A few nice plastic prototype parts suppliers images I found:
“Old Fashioned British Sweets From Your Childhood”
Image by brizzle born and bred
1953: Sweet rationing ends in Britain
Children all over Britain have been emptying out their piggy-banks and heading straight for the nearest sweet-shop as the first unrationed sweets went on sale today. Toffee apples were the biggest sellers, with sticks of nougat and liquorice strips also disappearing fast.
One firm in Clapham Common gave 800 children 150lbs of lollipops during their midday break from school, and a London factory opened its doors to hand out free sweets to all comers.
Adults joined in the sugar frenzy, with men in the City queuing up in their lunch breaks to buy boiled sweets and to enjoy the luxury of being able to buy 2lb boxes of chocolates to take home for the weekend.
Do you remember your favourite childhood sweets and the excitement of going to the local sweet shop and choosing from the vast array of jars on the shelves full of colourful mouth watering temptations?
They were weighed by the quarter on a big old fashioned metal scale pan and packaged into small white paper bags.
For many of us, the Saturday ritual of sweets-buying has lingered into adulthood, and it is heartening to find so many places selling from jars. Indeed, the Bonds sweets factory in Carlisle – a major supplier – is planning to redesign its plastic jars to be squatter and wider than usual: an echo of the prewar shape. Multicoloured jars lined up on shelves are very alluring, for many of us a potent reminder of a time when the local sweet shop represented a kind of El Dorado.
If you thought it was just kids who ate sugar confectionery you’d be wide of the mark. Many of the lines might have been developed for children but prove a hit with adults, too. Even the tough guys (and gals) in the British armed forces love their sweets according to NAAFI figures, servicemen and women in Afghanistan last year munched their way through 923,583 bags of Haribo.
Here in the UK, sweetie buying habits change as we hopefully head towards warmer weather, with more people opting for fruity sweets rather than chocolate bars.
THE SWEETS GRAVEYARD
Spangles
Dimpled, square boiled sweets in fruit-flavoured and Old English varieties. Spangles was a brand of boiled sweets, manufactured by Mars Ltd in the United Kingdom from 1950 to the early eighties. They were bought in a paper tube with individual sweets cellophane wrapped. They were distinguished by their shape which was a rounded square with a circular depression on each face.
The regular Spangles tube (labelled simply "Spangles") contained a variety of translucent, fruit flavoured sweets: strawberry, blackcurrant, orange, pineapple, lemon and lime.
Originally the sweets were not individually wrapped, but later a waxed paper, and eventually a cellophane wrapper was used. The tube was a bright orange-red colour, bearing the word "Spangles" in a large letters. In the seventies a distinctive, seventies-style font was used.
Over the production period many different, single flavour varieties were introduced including Acid Drop, Barley Sugar, Blackcurrant, Liquorice, Peppermint, Spearmint and Tangerine.
The Old English Spangles tube contained traditional English flavours such as liquorice, mint humbugs, cough candy, butterscotch and pear drops. One of the flavours was an opaque mustard yellow colour, and one was striped.
The sweets’ individual wrappers were striped, distinguishing them from regular Spangles. The tube was black, white and purple, and designed for a more mature and specific clientele than the regular variety.
Spangles were discontinued in the early eighties, and briefly reintroduced in 1994, including in Woolworths outlets in the UK. There are many nostalgic references to them from children who grew up with them. Spangles are associated with the 1970s and they, like Space Hoppers or the Raleigh Chopper, have become shorthand for lazy nostalgia for the time, as in the phrase "Do you remember Spangles?"
Today the Tunes brand is the only remaining relation of the Spangles brand, sharing the shape and wrapping of the original product. In the UK, Tunes no longer have the Spangles style packaging, and they are now lozenge-shaped.
Cabana bar
Very sweet coconut-centred chocolate bar with cherry twist made by Cadbury’s.
Pineapple Mars
This early tropical-flavoured prototype was not a lasting success
Fry’s Five Centres
Follow-up to famous Fry’s Five Boys. Fry’s Cream is a chocolate bar made by Cadbury’s, and formerly by J. S. Fry & Sons. It consists of a fondant centre enrobed in dark chocolate and is available in a plain version, and also peppermint or orange fondant. Fry’s Chocolate Cream was one of the first chocolate bars ever produced, launched in 1866.
There are currently three variants of Fry’s Cream:
Fry’s Chocolate Cream
Fry’s Orange Cream
Fry’s Peppermint Cream
Over the years, other variants existed:
Fry’s Five Centre (orange, raspberry, lime, strawberry, and pineapple), produced from 1934 to 1992.
