Wispa It - Cremola Foam; Cabana; and The Nutty Bar

A distinct memory of visits to our great grandparents at London Road Dalkeith was the tin of Creamola Foam which sat on the kitchen shelf. On warm summer Saturday afternoon visits it was a thrill for us to enjoy this little luxury. Creamola Foam was a small tin of powder which if you added a spoonful to a glass of water provided you with an instant fizzy drink.

I’d never come across it before and found it fascinating and of course it was a real treat; when we were very young a fizzy drink in the early 1960s was an unusual thing for me. Ane even if you weren't scientifically-minded I thought it rather amazing that a glass of water could be transformed, like water into wine!

I believe it was popular with the Travelling People too. It must have been quite magical to gather cool water from a stream in the middle of nowhere, put in a teaspoon of orange or raspberry crystals and have a ready made refreshment! We never had it at Oxgangs but I recall tins in the Blades' kitchen up above at 6/6. I think it was from here that we got the idea to buy bottles of Treetop diluting orange.

Like many products it disappeared to the great confectionery graveyard in the sky-the Cabana bar-a Cadbury's rival to the Rowntrees Bounty chocolate bar, but more solid and with the addition of a cherry to the mixture-the Nutty Bar, a fudge type roll covered in peanuts several of which which I consumed daily in 1978 before falling out of love with-chewing gum coins wrapped in foil-Cadbury's Aztec, we remember the advert more than the bar.

It's interesting how some products survive for decades and others disappear-few come back, but the Cadbury's Wispa did after a public campaign. Check out Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury-a wonderful social history focusing on the great Quaker families who were such successful companies and enlightened employers.