1940s sweet memories

I’ve just completed my latest jigsaw. It was entitled “1940s Sweet Memories”. It surprised me there were so many sweets, predominately chocolates, around at the time. After all, throughout the 1940s there was rationing in this country.

It is noticeable that most of the chocolates were not pure chocolate. The chocolate content was reduced with fruits, nuts, wafers, toffee, honeycomb. Is this a period when chocolate was in short supply so the manufacturers endeavoured to extend the chocolate experience by using other ingredients?

It is also noticeable that there were various chocolates called “blended chocolate”. Blended with what, I cannot help wondering. Other varieties of chocolate? Other non-chocolate ingredients that stretched what little actual chocolate there was whilst still giving you that chocolate hit? Fat for example. There is no indication of the answer.

There is also the presence of “Ration chocolate”. What’s that? An inferior chocolate perhaps? Or was some chocolate issued to the troops & this was it? Or is it just ration chocolate because it was the only sort of chocolate available with ration tokens?

Doing the jigsaw certainly raised some questions in my mind. As a child of the 50s I have no actual personal experience to fall back on to answer these questions. Maybe I will have to ask some of my older friends. We have several friends in the 70s, 80s & even 90s. Maybe they will remember.