The confectionery industry has a history that is as bright and colourful as the products placed before us over the ages. Hundreds, if not thousands of local manufacturers existed in the early 19th century, at which time production mechanisation was starting to be introduced, leading to the mass production of many confectionery products and the growth of the 'giants' of the industry which had become household names by the 1960s. The actual history of the companies is very complex and intertwined, with large numbers of mergers and takeovers occurring, many of which happened during the 1960s, leading to many products being marketed under the same name by different companies during that period and subsequently. Some products were discontinued, only to be reintroduced at a later date under a different name. In addition to established favourites, the Sixties saw the introduction of many new, now famous, sweets and chocolates, some of which still exist today, but a large number of which have since been discontinued or changed, leaving the names as only a childhood memory.

There are many excellent pages about the history of confectionery available on the internet including 'company history' pages by the brands themselves, should you wish to search further but the subject is rather too complex for me to cover here. Therefore I merely present, for your interest, the content below that contains over 130 illustrations of these confection offerings that I hope will bring back some happy childhood memories and also show the difference in appearance that these had in the Sixties and early Seventies. It is also worth noting that confectionery produced some of the most memorable and entertaining TV adverts in history and coined phrases that are still used today, although their origin may be forgotten.
A particular 'genre' of sweets were those (generally 'sweet cigarettes' and bubble gum) that included card collections, similar to adult cigarettes and tea distributors which are now highly collectable and contained series in keeping with the interests of the youth of the day. Cadet Sweets (along with Comet Sweets) was a subsidiary of Paramount Laboratories of Slough, Berkshire, and was primarily a maker of sweet cigarettes, producing some of the best loved and highly collectable trading cards representing TV in the 1950s and 1960s.
These 'themed sweets' included Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Rin Tin Tin, Daktari, Doctor Who, The Flintstones, Sea Cadets, Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE, James Bond, Football, Tarzan, Footballers, Cars and Planes. Rather strange members of this group are the rather gory American Civil War cards which I have fully illustrated on another page.
Before we get to the images, here are a few other interesting pieces of confection trivia to chew on:

Before 1993, the nougat flavour inside the Milky Way bars was actually chocolate before it was changed to vanilla.
Cadbury Eclairs were invented by the Birmingham-based confectionery company Taveners in 1932 and were adapted by Cadbury's into a Dairy Milk version of Eclairs in 1965.
The first product scanned using a UPC bar code was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum on June 26th 1974.
Mackintosh's 'Good News' inspired the Beatles song 'Savoy Truffle' written by George Harrison for the 1968 White Album.
When Rowntree's launched Jelly Tots in 1965 they were disc-shaped and not the dome-shape they are today.
Swizzel's introduced the world's first chewable lolly in 1957 with the Drumstick. According to the official story these were accidentally invented by the son of one the company's owners who was experimenting with a new machine and unintentionally learned that it was possible to make a sweet with two different flavours. Raspberry and milk were chosen for Drumstick.
Spangles produced many single flavour varieties including: Acid Drop, Barley Sugar, Blackcurrant, Licorice, Peppermint, Spearmint, Tangerine and 'Old English'. The usual content of 'Old English' was licorice (black), mint humbug (brown), pear drop (orange/red), aniseed (green) and treacle (opaque mustard yellow), but other flavours also occasionally appeared.
Their individual wrappers were striped to distinguish them from regular Spangles. A white mint Spangle, complete with hole, was also produced as a potential competitor to the Polo mint. There was also a 'mystery flavour' released where the wrappers had question marks on them and one was invited to try and guess the flavour, eventually revealed as 'Fruit Cocktail'.