Fry’s Strawberry Cream
Fry’s Pineapple Cream
Cadbury’s also produced a solid milk chocolate bar called Five Boys using the Fry’s trademark in the 1960s. Cadbury’s produced milk and plain chocolate sandwich bars under the Fry’s branding also.
Fry’s chocolate bar was promoted by model George Lazenby, later James Bond actor, in 1962.
The Fry’s Chocolate bar was first produced in Union Street, Bristol, England in 1866, where the family name had been associated with chocolate making since circa 1759. In 1923 Fry’s (now Cadbury) chocolate Factory moved to Keynsham, England, but due to the imminent closure of the factory the production of the bar will move, possibly to Poland.
Banjo bar
Banjo is a chocolate bar once available in the UK. Introduced with a substantial television advertising campaign in 1976, Banjo was a twin bar (similar in shape and size to Twix) and based upon a wafer with a chopped peanut layer and the whole covered in milk chocolate. It was packaged in distinctive navy blue – with the brand name prominently displayed in yellow block text – and was one of the first British snack bars to have a heat-sealed wrapper closure instead of the reverse-side fold common to most domestically-produced chocolate bars at that time. It was available into the 1980s. There was a coconut version also available in a red wrapper with yellow text.
Aztec bars
So many sweet lovers would love to be able to enjoy Aztec bars again. Sadly it isn’t possible to buy Aztec bars at the moment. It was like a Mars Bar but not as sickly because it had nougat instead of toffee. It had a purple wrapper it was made by Cadbury’s.
Opal Fruits
Mars, the manufacturers, is bringing back the sweets for a limited period in conjunction with the supermarket chain ASDA.
The fruit chews that were "made to make you mouth water" were replaced by Starburst in 1998, the name under which they had been exported to the US in the seventies.
But the iconic British brand is being revived in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the change.
They will be available for an initial period of 12 weeks from May 10, exclusively in ASDA stores.
A spokesperson for ASDA said: "The demise of the Opal Fruit was mourned across the nation, and we’re really excited to be staging the exclusive comeback of this great British favourite."
Opal Fruits were initially introduced in Britain in the 1960s.
In 1998, the US brand Starburst was adopted in England in order to standardise the brand in the global marketplace.
Expectations are high that the move to bring back Opal Fruits will be popular with consumers.
As well as reverting to the original flavours of lemon, lime, orange and strawberry, the new Opal Fruits will be a strictly natural affair.
The limited edition will be produced using no artificial colouring or preservatives, a move that both ASDA and Mars hope will appeal to twenty-first century customers.
The return of Opal Fruits continues the recent trend of reviving classic brands.
Cadbury reintroduced the Wispa last year after an internet campaign which also involved protesters storming a stage at the Glastonbury festival.
Sherbert Fountain
Sherbet is sold in a plastic tube with twist-off lid, with a stick made from liquorice as a sherbet fountain. Many consumers regret the replacement of the former paper packaging, which allowed an extra dimension of enjoyment: the crushing of the caked lumps of sherbet as the paper cylinder was rolled between the hands. The top of the stick is supposed to be bitten off to form a straw and the sherbet sucked through it, where it fizzes and dissolves on the tongue, though many people prefer to either dip the liquorice in the sherbet and lick it off or to tip the sherbet into their mouths and eat the liquorice separately.
When paired with liquorice, sherbet is typically left unflavoured in a white form and with a higher reactive agent so that it causes a fizzy foam to develop in the mouth.
They are manufactured by Barratt, a subsidiary of Tangerine Confectionery.
Though some shops still sell the old-style only.
Sherbert Flying Saucers
These small pastel coloured rice paper sweets were shaped like a U.F.O. and contained delightfully fizzy sherbet.
Small dimpled discs made from edible coloured paper (rice paper), typically filled with white unflavoured sherbet (the same form as in Sherbet Fountains) These sweets had sherbert in the middle and a kind of melt-in-your-mouth outer shell.
Black Jacks Chews
Black Jack is a type of "aniseed flavour chew" according to its packaging. This means that it is a chewy (gelatin-based) confectionery. Black Jack is manufactured under the Barratt brand in Spain. Black Jack is very similar to Fruit Salad, which are also manufactured by Barratt.
Black Jacks are one of the most well-known classic British sweets. They`re aniseed-flavoured, chewy and black with a unique taste, and they make your tongue go black!
The original labels from the 1920’s pictured a grinning gollywog – unbelievably, back then images of black people were used to advertise Liquorice. This is seen as unacceptable today, of course, and by the late 80s manufacturers Trebor deleted the golly logo. It was replaced by a pirate with a black beard.
In the early 1990s the pirate logo was replaced by a rather boring black and white swirl design.
Cabana bars
Cabana bars died out in about 1984, and as they were made by Rowntree (sold to Nestle in 1989) they’re very unlikely to make a comeback.
