Gobstoppers!

When you got your Friday Penny, our pocket money, we would visit the local sweet shop. You got quite a lots of sweets for a penny. One of the most expensive sweets in those days was a Gobstopper, although it would last you all morning, you could not break it you had to suck it! When I was about 7 or 8 around 1933, I found gobstoppers, they are not like the little gobstoppers around now, those are too hygenic and they are quite small, these gobstoppers were made for sharing, if my mind serves me correctly I would guess nearly as big as a golf ball (although being a lot smaller then they may have just seemed big!). We would buy a gobstopper if we were flush, they were around a halfpenny. They were just really sweet, they took hours and hours to finish off and every so often they changed colour…I think they always started off white, but then this is my memory, thinking! You would suck them for a while and then take them out of your mouth to check the colour… as when they changed colour you passed them on to your friend so they could have a turn, and so on. This was a favourite game of the time!

So that is my Granny’s memories of Gobstoppers ,we still have them today…even the huge ones, but unfortunately they don’t change colour. Although I must say Granny is sat here with me and is not convinced by the picture of them, and her teeth won’t allow her to try to see if they are still the same sweet, dont worry though there are 499 others in our shop and Granny is working her way through them. I love the idea of sharing a sweet (after sucking it!)

… not sure todays H&S world would aprove!!