Every week, Amanda will be saluting her favourite retro products – products which are still available in the U.K, and which she personally enjoys on an almost daily basis. This week, Amanda salutes….
As you can probably see from the packaging in the picture above, Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers have been around for a very long time. It is my understanding that Edward Longshank’s – ‘The Hammer of the Scots’ – was chewing on a Tunnock when he condemned William Wallace; they’ve been around that long. This could, however, just be a rumour; I have been unable to discover the exact year of the Caramel Wafer launch, but the company has been around since 1892. Somehow, I can’t quite imagine Queen Victoria and/or Jack the Ripper munching on a Tunnock; there’s something inherently 20th century about the taste. I’m taking a guess that the Caramel Wafer bar dates from the early ‘50s, and was probably conceived as the chocolate counterpart to The Festival of Britain.
Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers are very old fashioned; each is wrapped in foiled paper which is actually folded around the bar. Nothing is folded around anymore; things are ‘safety sealed’ in impenetrable, plastic wrappers. Not our Tunnock! It’s so easy to open that you don’t even needs hands. Furthermore, they are incredibly cheap. This is why posh families don’t really eat them. We never saw a Tunnock Caramel Wafer when I was growing up; my parents were nouveau riche, and we had ‘proper sweets’ (like Double Deckers), the socio-economic gulf between Cadbury and Tunnock my first introduction to the British Class System (and how it was kinda swinging in my favour.)
It was only as an unemployed adult in the ‘80s that I discovered T.C.W (as we shall now be calling it, as I truly cannot be arsed writing out Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer every time I mention it). It was, I believe, 10p a bar back then (probably still is), and – down to my last 10p – I bought one. I unfolded it with trepidation; although the wrapper states that ‘4,000,000 sold and bought every week!’, you never see anyone eating a T.C.W. It was light in my hand. Not usually a good sign (See: Way, Milky.) Imagine then my surprise when – biting into my first T.C.W – I was thrown into a frenzied miasma of chewy caramel, stale tasting wafer and the cheapest chocolate known to man. It was fantastic! This was the taste of council estates – and I liked it!
And I still do. Sure, they taste stale and are pretty awful, really – but the timeless elegance of a Tunnock makes their flag-ship range my retro caramel wafer of choice.
Serving Suggestion: Best eaten whilst listening to Alma Cogan.