Licorice Bootlaces
Long thin strips of licorice in the shape of boot laces.
Pineapple Chunks
Pineapple Flavour Hard Boiled Sweets.
Jamboree Bag
Bags of different sorts of sweets, with dodgy plastic toys and whistles etc, where are they now?
Rhubarb & Custard
Rhubarb and Custard flavoured boiled sweet, with it’s two colours.
Gobstoppers
Gobstoppers, known as jawbreakers in Canada and the United States, are a type of hard sweet or candy. They are usually round, usually range from about 1 cm across to 3 cm across (though much bigger gobstoppers can sometimes be found in Canadian/US candy stores, up to 8 cm in diameter) and are traditionally very hard.
The term gobstopper derives from ‘gob’, which is United Kingdom/Ireland slang for mouth.
Gobstoppers usually consist of several layers, each layer dissolving to reveal a different colored (and sometimes different flavoured) layer, before dissolving completely. Gobstoppers are sucked or licked, being too hard to bite without risking dental damage (hence the US title).
Gobstoppers have been sold in traditional sweet shops for at least a century, often sold by weight from jars. As gobstoppers dissolve very slowly, they last a very long time in the mouth, which is a major factor in their enduring popularity with children. Larger ones can take days or even weeks to fully dissolve, risking a different kind of dental damage.
In 2003, Taquandra Diggs, a nine year old girl in Starke, Florida, suffered severe burns, allegedly from biting down on a Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper that had been left out in the sun. Diggs and several other victims’ families filed lawsuits against Nestlé for medical bills resulting from plastic surgery as well as pain and suffering; the matters were later settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount.
A 2004 episode of the Discovery Channel television program "Myth Busters" episode subsection named Exploding Jawbreakers then demonstrated that heating a gobstopper in a microwave oven can cause the different layers inside to heat at different rates, yielding an explosive spray of very hot candy when compressed; Myth Busters crew members Adam Savage and Christine Chamberlain received light burns after a gobstopper exploded.
Acid Drops
Tongue-tinglingly sharp boiled sweets.
Barley Sugar
Barley sugar (or barley sugar candy) is a traditional variety of British boiled sweet, or hard candy, yellow or orange in colour with an extract of barley added as flavouring. It is similar to hard caramel candy in its texture and taste.
Barley sugars and other energy sweets are the only food allowed to be eaten in the New Zealand & Australian 40 Hour Famine, an annual event which draws attention to world hunger. A single barley sugar is allowed to be consumed once every 4 hours during the 40 Hour Famine. This applies to participants older than primary school age.
Bulls Eyes Humbug
Humbugs are a traditional hard boiled sweet available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They are usually flavoured with peppermint and striped in two different colours (often brown and tan). They have a hard outside and a soft toffee centre. Humbugs are typically cylinders with rounded ends wrapped in a twist of cellophane, or else pinched cylinders with a 90-degree turn between one end and the other (shaped like a pyramid with rounded edges), loose in a bag.
They are more often eaten in winter than summer, as they are considered "warming." The name of the candy is not related to the phrase "Bah, humbug" derived from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. That expression implies a general dissatisfaction with the Christmas season. However, offering humbugs around Christmas time is now seen by some as humorous or ironic, and was featured in an episode of Blackadder in this manner.
A similar sweet is "bulls-eye" which has black and white stripes like a humbug but is spherical like an aniseed ball. These are peppermint flavoured and are also known as bullets in the UK as they are similar in size to smoothbore musket balls.
Love Hearts
Love Hearts are a type of confectionery manufactured by Swizzels Matlow in the United Kingdom. They are hard, fizzy, tablet-shaped sweets in a variety of fruit flavours featuring a short, love-related message on one side of the sweet.
The sweets are small and circular, approximately 19 mm in diameter, and 5 mm in height (including the embossed decorations). Both sides are embossed with a decoration, the rear with a large outline of a heart and the front with the message within an outline of a heart. On the front of the sweet the embossing is highlighted with a red colouring.
The main body of the sweet is coloured in one of the 6 colours – white, yellow, orange, green, purple or red. Especially for the darker red and purple colourings this colouring is somewhat blotchy.
Fruit Salads
Fruit Salad is a type of "Raspberry & Pineapple flavour chew" according to its packaging. This means that it is a chewy (gelatin-based) confectionery. Fruit Salad is manufactured by Barratt in Spain. Fruit Salad is very similar to Black Jack, which are also manufactured by Barratt.
