Topic: Is the McVities Gold bar a minor confection?

[Kankurette]

Pshaw. Raisins and biscuits and nuts make everything better.

[buzby]

Mythical Milk Tray bar that no one has ever seen in person.

They *did* exist. Purchased a few every now and again when I felt like treating meself. I distinctly remember chuckling away to meself while reading Danny Baker[1]reviewing the singles in the NME., and scoffing one of them bars.That was a very good day.

1.	before he was an arsehole

Here's a picture of the actual mould for the top side of the bar:

They were introduced in 1947 and discontinued in the early 80s. They were not popular with retailers as wastage was quite high (the segments could be easily cracked in the wrapper, leaving a gooey mess inside. There was also the Plain Choice version, with Bournville chocolate replacing Dairy Milk:


Rowntree's introduced a similar Dairy Box bar in 1975 but it was short-lived.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I bet Plain Choice was great.

Imagine if Ritter Sport did an equivalent. I'd feel like Croesus.

[Kankurette]

10/10 would eat.

Unpopular opinion: I wish Fry's Five Centres was still a thing. Lime, coffee, orange, blackcurrant AND raspberry? Get in my mouth.

ETA: when I went to Germany a few years ago, I couldn't get enough of Ritter Sport. My local pound shop sells it. It's fit.

[buzby]

Best Club flavour? Fruit 'n' nut, without a doubt.

There never was a Fruit & Nut flavour of Jacob's Club:

I come from the Land Of The Club (they used to be made in the Jacob's factory in Aintree), and like most people in the area I had a relative that worked there who used to bring home huge bags of the Club misshapes and mis-wraps that they used to sell to the workers[1]. The Club flavours used to be:
Milk (milk chocolate)
Plain (plain chocolate)
Mint
Orange
Fruit (same as milk but with a fruit shortcake-style biscuit layer)
Choclolate (the holy grail - chocolate-flavoured biscuit and cream inside)
Coffee

In the 90s Jacobs was bought by Danone, who redesigned the Club. They changed the filling to a single biscuit topped with cream (basically took the upper biscuit off), changed the coating from real chocolate to 'chocolate-based' and discontinued the Milk, Plain, Coffee and Chocolate varieties. Danone sold it on a few years later to UB, so they are now branded as McVities Club.

However, Jacobs had an Irish operation that was also bought by Danone but not sold on to UB. Instead it was sold to the Fruitfield group, who have continued to use the Jacobs name resulting in a long-running legal battle with UB (some of their products are imported back to the UK and sold under the Boland name, but with almost identical packaging to the Jacobs versions). Fruitfield have resumed production of Club Milk in Ireland, using the traditional 2-biscuit sandwich construction.

1.	This may have been why I was 17 stone by the time I was 17

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Few 'classic' brands have fallen quite as far as Bournville. Legit better than most luxury brands until the millenium then straight down 'ole. Worse with every relaunch.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Good old Buzby, delivering the goods again. It's the top label that's got me all Proustin' and Jonesin'

I may well have consumed those choccy bars in their very last years of their being, during 1981, the decadent " paper round plus pocket money" year.

Oh, and I suggest we all view kankurette with AC 12 - like levels of suspicion from now onwards. Or assume she's a 72 year old grandmother ( in reference to her stated preference for the feared purple wrapper Club. She's since tried to cover her tracks by claiming a fondness for the more conventionally tasty choccy choices. I'm still not covninced).

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Plain clubs are clear victors. The coffee variety was good, tasted like a chocolate digestive dunked in tea.

[markburgle]

Here's another forgotten chocolate bar, the Riva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6vcmv7-Sr4

One of the irrefutable signs that western civilization has crested the wave and is now inexorably sinking into the abyss is the lack of new chocolate bars. Just think - there was once a time where confectionary was a wild frontier, chocolatiers all full of creativity and competing to invent things like the Mars Bar out of thin air, and now all Cadbury can manage is to listlessly foist random gaudy adulterants onto bars of Dairy Milk. We're a civilization coasting towards the grave on it's own past glories.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

These are the best.

[Kankurette]

There never was a Fruit & Nut flavour of Jacob's Club:

Fruit and BISCUIT, dammit. I meant fruit and BISCUIT. Back of the classroom for me.

ETA: I'm 36, soon to be 37, but I feel like a 72 year old grandma. I also like fruit creams. Violet and rose and stuff.

Plain clubs are clear victors. The coffee variety was good, tasted like a chocolate digestive dunked in tea.

Never had one but I wish I had because I love coffee chocolate. Divine does an amazing coffee chocolate bar.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

One of the irrefutable signs that western civilization has crested the wave and is now inexorably sinking into the abyss is the lack of new chocolate bars. Just think - there was once a time where confectionary was a wild frontier, chocolatiers all full of creativity and competing to invent things like the Mars Bar out of thin air, and now all Cadbury can manage is to listlessly foist random gaudy adulterants onto bars of Dairy Milk. We're a civilization coasting towards the grave on it's own past glories.

