Nostalgia eats me alive

Snacks aren’t just snacks. Not really. They’re formative identity markers for certain generations.

I was raised by Neil Buchanan from Art Attack and ambient parental neglect.

A childhood held together by Cartoon Network and several types of processed cheese.

You were either a Mini Cheddars child, or a Snack-a-Jacks child with slightly better emotional regulation because your dad actually spent time with you.

We were raised by crisps and cereal bars and Frubes that always ended up in the freezer for a desperate summer day. Lunchables were our charcuterie. We drank Panda Pops from the chippie fridge. “Ultra-processed” wasn’t a term anyone’s mum cared about.

There is an undeniable snack canon in the UK. One not written in books, but formed in playgrounds, corner shops, and multipacks from Iceland.

Edible strings of cheese. The repressed sadness of a paper plate of Party Rings at birthday parties held in church halls. Hula Hoops proudly worn on chubby fingers as crunchy engagement rings. An Um-Bongo that went lukewarm in your PE bag.

Freddo — now mostly used as a unit of economic despair.

They sat in lunchboxes, got crushed in our book bags, and lodged in our repressed memories.

Brands rifled through our subconscious to bring back old memories. Mars brought back the Milky Way Crispy Rolls bar. Nestlé re-released Caramac for about five minutes before discontinuing it again and pissing off fans.

Can we seriously bring back the Mars Delight though?

We don’t just want shiny new things like protein ice cream or alcoholic iced tea. We want old things with better fonts. Sure they’ll be slightly smaller, definitely more expensive, but close enough to count as comfort. Take me back to the whiff of a packed lunch. A sleepover. A long car journey.

Even now, a melted Blue Riband still tastes like a school coach trip. The weird leather strip of a Fruit Winder still tastes like a Friday. I was a “ball it up and eat it in one” gal. Skips taste like being eight years old again, slightly sunburnt, on a towel that smells of damp grass and sun cream.

We didn’t overthink it at the time. We ate what we were given, swapped what we didn’t want, and secretly hoped someone would offer us one of those Cadbury’s chocolate animal biscuits.

We don’t eat these snacks for the taste anymore. We eat them for who we were before back pain, LinkedIn, and oat milk.