Sweet ‘Cigarette’ Sticks
(sticks wrapped in paper, in packs that looked just like real cigarettes)
Candy cigarettes is a candy introduced in the early 20th century made out of chalky sugar, bubblegum or chocolate, wrapped in paper as to resemble cigarettes. Their place on the market has long been controversial because many critics believe the candy desensitizes children, leading them to become smokers later in life. Because of this, the selling of candy cigarettes has been banned in several countries such as Finland, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
In the United States a ban was considered in 1970 and again in 1991, but was not passed into federal law. The U.S. state of North Dakota enacted a ban on candy cigarettes from 1953 until 1967. In Canada federal law prohibits candy cigarette branding that resembles real cigarette branding and the territory of Nunavut has banned all products that resemble cigarettes.
The Family Smoking and Prevention Control Act was misquoted as banning candy cigarettes. The Act bans any form of added flavoring in tobacco cigarettes other than menthol. It does not regulate the candy industry.
Candy cigarettes continue to be manufactured and consumed in many parts of the world. However, many manufacturers now describe their products as candy sticks, bubble gum, or candy.
Popeye Cigarettes marketed using the Popeye character were sold for a while and had red tips (to look like a lit cigarette) before being renamed candy sticks and being manufactured without the red tip.
Liquorice "Smoker’s Sets"
Sweet smokers sets with sweet cigarettes, tobacco and liquorice pipes. CONCERNS have been raised about the availability of candy-style imitation cigarettes. The sweets, which look remarkably like a hand-rolled cigarette and packaged in replica cigarette packets.
"Recently there has been a trend for buying so-called retro candy such as aniseed balls and spangles. It’s unfortunate that chocolate cigarettes have re surfaced but it’s not illegal to sell them and it’s really up to retailers to decide whether or not it’s a product with which they wish to be associated."
Aniseed Balls
Aniseed balls are a type of hard round sweet sold in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. They are shiny and dark brownish red, and hard like Gobstoppers.
Aniseed Balls are something you either love or hate! They are flavoured by aniseed oil (obviously!), and have a very strong aniseed flavour. They last for a long time in the mouth before dissolving and in the centre of the ball is a whole rapeseed that can be crushed.
Butterscotch
Butterscotch is a type of confectionery whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter, although other ingredients such as corn syrup, cream, vanilla, and salt are part of some recipes.
The ingredients for butterscotch are similar to toffee, but for butterscotch the sugar is boiled to the soft crack stage, and not hard crack as with toffee. Butterscotch sauce is often made into a syrup, which is used as a topping for ice cream (particularly sundaes).
The term butterscotch is also often used for the flavour of brown sugar and butter together even where actual confection butterscotch is not involved, e.g. butterscotch pudding.
Food historians have several theories regarding the name and origin of this confectionery, but none are conclusive. One explanation is the meaning "to cut or score" for the word "scotch", as the confection must be cut into pieces, or "scotched", before hardening. It is also possible that the "scotch" part of its name was derived from the word "scorch".
However, the word was first recorded in Doncaster, in England, where Samuel Parkinson began making the confectionery in 1817. Parkinson’s Butterscotch had royal approval and was one of Doncaster’s attractions until it ceased production in 1977. The recipe was revived in 2003 when a Doncaster businessman and his wife rediscovered the recipe on an old folded piece of paper inside one of the famous St Leger tins in their cellar.
Butterscotch is an example of a genericized trademark, originally a trademark of Parkinson’s.
Jelly Babies
Jelly babies are a type of soft confectionery that look like little babies in a variety of colours. There are currently several companies that make jelly babies, most predominantly Trebor Bassett (part of the Cadbury Group of companies, and famous for their liquorice allsorts) and also Rowntree (Nestlé).
Jelly Babies were launched by Bassett’s in 1918 in Sheffield as "Peace Babies" to mark the end of World War I. Production was suspended during World War II due to wartime shortages and the fact that the name had largely become ironic. In 1953 the product was relaunched as "Jelly Babies". In March 1989 Bassett’s were taken over by Cadbury Schweppes who had earlier acquired the Trebor brand.
Jelly Babies manufactured in the United Kingdom tend to be dusted in starch which is left over from the manufacturing process where it is used to aid release from the mould. Jelly Babies of Australian manufacture generally lack this coating.
Like many gummy sweets, they contain gelatin and are thus not suitable for vegetarians.
A popular science class experiment is to put them in a strong oxidising agent and see the resulting spectacular reaction. The experiment is commonly referred to as "Screaming jelly babies".
Each Bassett’s Jelly Baby now has an individual name and shape, colour and flavour: Brilliant (red – strawberry), Bubbles (yellow – lemon), Baby Bonny (pink – raspberry), Boofuls (green – lime), Bigheart (purple – blackcurrant) and Bumper (orange). The introduction of different shapes and names was a new innovation, circa 1989, prior to which all colours of jelly baby were a uniform shape.
