OPAL FRUITS

Sammy bought a packet of Opal Fruits yesterday. I’m not even joking. Pre-Starburst, classic 1980s, full-flavour, bona fide Opal Fruits.

“Where did you get those from?” I asked, open-eyed, as though I were eight years old.

“Waitrose,” she munched, casually.

You should taste them! Thirty years of history melted away in my mouth. Orange, lemon, strawberry! What a succulent treat!

Is this the ‘sunlit upland’ of Brexit they keep going on about? A sort of return to the good old days before the bureaucrats of Brussels shook all the E numbers out of sweets, and banned the bendy banana? Are Opal Fruits back because we’re not subject to EU regulations any more?

I’m verging on politics here, even if a little sarcastically. I don’t want to do that. I don’t have some dreamy-eyed idea that the 1980s were full of magical rainbows; we were children - of course the world looked sweeter, just as the 50s does to the Boomers. As hard as it might be to believe, the Zs will probably also look back at these years with the same rose-tinted whimsy one day, too.

Speaking of Zs, Ys, Millennials, etc… what do you think of the name Opal Fruits as opposed to Starburst? There was uproar when it changed in the mid 90s. As a physics student, I used to riff about how ‘starburst’ ought to be a stream of high energy photons and gamma rays. You might find it hard to believe but nobody found it funny at the time.

But is ‘Opal Fruits’ really a better name? I mean Opal is a mineral, no more suited to fruit-bearing than a lump of carbon. And do you find it equally interesting how the name shift went from describing the thing (the fruit) to the effect of the thing (the taste)?

Anyway, I could only have one or two OFs from Sammy’s packet before I started going dizzy with sugar and nostalgia. Heaven only knows what would have happened if she’d brought in a Marathon.