The ubiquity of 'Cookies N Cream' is everything Devo tried to warn us about.

[Kankurette]

Oreos have a lot to answer for. Bastard things are everywhere.

[buzby]

These are the best.

GET OUT.
Modolez cross brand vertical integration bullshit.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Put raisins on it then.

[steve98]

Here's another forgotten chocolate bar, the Riva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6vcmv7-Sr4

One of the irrefutable signs that western civilization has crested the wave and is now inexorably sinking into the abyss is the lack of new chocolate bars. Just think - there was once a time where confectionary was a wild frontier, chocolatiers all full of creativity and competing to invent things like the Mars Bar out of thin air, and now all Cadbury can manage is to listlessly foist random gaudy adulterants onto bars of Dairy Milk. We're a civilization coasting towards the grave on it's own past glories.

Someone earlier was trying to make a point, that if the pigs busted Mick and Keith and Marianne Faithful today the story would go nowhere because it wouldn't be a Mars Bar Faithful was abusing herself with but a digestive or a Caramel Log (or something equally dull). Good point, I thought.

[Bernice]

Aldi don't sell packs of Gold bars, as most of their confectionery is own brand knockoffs. I think Lidl do sell them as they do a lot more branded stuff, and Home & Bargain and B&M definitely do as that's where i buy them from.

You can get them in Iceland too.

I do sort of hate that vertical integration thing and expanding the brand so that now you can get dairy milk with a million different middles and Oreo fucking everything. BUT that Milka and Tuc is a passable alternative to the biscuit Ritter Sport.

My corner shop sells these:



Which are fucking great. I am no longer allowed to buy them.

[Gurke and Hare]

The Milk Tray bar had a filling that only existed in the bar, lime cordial. It was lovely, but it wasn't in the boxes and when the bar went that was it.

[badaids]

Do they still do 5-4-3-2-1 bars?  Thanks.

[Butchers Blind]

Do they still do 5-4-3-2-1 bars?  Thanks.

No.

I do like the simplicity of the Snack biscuit.

[Kankurette]

You can get them in Iceland too.

I do sort of hate that vertical integration thing and expanding the brand so that now you can get dairy milk with a million different middles and Oreo fucking everything. BUT that Milka and Tuc is a passable alternative to the biscuit Ritter Sport.

My corner shop sells these:



Which are fucking great. I am no longer allowed to buy them.

Mine too. You can always find them in the Polish sections in supermarkets.

In Northenden there's this Polish bakery/corner shop and it does this amazing pick 'n' mix with some gorgeous filled chocolates. Rum, coffee, the lot.

[amateur]

There was also the Plain Choice version, with Bournville chocolate replacing Dairy Milk:

The absolute puritan spirit of a "Plain Choice" chocolate bar has got me all a-quiver. That looks like absolutely 5/10 perfunctory joy.

[turnstyle]

I was 28 before I realised that the Blue Riband wasn't called a Blue RIBBON. I had them in my lunch box pretty much every day as a young 'un. I can never show my face at my primary school ever again, I'll be a laughing stock. Also the police would probably get involved as I'm a grown man now.

[Chollis]

is there a more mediocre chocolate bar than the insipid Breakaway? just checked and they've been going since 1970. ridiculous

[seepage]

Didn't M&S do a copy called a Break-In, or have I dreamt that?

[turnstyle]

When Milky Way swapped the brown filling for the white, some people said it was too dang sweet. I remember discovering by happy accident that the Flyte bar* (also made by Mars) was pretty much the Milky Way of old, and would casually drop it into any vaguely confection related convo and wow people with by choc-based knowledge. Look, I'm not going to lie, a couple of times it even got me laid. People really liked the old Milky Way.

Well anyway, they discontinued it in 2015, and I've not had intercourse since.

*Weirdly, I only ever saw them for sale in Boots - whatsallthatabout?

[El Unicornio, mang]

I was 28 before I realised that the Blue Riband wasn't called a Blue RIBBON. I had them in my lunch box pretty much every day as a young 'un. I can never show my face at my primary school ever again, I'll be a laughing stock. Also the police would probably get involved as I'm a grown man now.

My Mum bought those for us by the carload. I got so used to saying Blue Riband that during my first year or so in America I couldn't help calling their most famous cheap beer "Pabst Blue Riband"

[jamiefairlie]

is there a more mediocre chocolate bar than the insipid Breakaway? just checked and they've been going since 1970. ridiculous

Yeah, truly the wooden spoon of chocolate biscuits.

[Goldentony]

most people in Liverpool knew someone several degrees removed from working at the Jacobs factory so if you wanted bin bags full of Club biscuits in any flavour, bust mainly orange, mint of fruit, you were in luck. Genuinely dont know anybody who paid for a club here through most of the nineties

[purlieu]

As we're moving on to general chocolate bars[1], who's for a bit of Nestle Secret nostalgia? One of the finest bars ever.

1.	and nobody has even acknowledged my supermarket brand chocolate caramel biscuit bar comment :'(