Jelly Babies are similar in appearance to Gummi bears, which are better known outside of the United Kingdom, though the texture is different, Jelly Babies having a harder outer "crust" and a softer, less rubbery, centre.
In 2007, Bassett’s Jelly Babies changed to include only natural colours and ingredients.
In the early 1960s, after Beatles guitarist George Harrison revealed in an interview that he liked jelly babies, audiences showered him and the rest of the band with the sweets at live concerts and fans sent boxes of them as gifts.[citation needed] Unfortunately American fans could not obtain this soft British confection, replacing them with harder jelly beans instead. To the group’s discomfort, they were frequently pelted with jelly beans during concerts while in America.
Jelly babies are popular with several of the Doctors in the television series Doctor Who. The Second Doctor was the first to have them in his pockets. The Fourth Doctor had them throughout his time on the show. They also appear briefly with the Tenth Doctor In the 2007 episode "The Sound of Drums", The Master is seen eating them.
Dolly mixture
This is a British confection, consisting of a variety of multi-coloured fondant shapes, such as cubes and cylinders, with subtle flavourings. The mixtures also include hard-coated fondants in "round edged cube" shapes and sugar coated jellies. They are sold together, in a mixture in a medium-sized packet. It is produced by various companies in different countries; the most popular brands are those produced by Trebor Bassett (now a part of the Cadbury’s consortium)
Bonbons
The name bonbon (or bon-bon) stems from the French word bon, literally meaning “good”. In modern usage, the term "bonbon" usually refers to any of several types of sweets and other table centerpieces across the world.
The first bonbons come from the 17th century when they were made at the royal court especially for children who were eating them and chanting bon, bon!, French for good, good!.
Bonbon is also a colloquial expression (as in, "She sat around all day eating bon-bons while her husband was at work."). This sweet inspired Johann Strauss II to compose a waltz named, "Wiener Bonbons".
Chewits
Chewits is the brand name of a chewy, cuboid-shaped, soft taffy candy manufactured by Leaf International.
Chewits was launched in the UK in 1965. The sweets were originally manufactured in Southport, but after the closing of the factory in 2006 manufacture was moved to Slovakia. The original flavours consisted of Strawberry, Blackcurrant, Orange and Banana. Over the years more exotic flavours such as Ice Cream, Cola, Rhubarb & Custard, and Blue Mint were introduced as limited edition flavours. New Chewits pack designs, formats and flavours were launched in 2009.
Currently Chewits core flavour range includes Strawberry, Blackcurrant, Fruit Salad, Ice Cream and Orange. Ice Cream Chewits, originally released in 1989, were re-introduced in 2009 following an online petition and demand expressed on Facebook and Bebo.
Chewits were first advertised on television in 1976. The original advertisements featured the ‘Monster Muncher’, a Godzilla-resembling mascot on the hunt for something chewy to eat. The first ad featuring the Muncher threatening New York was made by French Gold Abbott and created by John Clive and Ian Whapshot. The first ad was so successful the sequel was delayed. The ‘Monster Muncher’ chomps and tramples humorously local and well-known international landmarks such as Barrow-in-Furness Bus Depot, a London block of flats, London Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Empire State Building. The ‘Monster Muncher’ could only be quelled by a pack of Chewits.
A spin-off computer game, The Muncher, was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1988.
The original adverts used claymation special effects, similar in style to those made famous in the movies of Ray Harryhausen. They also included a voiceover style reminiscent of a 1950s radio serial.
A subsequent advertisement, originally aired in 1995, plays on the over-the-top advertising style of the post-war era. To the tune of bright 50’s era orchestration, a salesy narrator exhorts viewers to try a variety of chewy consumer items in the essential guide to a chewier chew. The ad shows the ‘Monster Muncher’ sampling items such as Wellington boots, a rubber boat and a rubber plant in order to be ready for the chewiest of chews – Chewits.
In the late 1990s, Chewits experimented with ads showing multiple news casting dinosaur puppets. The catchphrase advice at the close of each ‘broadcast’ was to "do it before you chew it". This style of ads was relatively short-lived for Chewits.
With a change of advertising agencies, the puppets were replaced by colourful 2D animations. The ‘Monster Muncher’ was re-introduced as ‘Chewie’ in two popular adverts from this time. In the first, which aired in 2000, Chewie roller skates on two buses through a busy city scene. The second, which went out a year later in 2001, shows Chewie waterskiing at a popular seaside resort. The ads included a rendition of the 1994 hit song ‘I like to move it’ by Reel 2 Real, with the chorus, "I like to Chewit Chewit."
In 2003, after a further shift in advertising agencies, a new ad was aired showing a wide range of animals auditioning to be the new face of Chewits. The ad announced the return of the iconic dinosaur Chewie mascot, now dubbed ‘Chewie the Chewitsaurus’.
