I think you will have to have eaten a truck load of Five Boys chocolate bars to remember this poster.
Once a long time ago the five boys were everywhere, often to be seen on enameled metal boards at railway stations.
And it will be on a railway station, that I first had a bar of Fry’s Five Boys. I can’t remember which railway station or exactly when, but it will have been in the late 1950s and was bought from one of those old fashioned sturdy metal vending machines.
The sort that could double as the design for a battle tank, and despite being in situ for perhaps half a century showed little evidence of wear other than a slight rusting at the edges.
Sadly, the chocolate had not fared so well. When unwrapped the edges had that whitish appearance and the taste had lost its intensity, all of which suggested its time in the vending machine stretched across the seasons, and it may well have endured more than one winter and a spring, summer, and autumn before I slipped the sixpence in the slot.
Although I doubt that the bar was a contemporary of the picture postcard which was issued by Tuck and Son in the series of “Celebrated Posters” which went on sale in 1904.
Interestingly the majority of the cards were all to do with food, and so to close I have opted for two more chocolate posters, which were from Rowntrees, and another from Fry's
Location; 1904
Pictures; “Celebrated Posters”, 1904, marketed by Tuck and Sons, and reproduced courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/
