From the archive, 6 February 1953: Wartime sugar rationing finally ends - sweet!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2013/feb/06/sugar-chocolate-sweets-war-rations

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Careless of spoiling their dinners, and mortgaging their Saturday pennies for weeks ahead, children flocked into the sweet shops on their way home from school yesterday - the first day of unrationed confectionery. Cheapness, bulk, and durability seemed to be the chief criteria for Manchester school-children and toffee apples the most popularly acclaimed repository of all the vital virtues. Sticks of nougat were a close second because "they last for ages." and liquorice strips well favoured since uneaten portions can "be saved up to make grog."

Sweets sold by weight, like caramels and chocolate drops, seemed less popuIar perhaps because these are the kind the children are used to having bought for them. One boy said buying sweets in bags was "sissy " but another defended them on the grounds that they were easier to suck in school than toffee apples.

Adults, if a little more controlled in their reactions, were no less quick to take advantage of the end of rationing than the children. Men particularly, used to having their wives buying for them, indulged their free choice to the full and queued outside city shops in their office lunch hour. One city confectioner said she had not seen so many men in her shop since before the war.

Shopkeepers had no fears that demand would exceed supply. Their wholesalers had assured them that stocks in the warehouses would prove adequate to meet "rush" buying in the first few days. Once the novelty of unrationed sweets was over the public would soon reduce their demands, they believed. Soon, the relatively high cost of sweets and chocolates compared with pre-war unrationed prices would be the main limitation on buying, several shopkeepers said.

One wholesaler believed that the largest increase in orders would come from the cinema-owners, many of whom were planning to sell sweets and chocolates along with ice-cream during the intervals in their performances.