In 2009, Chewits introduced the new Chewie the Chewitsaurus look, showing a contemporary, computer-game-style slick design. Chewie the Chewitsaurus features on all Chewits packaging and sponsorship activity.
Fizzy Cola Bottles
Remember that fizzy, sour cola taste you used to get from these? I think these are another sweet you either love or hate. Real cola tasting Giant fizzy bottles.
Milk Bottles
These white milk bottle shaped chewy white sweets are also known as milk gums. They were pretty popular in the UK, and are still selling well today repackaged as retro sweets.
Pacers
These were a kind of Opal Fruits spin-off, but came in peppermint and spearmint flavours. They were discontinued sometime in the 80’s.
Sweet Bananas
These yummy sweet bananas, soft, juicy chews with a lovely mellow banana flavour.
Mackintosh’s Toffee
Mackintosh’s Toffee is a sweet created by John Mackintosh.
Mackintosh opened up his sweets shop in Halifax, Yorkshire, England in 1890, and the idea for Mackintosh’s Toffee, not too hard and not too soft, came soon after. In 1969, Mackintosh’s merged with rival Rowntree to form Rowntree Mackintosh, which merged with Nestle in 1988.
The product is often credited with being over 100 years old.
The toffee is sold in bags containing a random assortment of individual wrapped flavoured toffees. The flavours are (followed by wrapping colour): Malt (Blue), Harrogate (Yellow), Mint (Green), Egg & Cream (Orange), Coconut (Pink), Toffee (Red). The red wrapped toffees do not display a flavour on the wrapper. The product’s subtitle is "Toffee De Luxe" and its motto "a tradition worth sharing".
Space Dust
Space Dust the candy that pops when placed in your mouth.
Bazooka bubble gum
It was first marketed shortly after World War II in the U.S. by the Topps Company based in Brooklyn, New York. The gum was packaged in a patriotic red, white, and blue color scheme. Beginning in 1953, Topps changed the packaging to include small comic strips with the gum, featuring the character "Bazooka Joe". There are 50 different "Bazooka Joe" comic-strip wrappers to collect. The product has been virtually unchanged in over 50 years.
The Topps company expanded the flavors, making them Original, Strawberry Shake, Cherry Berry, Watermelon Whirl, and Grape Rage. The Strawberry flavor is packaged in a pink and white wrapper and the Grape in a purple and white wrapper. Bazooka gum can also be found in a sugar free variety with the standard bubble gum flavor and a "Flavor Blasts" variety, claimed to have longer lasting, more intense taste. Bazooka gum comes in 2 different sizes.
Bazooka bubblegum is sold in many countries, often with Bazooka Joe comic strips translated into the local language. Bazooka gum is sold in Canada with cartoons in both English and French, depending upon the city. In Israel, manufactured under license to Elite, the cartoons are written in Hebrew. The gum was also sold in Yugoslavia and later in Slovenia until the local licensee allowed their license to expire in 2006. The "Bazooka Joe" cartoons are about "Bazooka Joe" and his friends. There are also "Bazooka Joe" t-shirts in return for 15 Bazooka Joe comics and .99 while supplies last. But the offer has been discontinued.
In May 2009 it was announced that the Bazooka Joe comic was to be adapted into a Hollywood movie.
Traffic Light lollies
These were a red yellow and green lolly that was a childhood favourtite sweet for many.
Black Magic Chocolates
What a huge disappointment these chocolates are!! A few years ago Nestle made an almighty mistake by doing away with THE best brand of dark chocolates, favourites of many thousands of people, and replacing them with cardboard pretend chocolate squares which tasted cheap and nasty. Most boxes ended up in the bin. Last year I had a letter from Nestle saying they were bringing the classics back, fantastic, I was straight to the shop for some, so bad was my addiction, but horribly they are nothing like the originals.
The dont taste or smell the same, the centres are hard and taste of chemicals, like long gone off chocolates. The bottom line is this, why change them in the first place? and when you realised you had made a mistake why not bring back the originals instead of these tacky replacements. very sad, and I still havent found any chocs like Black Magic, I still have original boxes with ribbons from the 1950’s, now they were class.
Texan
Ultra-chewy, chocolate-covered nougat bar launched in the mid-70s; disappeared in the mid-80s.
Banjo
Boring two-fingered wafer bar, lasted for most of the 80s.
Callard & Bowser Creamline Toffees
A 2001 casualty; they were better than Toffos.
Amazin Raisin
1971-78 – the sweets equivalent of rum’n’raisin ice cream.
Freshen Up
Chewing gum with a liquid centre, an 80s innovation.
Bluebird Toffee
A classic, but a recent casualty of confectionery industry takeovers.
