(Editor’s note: the views expressed in this post are the author’s own, and are quite often shit and wrong.)

Another Rock and Roll Christmas!*

*Rock is what you do when your try to get off your inflated arse and rolls are what you’re made of.

It’s time for the annual festive gorge!

Salt Crackers Party Mix

Sounds an awful lot like the playlist of someone who is equally acerbic and insane.

These would appear every year. I’m still at a loss as to know why, their varying shapes belying the identical nature of their flavour. These things tasted dry, slightly burned, and yes very very salty. I may or may not have once referred to them as ‘crystallised spunk waffles’… which was indeed quite a mouthful.

Some of these were pretzel shaped, others were sticks and there were flat round ones as well. I’m inclined to think they all had original and or weird sounding names, they were however all just salty twigs. The kind of snack that they might offer in a pub to make you thirsty and therefore buy more drinks. Those landlords eh? If they don’t sodomise your liver they’ll give you high blood pressure.

Thankfully these went from being a yearly oddity to unpleasant memory reasonably rapidly. Continue reading “World of Crap reviews Christmas food” →

In a break from my usual review style, I’m not actually going to be eating Quality Street, because Nestle can get to fuck. I will instead be recounting, from memory and Google images, the wrapped variety sweets of choice from the 80s. Back when Mackintosh did them.

Christmas was defined by chocolate in a lot of ways. Painfully rare for the rest of the year, Christmas was the time to splurge on the likes of these brightly foiled little beggars. Almost like decorations in and of themselves. Alongside the ubiquitous ‘Tin of Biscuits’ (more on that here), Quality Street was the major player in long term cylindrical, metal storage containers.

Emblazoned with beautiful artwork – a gentleman solider and his lady friend, dressed in military garb and a fetching bonnet respectively. The image still conjures stories for me to this day. Who were they? Was he back from a war? Had he brought her this very box of chocolates? Had they just finished shagging? In fact, were it not for the Victorian clothing they might very well be shagging in some of these shots. Though they might have had some of those weird access hatches…

Anyway, compare that the bland purple tripe of today, that someone knocked up in five minutes using Photoshop. We got hand drawn original artwork on our sweet tins back then! Had to really, as there were only four channels and they mostly stopped broadcasting around 8:30 in the evening. So it had to be good to stare at.

Also, some of the sweets had either the bloke or the woman printed on them. His and hers, ladies or gents. To a boy in the 80s it felt odd eating the “girls’ sweets”. Such was the conditioning of the school yard, but I wasn’t at school and she had the strawberry cream so… fuck that.

As always, dregs first…

(Editor’s note: We’re using pictures of the modern sweets, or artist’s impressions, because I don’t have a time machine and anyway I’m not your mother. Use your imagination.)

Toffee Penny (gold wrapper, bloke)

I hated these bastards with a passion; no one actually wanted them and they took forever to go. The remains of any tin became a sea of golden disappointment. I’d sooner open it and find the cheque books, birth certificates and spare wires to be fair. Continue reading “World of Crap reviews Quality Street” →

I’m back on with cereal again, picking up from our whistlestop tour of milk mulched memories.

Another round up for you now, this time from later childhood…

Frosties

Frosties are to Corn Flakes as Ricicles (Gawd rest em!) were to Rice Krispies. The sugared up, extra crunchy, enamel eroding, waist ballooning version.

“They’re Grrrreeaat!”

Look at Tony, just look at him. That’s the sexual imprint primogenitor of Deviant Art right there. Between him and Thundercats this is why thirty years later we’re all strangle wanking dressed as cats with six breasts. You see Kellogg’s never planned for that when they put sugar on Cornflakes (blessed be their eternal golden form). Continue reading “World of Crap reviews cereal part 2” →

I’m now World of Crap’s food correspondent, this wasn’t deliberate or planned but this will be my fourth post about some manner of grub and everyone knows if you do something three times it’s official and set in stone.

I’m going to be covering the cereals of my own personal youth, much in the style of every other post I’ve done, this is very much my own personal experience. Doubtless though, many will be the commenters who “can’t believe you missed out Sugar Frosted Chocolate Fucknuggets! Because they were the best and you’re a terrible human being for not having retrospectively eaten this during your childhood. The past is likewise unfortunately set in stone.

I will do further cereals in subsequent articles, and if I haven’t already tried a given cereal I will buy, eat and write about it just for you. I will likewise gain a stone.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; we’re told this along with other advice like “don’t swim after eating” and “take your finger out of there and wash your hands this instant!”. ‘Break’ ‘fast’ you see? You’re no longer fasting so you’re breaking it. Because you’ve been asleep all night and not eating. That counts as a fast, well done!

Corn Flakes

(Editor’s note – only psychopaths put strawberries on their Corn Flakes.) Continue reading “World of Crap reviews cereal” →

So, my inaugural piece proved popular – even within minutes of going up people were clamouring for more. “You’ve missed loads of chips you wankshaft do it properly!” they cried. But between this and x number of likes, reacts, retweets and views, I take this all as acceptance, love and a clear invitation to eat a fuck load of chips specifically for this article.

Chinese takeaway chips

Chips from the Chinese take away, an odd request and an experience that it must be said I did have. Once and once only. There was a time, concurrent to being able to read the menu for myself, that I started to long for items other than our standard go-tos of chicken chow mein or sweet and sour chicken. Much more fascinating offerings caught my eye, exotic wonders such as chicken and sweetcorn soup, pickled eggs and chips with gravy. Continue reading “World of Crap ranks chips Part 2” →

It’s just potato sliced into sticks, nothing special surely? An everyday food to be taken for granted, and given less regard than the condiments you drown them in.

Surely little more than a baton of starch to transport ketchup from bottle to waiting maw, a thin golden line between civility and just necking the bloody thing and calling it lunch.

Well I’d like to take some time to look back on the chips of yesteryear, the varying quality available to a child of the 80s was immense and certainly not all were created equally.

Oven chips

Let’s get the utter trash out of the way first. These were dry, cloying cardboard aspiring affairs, sold in a four stone bag and taking up half the freezer by itself.  The all-purpose gut filler for the culinarily uninspired, regardless of what Bernard Matthews’ Amusing-Shape-In-Breadcrumbs was being served alongside it. These mass produced julienne would fill the majority of your plate.  Fill it with sadness and remorse, remorse that your parents couldn’t cook. Continue reading “World of Crap ranks childhood chips” →