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Here’s looking at chew, kid. Triumphantly post-imperial Chewits (1965).

CHEWITS

In 1965 corporate financier and asset stripper Jimmy Goldsmith, bored with outrageous takeover bids and fending off bankruptcy, boldly chose to move into the confectionery business. He formed Cavenham Foods, named after the family estate, from an amalgamation of the flagging Carsons & Goodies of Bristol, Parkinsons of Doncaster and Hollands of Southport.

This last was at the time best known for its one penny Arrow bar (advertised in the ’70s by a precocious Bonnie Langford, almost certainly giving rise to the phrase ‘she can’t act for toffee’) but a new fondant chew would put the company – not to mention Barrow-in-Furness bus depot – firmly on the map.

Chewits were stickier, more sugary and more solid than their nearest rivals Opal Fruits – so much so that they required special machinery from Germany to manufacture and wrap. A special technique was also necessary to smuggle them into your mouth unseen during double maths lessons. The earliest range offered a choice of strawberry, blackcurrant, orange or banana flavours and were packaged in a mottled camouflage design which made them look a little like military refugees from a particularly effeminate NAAFI. By far their greatest sales boost, however, was delivered in 1976 by the Aardman-animated Godzilla-like star of the ‘Muncher’ adverts.

Alternative muncher monster name suggestions: Chew Hefner, Pepe Le Chew, Nerys Chews, Chiouxsie & The Banshees, Chewy Chase.

In these, a giant Plasticine Pleistocene chewed his way through some b-movie spoofing scenery, before being quelled by the taste of the altogether more satisfying Chewits (wrappers and all), literally off the back of a lorry. Later ads highlighted the creature’s claymation capers at a selection of tasty international landmarks (the aforementioned bus terminus, the Taj Mahal and the Empire State Building) and a raucous rampage through wartime London, much to the chagrin of the local ARP warden.

Chewits were popular with pauper and pregnant princess alike. In 1981 an expectant Diana was caught short of cash at a Gloucestershire sweet shop after unexpected cravings for a pack of the strawberry flavour – a story deemed bafflingly headline-worthy by the Daily Mirror. Meanwhile, the penniless tearaways of Merseyside knew exactly which bins to raid for misshapen and discarded rejects at the rear of the Chewits factory on Virginia Street. Let them eat cack, you might say.

Jimmy Goldsmith became Sir James in 1976. In the midst of issuing writs for defamation against Richard Ingrams’s Private Eye, he moved control of his interests to Paris and privatised the confectionery and bakery businesses. Ironically, the Muncher dinosaur (renamed Chewie the Chewitsaurus by new owners Leaf in 1989) lived to fight another day, long after Cavenham and Hollands themselves became extinct.