Wham Bars!!!!

Do you remember the days of struggling with sticky sweet wrappers? I am of course thinking about the main culprit of the sticky wrapper that just refused to all come off - the Wham bar!

Now for those of you unsure on what a Wham bar is - luckily it isn't anything to do with the camp as you like 80's chart toppers! Club Tropicana drinks may well be free, but the sweet wrappers still won't come off! Anyways, sorry! A Wham bar is a long sticky bright pink mess of a sweet. If the colour didn't put you off then the fact it had little crispy bits in (I'm sure they were called something like space crystals!) then the fact you just couldn't ever get the wrapper to come off really should have! But as kids these were our sweets of choice!

Wham bars were huge in the 80's! I remember we used to get them from the vending machine at the local sports centre. For just 10p we could enjoy the Wham goodness and moan about the sticky wrapper.

You open the bar and of course the paper would rip and parts would stay stuck to the chew. Of course looking back this should have put us off, but in fact it fuelled us into wanting the bar even more. Something that sticky surely can't be good news for your insides! Then you had to contend with the fact that if you did manage to get the wrapper off a bit decent like, then it would surely rip and little you'd be left with a shredded wrapper effect down this bright pink chew. The next option was of course to use your finger and pick at the remains of the wrapper. This lead to the inevitable really sticky fingers and more often that not, pieces of the pink wrapper getting trapped under your fingernails along with anything else that you'd managed to pick up at the sports centre. You had to leave it until you'd finished because you’d only get more stuck in there and picking out too early was not wise.

If you were still struggling with wrapper then the inevitable happened. You started eating it and eating around the wrapper. Pulling at the pink chew like a lion would pick the flesh of a recently caught gazelle. Oh yeah, we're talking primal instincts taking over right now. Gnawing and ripping away at the bright pink chew. Sometimes this could work well as it helped you get more chances to pull further wrapper off, including the options to rip upwards. Hell we'd try anything to get this chew in our system. And if still you have wrapper, the final option (which I dare say was taken a bit too often), would be to just eat the paper and try and spit it out. If it didn't come off then down the hatch it went! I dread to think how much Wham bar wrapper I would have eaten back in those days. I once worked with someone who used to bring their dog (Hamish) into the office. Hamish used to enjoy a cake or two and she used to let him eat the paper case the cakes would come in. She explained it would of course help them come out the other end all ready wrapped! What a lovely thought that was!

I'm not really sure when the Wham bar stopped becoming a part of my diet. Maybe around the times we stopped doing sporty things as kids and discovered parties and booze. Not sure which is actually worse for my guts? I have of course stopped drinking alcohol all together these days, but Wham bars found a recent resurgence into my life. Well a few years ago now…we bought a massive box of Wham Mini's and they helped us stay awake when getting the ridiculous middle of the night call from one of our kids as babies who needed a bottle, a change or a cuddle. Downstairs heating the bottle up, scoffing a few Wham bars to keep us awake. I know it's not ideal, but you do what works in these situations! I was most disappointed that they have obviously changed the texture of the wrapper as they cam right off. No more struggling and picking away at it. I guess that was most of the charm of the Wham bar and I missed it!