Jap Desserts
These old coconut sweets (coconut was often known as ‘Jap’) died a death in the early 2000s.
Counters (Galaxy)
Harmless chocolate beans cruelly cut off.
Pink Panther
Extraordinary strawberry-flavoured chocolate bars, thin like Milky Bars. An acquired taste.
Bandit
Wafer biscuit – a challenger to Penguins.
Club bars
From Jacobs. The full range has been withdrawn, but Orange is still available. Symbol guide: plain = jack of clubs; milk = golf ball; mint = green leaf. Bog-standard but likable for thick chocolate.
Nutty Pure
80s bar, with a smoky brown see-through wrapper. Peanuts encase a fudge-type caramel log centre.
Double Agent
Extremely artificial blackcurrant- or apple-flavoured boiled sweets, with a sherbet centre and spy questions on the wrapper. Classic cold war confectionery.
Mighty Imp’s
Mighty Imps were really old fashioned liquorice and menthol pellets that used to turn your tongue black… lovely!
They were sugar free and were marketed to help you keep a clear voice and protect against a sore throat (due to the menthol content I suspect).
Zoom
This ice lolly on a stick was shaped like a rocket and was made up of three sections, each with its own distinct flavour. In sequence this was lime, lemon and strawberry.
Refreshers
Fruit flavour fizzy sweets in a roll. Raspberry, lemon, lime and orange flavours. Refreshingly fizzly.
White Chocolate Mice
These white chocolate mice were cream flavoured and are silky smooth on your tongue. You certainly will not want the cat to get these sweet mice!!
The top 10 Best Sales – Through the ages
1966
1 Mars bar
2 Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
3 Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum
4 Milky Way
5 Polo
6 Kit Kat
7 Crunchie
8 Wrigley’s Arrowmint Gum
9 Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles
10 Maltesers
1978
1 Mars bar
2 Kit Kat
3 Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
4 Twix
5 Yorkie
6 Milky Way
7 Bounty
8 Maltesers
9 Aero
10 Smarties
1988
1 Mars bar
2 Kit Kat
3 Marathon
4 Wispa
5 Polo
6 Extra Strong Mints
7 Fruit Pastilles
8 Flake
9 Rolo
10 Double Decker
1997
1 Kit Kat
2 Mars bar
3 Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
4 Roses
5 Twix
6 Wrigley’s Extra
7 Quality Street
8 Snickers
9 Maltesers
10 Galaxy
2004
1 Cadbury’s Dairy Milk
2 Wrigleys Extra
3 Maltesers
4 Galaxy
5 Mars bar
6 Kit Kat
7 Celebrations
8 Quality Street
9 Haribo (total sales)
10 Roses
Can anyone add to the list?
Packard 901 Sedan (1932)
Image by pedrosimoes7
Cascais Classic Motorshow, Cascais, Portugal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PRODUCTSAUTOMOBILE
Packard was an American luxury automobile marque built by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, United States, and later by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last in 1958, with one of the last concept cars built in 1956, the Packard Predictor.
HISTORY
1899–1905
Packard was founded by James Ward Packard, his brother William, and their partner, George Lewis Weiss, in the city of Warren, Ohio, where 400 Packard automobiles were built at their factory on Dana Street Northeast, from 1899 to 1903. A mechanical engineer, James Packard believed they could build a better horseless carriage than the Winton cars owned by Weiss, an important Winton stockholder, after Packard complained to Alexander Winton and offered suggestions for improvement, which were ignored; Packard’s first car was built in Warren, Ohio, on November 6, 1899.
Henry Bourne Joy, a member of one of Detroit’s oldest and wealthiest families, bought a Packard. Impressed by its reliability, he visited the Packards and soon enlisted a group of investors—including Truman Handy Newberry and Russell A. Alger Jr.
On October 2, 1902, this group refinanced and renamed the New York and Ohio Automobile Company as the Packard Motor Car Company, with James Packard as president. Alger later served as vice president.
Packard moved operations to Detroit soon after, and Joy became general manager (and later chairman of the board). An original Packard, reputedly the first manufactured, was donated by a grateful James Packard to his alma mater, Lehigh University, and is preserved there in the Packard Laboratory. Another is on display at the Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio.
In September, 1900, the Ohio Automobile Company was founded to produce Packard automobiles. These quickly gained an excellent reputation and the name was changed on October 13, 1902, to the Packard Motor Car Company.
In the beginning, all Packards had a single-cylinder engine until 1903. Packard vehicles featured innovations, including the modern steering wheel and, years later, the first production 12-cylinder engine, adapted from developing the Liberty L-12, and air-conditioning in a passenger car. Packard produced its "Twin Six" model series of 12-cylinder cars from 1915 to 1923.
