When it comes to chocolate, there aren’t too many UK cities which have more history intertwined with the production of chocolate than Bristol - and it must be a reason so many of the older generation remember so fondly the old chocolate wrappers from the likes of Frys and Cadbury’s.
Confectionery shops in Bristol were like Egyptian bazaars to youngsters with all kinds of chocolates on offer behind the counter, all within their well-known, often colour wrapping.
You’d have the bright orange crunchie bars, the purple dairy milk chocolate and who could leave out the Fry’s Five Boys milk chocolate. How could one small human possibly decide which one to go for?!
And the beauty of it all was that much of the chocolate on show was made in the Bristol region at huge factories like Fry’s, later Cadbury’s, at Somerdale in Keynsham. The workforce at its height numbered 5,000 - and the site had its own power station and railway.
Today, its a modern housing and retirement home site with huge sports fields. But memories of the old times can still live on through the chocolates the older generation enjoyed.
Here is a selection of some of the chocolates they might remember while growing up in Bristol:
1.
The collection of old chocolate bars here and seen below are all on display at Oakham Treasures in Portbury, just outside Bristol
2. Cadbury’s Brazil Nut Milk Chocolate
Ah, the Brazil Nut in its purple packaging. This was one of the first slabs of chocolate produced by Cadbury which included Milk, Milk Fruit, Fruit and Nut and Bournville in the late 1930s. The chocolate can no longer be found despite calls online for the old favourite to return.
3. Fry’s Chocolate Cream
The packaging has changed and the advertising campaigns have moved on somewhat, but the chocolate can still be found in a different blue wrapping. The chocolate was first made in 1866 in Bristol and later Somerdale in Keynsham, but is now produced in Warsaw in Poland.
4. Nestle Coconut Rough
Ok, not strictly a Bristol chocolate, but one which will have been eaten in the playgrounds across the city. Today, rather than being sold as slab, it is sold in a 20g loose packet.