MORE GIFTS FOR KIDS - 60'S & 70'S

Other ways kids got stuff for free, or on the cheap, were as shown in the examples above where you could - join a club, try competitions or collect wrappers.

The top Arrow Bar ad is dated 1968 and offers kids the chance to join the Arrow Bargain Club. If you did you got a membership card, badge and a book of bargains. Any of the goodies you sent away for out of the bargain book were sold at discount prices. So for instance they had things like roller skates, cowboy outfits, cameras and so on, with the ad emphasising a transistor radio, which is probably what I would have opted for.

Arrow Bars themselves were bars of toffee in different flavours.

The Love Hearts ad is also from 1968 and they came up with a competition as a way to entice kids to get hold of a Kodak Instamatic camera or a trannie. Pretty easy competition really - all you needed to do was figure out what their jumbled up slogans said. After that it was just a matter of sending your answer in, along with a winning slogan of your own, then cross your fingers and hope for the best.

The last example is the Super Mousse ad from 1972.

They were giving away free Apollo Mission sticker badges. Each badge referred to a different flight number and so all that was required was for you to collect 2 wrappers that had the same number printed on them, send them off and await your badge in return.

To collect the entire set of badges, meant, of course, that you had to chomp your way through an awful lot of chocolate bars!

Click on the ads to enlarge if you want to read the small details.

SIMPSON'S SWEETIE SHOP - 1979

Bart and Lisa would have enjoyed this place - Simpson's Sweetie Shop on the corner of Graham Place and Princes Street.
The picture was taken in 1979, and although there is still a corner shop at this location, it isn't this one anymore.
On the subject of sweeties, anybody remember Ross's Chocolate Puff Candy? Same as a Crunchie but about the size of brick! Here's an ad for it from the 60's. It's black & white but my memory has it as being a red and yellow wrapper.

LEES MACAROON BAR THEME TUNE - 1967

I searched and searched the Internet but couldn't find any commercials from the 60's for Lees Macaroon Bars.
Just like Ricicles, Milky Bars, plus a few others, the tunes used on these kids ads were drilled into our childhood psyche and have since gone on to become fond memories many decades later.
Well I'm pleased to say I had the Lees theme tune in my own collection, and after discovering it's non appearance on the net, I thought I'd do the honours.
The recording below is from May 1967 and is a radio ad for Macaroon Bars using the same tune they had for their TV ads.
Not only will most of you (my age group) recognise the tune, some of you may even be able to sing along to it - "Lees, Lees, more if you please..."
The radio version doesn't actually have the TV ad lyrics because back then Radio Scotland's DJ's still read out the product ads live on air themselves, but you do at least get the same tune along with the DJ's sales pitch.
The image above of the cheery chap pointing to the Lees products is the piccaninny who was referred to in the TV version.
You wont need me to remind you that Lees also made the scrumptious Snowballs, which would then be put into a Squasher (or Skwaashir) and made it so messy as a kid with most of it ending up all over your face. (Cue - tongue trying to clean face, but not long enough to reach the remnants stuck too far away!)
Anyway, possibly for the first time in over 40 years for some of you, here's the original Lees Macaroon Bar theme tune.

MORE PLEASE!

Some of you may think that just before I tucked into my meal on Christmas day, I snapped this picture of it on my mobile, but no, this spread of Scottish cuisine dates back to 1984.
Tasty treats on offer include Keillers marmalade, butterscotch sweets, OVD rum, pies plus a few other delights in the mix.
This leads nicely into the fact that it's time once again for me to whet your appetite and serve up a feast of goodies on Retro, with lots of Dundee morsels placed tantalizingly before you to chew over! Some of the items on show may make you want a second helping and the odd one might induce bile, but at least there will be the usual variety brought over to you on the Retro platter.
Having said that, 2011 will be my final year dishing up the local fare. Fun that it is, I haven't actually got a bottomless pit of material to delve into, and having made a recent assessment, I reckon that the quantity I have remaining will run out this year. I definitely do have loads of stuff to keep going for many months and will likely go beyond summer before I reach the end of the line.
Retro Dundee will of course remain on the net, so all the items that are on will stay on for you to rewind over, as and when you fancy.
For now though, better get back into the time machine and set forth on another weird & wonderful journey into our past!!

Happy New YEEEEEEEEAAAaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....... (enter time warp portal for 1980's).

