I didn't have it very often - we was poor but we was honest -but it's the chocolate I most remember. It was a thin bar of chocolate in five sections with a boy's face on each section. Googling for it, I could only find the original label.
This first advert for Fry's appeared in 1885 and featured Lindsay Poulton. A fee of £200 - a huge amount then - was paid for the right to use the photos.
The image, only slightly updated, was used until Five Boys chocolate was discontinued in 1976.
Lindsay was five when the pictures were taken and in 1962, recalling the photo session, he said, "I think they must have found it hard to make me cry (for Desperation). In the end, my grandfather induced a sufficient degree of desperation by soaking a cloth in ammonia and placing it around my neck."
I hope the poor boy got to eat the chocolate at the end of that.
Joseph Fry, a Quaker, made his own chocolate which he was advertising as early as 1756. It was his grandsons who set up J. S. Fry and Sons. Frys is now part of the Cadbury Schweppes corporation.
8 comments:
Cool candy! I guess this was in your neck of the woods and not in the U.S.
I don't remember those, Liz...but I just had an epiphany from your post!
I remember Fry's Dark Chocolate Mint Bar...and it was delicious! Wow! That's a flash from the past! Thanks for the memory!
I don't remember these in Australia, but frankly that's a very ugly label. Of course I was a child during the war years when we had no sweets or chocolate or chewing gum or.... Also we was poor but honest: what today they call the working poor.
Rhea, Fry's was a British company and I suppose it didn't get over to the US - we don't have Hershey over here.
Lee, yes, I remember the choc mint bar. Glad you enjoyed the memory!
jmb, it's not the most appealing label is it?! But I suppose it was meant to show you what a difference chocolate could make to an unhappy child! (Or me!)
'Working poor' - that's not a term you hear much these days. In fact, poor isn't used very much, is it? 'Those living in poverty' doesn't have quite the same ring.
All this talk of chocolate -- which I gave up for Lent. But I'll catch up on Easter. Tummy rumbles.
I've given up computer solitaire for Lent. It's hard; my fingers twitch sometimes in their desperation to click on the game!
That sounds like a drastic way to make a kid cry.
I've never seen those, but it sounds fabulous. I don't give up chocolate for anything and will take it where I can get it.:)
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