Moment
Why penny sweets disappeared
The sweet that cost a penny for a century.
The story
For most of the twentieth century a British child could buy a chew for a penny, and often four of them. Black Jacks and Fruit Salads were four a penny into the 1970s. Inflation ended it slowly rather than suddenly, and the halfpenny leaving circulation in 1984 took the bottom out of the market. The phrase penny sweets survives as a description of a kind of sweet rather than a price, which is why so many people over forty can tell you exactly what they used to cost.