70'S CADBURY'S BADGE

I've put the Retro Dundee email address on the image above, so if anyone wants to contact me about anything, or send some Dundee based items from the 60's, 70's & 80's, feel free to get in touch.
A big thanks once again to those of you who have contributed material for sharing, appreciate the effort. I'm always amazed at what some people have tucked away in the loft!
So, ending the recent sweets theme, the badge above dates from around the early 70's and is of course referring to the well known TV adverts from back then for Cadbury's Fruit & Nut.
Finally, another tasty treat from my childhood years is this classic piece of bubblegum pop below, the original cartoon of The Archies mega hit from 1969, appropriately titled "Sugar Sugar".
8 weeks at number one!!

TUCK SHOP #4 - 70'S SELECTION

Room for a few more...
A 70's bundle of goodies to choose from here, with the likes of - Dipped Flake - Swisskit - Buttersnap - Texan - Ice Breaker - Bar Six - Waifa - Welcome...etc etc.
Click on the image to enlarge and see which ones you'd by off your dinner money!!

TUCK SHOP #3 - 60'S SELECTION

Choc-a-block with 60's sweets here.
Far too many to mention, but naming just a few, we have - Mintola - Medley - Mint Cracknel - Skippy - Nux - Poppets - Super Mousse - Tooty Frooties...and on and on.
Although the photo is a bit blurry when enlarged, it's still good enough to have a nose around and get a reminder of all the original wrappers.
See if you can spot your favourites by clicking on the image to view.

TUCK SHOP #2 - VARIOUS - EARLY 60'S

Here's a variety of sweets from the early 60's.
A few of them were introduced in the 50's, but were still available in the 60's, and even beyond.
So for "search" purposes I'll name them all - Bounty - Sky Bar - Opal Fruits - Picnic - Giant Crunchie - Munchies - Punch - Galaxy.
You're probably now starting to hear one or two TV advert tunes pop into your head!

TUCK SHOP #1 - AZTEC BAR

So, after being at school the past few days, time now to pay a visit to the tuck shop!
Retro sweets galore coming up next...
To start with, here's an Aztec bar to whet your appetite. On the go from 1968 to 1977.
The Aztec badge of mine dates from around the early 70's, although the 2 items are not to scale!

THE GIANT TUBE OF SMARTIES

Just like selection boxes, the giant tube of Smarties was something you only saw at Christmas time.
This is how they looked in an ad from 1966.
You probably all did that thing with the ordinary sized tube, when the contents were finished, you'd put the lid back on the empty tube, give it a hard wallop with your fist, and the lid would shoot off across the room like a pop gun!
Well you couldn't do that with the giant one because it was too robust, so you'd have to put it on the ground and stamp on it, then it would go off like a grenade launcher!

BAZOOKA JOE BUBBLE GUM

I used to get Bazooka Joe bubble gum out of my local shop, Stan's, in Craigie. This was in the mid/late 60's when I was primary school age.
The appeal of the sweet, apart from the chunk of bubbly, was that when you removed the outer wrapper, there was a second wrapping inside that had a cartoon strip on it, featuring the wee BJ kid in various adventures.
It was always good to get things at that age that were free and you could collect.

LUCKY TATTIES IN THE 60'S

Made in Scotland, Lucky Tatties were a prized sweet for us kids back in the 60's. They were quite a size, solid white fondant covered in cinnamon powder. A bit more expensive than your average penny tray items, around threepence each, which meant you could be faced with a bit of a dilemma - do you buy 3 items from the penny tray or 1 Lucky Tattie?! What swayed the occasional Lucky Tattie purchase was that they had wee charms inside, usually a plastic animal or something like that, so they would be a long lasting sweet with a small reward for your efforts!
My local sweet shop/newsagent, Stan's, sold them back then but I doubt if you'll be able to find them in your corner shop nowadays. I don't know when shops stopped selling them, but I can't recall ever buying any in the 70's, or anytime after. The good news is that there are specialist shops on the net you can buy them from, although they don't make them with the charms anymore.

CHOC STIX - 1960'S

These sweets were popular when I was primary school age in the mid 60's. Most newsagents and confectioners in Dundee had them.
The twisted rope part was made of hard toffee and the centre was filled with chocolate all it's length. They were good value for money because of how big they were, (the full size of a sweet jar), which meant they lasted ages, like a stick of rock.

PRIMO'S IN HUNTLY SQUARE

Owned by Primo Zaccarini, PRIMO'S CAFE in Huntly Square in the 60's, was really a chip shop rather than a sit-in cafe.
The outside door on the right of the shop took you to a curvy grey formica counter that swept along in front of the frying area and lead to a confectionery corner on the left.
The outside door on the left opened into a small ice-cream parlour that was partitioned off from the main shop but you could also get to from a door inside.
In the early 70's the premises was taken over by Nan Howard although it still remained the same chip shop & confectioner set up.

Here below, is a wee slideshow of some of the products that would have been available from the ice-cream parlour in the 60's & 70's.

Photo by DC Thomson.