One of the things the cost-of-living crisis has thrown into sharp contrast is the diminishing returns the consumer suffers in the confectionary market. Shrinkflation is a thing, and no, it’s not just your hands getting bigger. Like most things compared to when you were young, sweets are shitter now, and smaller. Much smaller.
We decided to set out to prove this flimsy premise via the highly scientific means of a World Cup. Although we’ve only put in eight entrants (four from back in the day, and four contemporary), so perhaps it’s more like one of those crappy little tournaments you get in the odd years between the biggies. More like an Umbro Cup or Le Tornoi, which we won. More proof things were sweeter back then. (Please disregard last sentence if we win the Euros this summer).
So, without any further ado, let’s kick off the 2024 Confectionary World Cup-lite 90s vs 20s 30th Anniversary Extravaganza.
Old Curly Wurly vs New Curly Wurly
Old Curly Wurly: My uncle used to do his window cleaning round with one of these strapped to the top of his Ford Escort. He cleaned more windows climbing up and down a Curly Wurly than Robin Askwith had fish suppers doing the same with a real ladder. He bought a new one each morning, it only cost 25p, and at the end of the day he could feed his family with it.
New Curly Wurly: Really? I’m sorry but you shouldn’t be able to crush a Curly Wurly into a matchbox-sized puck and stick it in your mouth in one go. Yeah, it tastes more or less the same, but this would be shit for cleaning windows and it wouldn’t satiate a flea, let alone a hungry family.
Winner: Old Curly Wurly
Opal Fruits vs Starburst
Opal Fruits: Imagine the first deluge after being stranded in the desert for a month. Your mouth parched and throat dry like sandpaper. A salty, metallic taste covering your lips as you slowly become more husk than human. Then, a downpour of torrential proportions cascades from the sky, you open your mouth and guzzle until your thirst is slaked. The freshest, tastiest, cleanest drink you will ever have, it reinvigorates you and replenishes you, re-inflating you from a puckered balloon made of human skin into a Viking, towering over the vanquished corpse of your thirst. That was what Opal Fruits were like. Made to make you mouth water, oh indeed.
Starburst: Why are they all some horrible anaemic pastel colour? Is there a shortage of food colouring now? And the new name sounds like something Elon Musk does in his pants, and they’re about as refreshing. They taste like shoe.
Winner: Opal Fruits.
Marathon vs Snickers
Marathon: Marathons were fucking massive. The peanuts used to be the size of footballs and the nougaty bit was about a meter thick. I remember people building houses back then, using Marathons as bricks. Trellick Tower in West London was made out of them apparently, some bloke on YouTube told me. He seemed legit.
Snickers: If I want something filling, I want it called something more substantial. This sounds like where Elon Musk accidently drops a starburst.
Winner: Marathon, obviously.
90s Coke vs Today’s Coke
90s Coke: Coke was fucking everywhere in the 1990s. You couldn’t take a shit in the Atlantic bar without having to fight your way through mountains of the stuff on the way to the lavatory. They stored the bottles outside the bogs, you see. Chief instigator for many a great night, it was the real deal back then and full of the good stuff. Virgin tried to get in on the act with Pamela Anderson shaped bottles, but it tasted like piss. 90s Coca-Cola was the best.
2024 Coke: Hang your head in shame, 2024 Coke. You don’t even have a picture on the robot servers in McDonalds anymore. Such is the ire directed to sugar in 2024, drinking full fat Coke has now been relegated to the level of smoking and highly contagious leprosy in terms of undesirable social behaviours. And those stupid slim cans are just as much of a tease as those ones you get on the plane. Ugh. Away with you.
Winner: Nostalgia, every time.
Semi Finals
Curly Wurly vs Marathon
Good solid filling chocolate-based fillers. One has peanuts and makes you associate the act of eating it with that Greek bloke Pheidippides and his long run to Athens from some place whose name escapes me. But then the other one can be so chewy it feels like its cleaning your teeth – not Highland toffee-level filling-extracting chewy – but still a satisfying work out for your jaw. Difficult. I’m going with Curly Wurly, chiefly because I don’t like it when bits of peanut get stuck in my teeth and I have to spend ages trying to worry it out with my tongue, looking like a gurning idiot. Moreso than usual.
Winner: Curly Wurly.
Coke vs Opal Fruits
Remember that thing at primary school where you put one of your teeth in some coke and it dissolved over the course of a week? That was fucking cool, and it showed us the dangers of sugar heavy drinks. Although if you spend a week swilling a mouthful of coke around your mouth without swallowing it, you’re an idiot and you don’t deserve teeth. But what that experiment ignores is how delicious it is. And it’s really good for washing blood off the highway in America and cleaning toilet bowls, according to some unverified list someone tagged me in on Facebook. Must be true.
Opal Fruits put up a good fight in the refreshing arena. They generate a near constant stream of saliva from that little hole under your tongue, indeed watering your mouth just like the advert promised. But in terms of longevity, after the second packet, the Opal Fruits threaten to destroy the oasis in your mouth with some wicked acid reflux, so Coke is the winner here. Two litres in and it’s still delivering a happy experience, aided by some cracking full-throated glass-rattling burps.
Winner: Coke
Final: Coke vs Curly Wurly
How to compare these two disparate yet equally delicious things? Fuck knows, but let’s try. Coke’s packaging is red, so that means it goes faster. We’ve already covered the ladder thing, so Curly Wurly needs to come up with something else. One thing it has over Coke is it’s two for one status, bring both toffee and chocolate plating to the party. But on the other hand, you can’t stick a Curly Wurly in some Jack Daniels and pretend you’re a rock star. So, there you go, when it comes to who the winner of our Old School vs New School Confectionary World Cup, Coca-Cola is it. See what I did there? Thanks. Here all week.
Winner: Coke