photographic travelogue on Venice, a look at how chewing gum is made, and a short biography of the Empress Josephine. Can you imagine such a magazine existing today? Most adults I know would struggle to get through it.

  The articles were all illustrated, and the magazine used a regular group of artists resulting in a house style that looks quite dated now, but seemed perfectly OK at the time. Think school textbook again, with a slight instruction manual influence. I am pretty sure the artists made a few bob on the side by working on the leaflets you’d find in doctors’ surgeries.

  My favourite section was the ‘Penfriends’ column, in which kids from across the country described themselves and their interests in a handful of words, and then waited to receive letters from dozens of other children keen to correspond with them. Penfriends were all the rage back then; I discuss them elsewhere in this book.

  But the most popular section was undoubtedly ‘The Trigan Empire’, a science fiction comic strip. The story of an alien culture, it managed to weave all sorts of educational elements into its storylines.

  Ultimately it wasn’t a lack of interest from readers that brought about Look and Learn’s demise, rather, it was the price of paper. It ended up being too expensive to produce, and shut up shop in 1982, although it has resurfaced with an online archive and a ‘best of’ book version, so the kids of today can discover all about the Greek god Apollo and how tides work.

  Dodo Rating:

  Smarties Tubes

  In 2005, some bright spark at Nestlé Rowntree decided that, after 68 years, it would be a good idea to ditch the classic cardboard tube packaging of Smarties and replace it with a flimsy hexagonal disgrace that goes all damp when you try to down a few straight into your mouth. The official line was that the six-sided design, known as a ‘hexatube’ for crying out loud, would appeal more to youngsters and would lead to less spillage, but conspiracy theories abound, such as the suggestion that the new version is a lot cheaper to produce, or that it is easier to recycle.

  Whatever the reason, it was wrong, plain wrong.

  Original Smarties (and I am coming over all emotional at the mere thought that the kids of today will have no idea what I am talking about) came in a sturdy cylinder with a plastic lid. The lids were in a variety of bright colours and each had a letter of the alphabet embossed in lower-case on the underside.

  It was never altogether clear why the letter was there. In later years, the company claimed that they were intended as educational, to encourage kids to learn the alphabet. That may well be true but I cannot remember anyone ever doing such a thing. The lid, and tube, did have other uses, however, most famously in the Smarties Gun Game.

  Every day 570,000 tubes of Smarties are manufactured, each containing an average of 48 Smarties, while 307 tubes are eaten every minute in the UK. There appears to be no evidence that the new design improved sales, but it doesn’t look as if the classic packaging will ever return.

  At least Nestlé Rowntree had the good grace to acknowledge the end of an era. The final 100 cylindrical tubes to come off the production line each contained a commemorative certificate.

  Rules for the Smarties Gun Game (for two players):

  Take two tubes of Smarties.

  Eat the Smarties.

  Examine the lids. The person with the letter nearest the start of the alphabet goes first.

  Replace lids.

  Place tubes on a flat surface – a table or arm of a chair are ideal – with the lid pointing away from you.

  Player one then slams a fist down onto the middle of their tube, sending the lid hurtling off into space and, hopefully, across the other side of the room.

  Player two repeats this procedure.

  The winner is the person whose Smarties’ lid travels the furthest distance.

  Repeat until your tubes are knackered or your mum announces that ‘You could have someone’s eye out with that.’

  The game could, of course, involve more players. There was even a solo version.

  Dodo Rating:

  Smash Hits

  Famous for nearly three decades (it ran from 1978 to 2006) of pop music coverage, when Smash Hits first started out it was actually a bit more cutting edge. With the age of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman still a long way off, early issues featured Blondie, the Sex Pistols, and even Sham 69. But it really hit its peak in the mid-to-late-’80s when it was all about Duran Duran, and that bloke with the beret who sang that song about an ansaphone that Andy Warhol seemed to like. Although, even then it did keep a token indie page going for some time, just for the weirdos with crimped hair and DM boots.

  The magazine contained posters, intervie
ws (often with tongues firmly in cheek), and record reviews, but, for many, the main attraction was the inclusion of lyrics from the most popular songs of the day, most of which seemed to end with the legendary bracketed phrase ‘(ad lib to fade)’. This was before the days of karaoke and the closest kids would get to X Factor was singing into a hairbrush in front of the mirror. No matter how bad they sounded, Smash Hits ensured they were word perfect.

  If you were an up and coming pop star, Smash Hits was the magazine to be in. Sure, there were rivals, with Jonathan King’s No. 1 mag giving it a bit of a scare in the mid-’80s, but Smash Hits was always the favourite. Blimey, even Margaret Thatcher consented to an interview, such was its popularity.

  Perhaps the most famous journalist to work on Smash Hits was Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant, who actually edited the mag for a while, but it also gave early jobs to Kate Thornton, Miranda Sawyer, Mark Frith (who went on to set up Heat), and Mark Ellen (the man behind Q and Mojo). It was the pre-teen’s NME and, as the young readers graduated to more serious fare, so did many of the writers. Except for Kate Thornton, who now presents Loose Women.

  Ironically, the fall of Smash Hits was partly blamed on the rise of the BBC’s own Top of the Pops magazine, a brand that itself became extinct a few years later. However, the internet, mobile phones, and the proliferation of music channels must share part of the blame. Whatever the reason, by the time it folded, circulation was down nearly a million against the heady days of Culture Club and Johnny Hates Jazz. Shattered dreams indeed.

  Modern teens can still enjoy the Smash Hits pop philosophy by tuning in to the digital radio station or satellite music channel that bears its name, but it is highly likely that they have never heard of the magazine that started it all.

  Dodo Rating:

  Spangles

  Of all the sweets that have been lost to the great litter bin of time, few elicit such fond memories as the humble Spangle. This is surprising really as, despite the name, they weren’t really the most spectacular of confections looking, as they did, a bit like a Tune throat sweet.