While the Black Motor Company’s Black went as low as 5,Western Tool Works’ Gale Model A roadster was 0,the high-volume Oldsmobile Runabout went for 0, and the Cole 30 and Cole Runabout were US,500, Packard concentrated on cars with prices starting at ,600.
The marque developed a following among wealthy purchasers both in the United States and abroad, competing with European marques like Rolls-Royce and Mercedes Benz.
The 3,500,000-square-foot (330,000 m2) Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit was located on over 40 acres (16 ha) of land. Designed by Albert Kahn Associates, it included the first use of reinforced concrete for industrial construction in Detroit and was considered the most modern automobile manufacturing facility in the world when opened in 1903. Its skilled craftsmen practiced over 80 trades. The dilapidated plant still stands, despite repeated fires.
The factory is in close proximity to the current General Motors Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, which was the former site of the Dodge Vehicle factory from 1910 until 1980. Architect Kahn also designed the Packard Proving Grounds at Utica, Michigan.
1906–1930
Packard Fourth Series Six Model 426 Runabout (Roadster), 1927
From this beginning, through and beyond the 1930s, Packard-built vehicles were perceived as highly competitive among high-priced luxury American automobiles.
The company was commonly referred to as being one of the "Three Ps" of American motordom royalty, along with Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo, New York and Peerless of Cleveland, Ohio.
For most of its history, Packard was guided by its President and General Manager James Alvan Macauley, who also served as President of the National Automobile Manufacturers Association. Inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame, Macauley made Packard the number one designer and producer of luxury automobiles in the United States. The marque was also highly competitive abroad, with markets in 61 countries. Gross income for the company was ,889,000 in 1928. Macauley was also responsible for the iconic Packard slogan, "ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE".
In the 1920s, Packard exported more cars than any other in its price class, and in 1930, sold almost twice as many abroad as any other marque priced over 00.In 1931, 10 Packards were owned by Japan’s royal family. Between 1924 and 1930, Packard was also the top-selling luxury brand.
In addition to excellent luxury cars, Packard built trucks. A Packard truck carrying a three-ton load drove from New York City to San Francisco between 8 July and 24 August 1912. The same year, Packard had service depots in 104 cities.
The Packard Motor Corporation Building at Philadelphia, also designed by Albert Kahn, was built in 1910-1911. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
By 1931, Packards were also being produced in Canada.[20]
1931–1936
Entering the 1930s, Packard attempted to beat the stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression by manufacturing ever more opulent and expensive cars than it had prior to October 1929. While the Eight five-seater sedan had been the company’s top-seller for years,[21] the Twin Six, designed by Vincent,[22] was introduced for 1932, with prices starting at ,650 at the factory gate;[23] in 1933,[24] it would be renamed the Packard Twelve, a name it retained for the remainder of its run (through 1939). Also in 1931, Packard pioneered a system it called Ride Control, which made the hydraulic shock absorbers adjustable from within the car.[25] For one year only, 1932, Packard fielded an upper-medium-priced car, the Light Eight, at a base price of ,750, or 5 less than the standard Eight.[26]
1931 Ninth Series model 840
As an independent automaker, Packard did not have the luxury of a larger corporate structure absorbing its losses, as Cadillac did with GM and Lincoln with Ford. However, Packard did have a better cash position than other independent luxury marques. Peerless ceased production in 1932, changing the Cleveland manufacturing plant from producing cars to brewing beer for Carling Black Label Beer. By 1938, Franklin, Marmon, Ruxton, Stearns-Knight, Stutz, Duesenberg, and Pierce-Arrow had all closed.
A 1932 Ninth Series De Luxe Eight model 904 sedan-limousine
Packard also had one other advantage that some other luxury automakers did not: a single production line. By maintaining a single line and interchangeability between models, Packard was able to keep its costs down. Packard did not change cars as often as other manufacturers did at the time. Rather than introducing new models annually, Packard began using its own "Series" formula for differentiating its model changeovers in 1923. New model series did not debut on a strictly annual basis, with some series lasting nearly two years, and others lasting as short a time as seven months. In the long run, though, Packard averaged around one new series per year. By 1930, Packard automobiles were considered part of its Seventh Series. By 1942, Packard was in its Twentieth Series. The "Thirteenth Series" was omitted.
1934 Eleventh Series Eight model 1101 convertible sedan
To address the Depression, Packard started producing more affordable cars in the medium-price range. In 1935, the company introduced its first car under 00, the 120. Sales more than tripled that year and doubled again in 1936. To produce the 120, Packard built and equipped an entirely separate factory. By 1936, Packard’s labor force was divided nearly evenly between the high-priced "Senior" lines (Twelve, Super Eight, and Eight) and the medium-priced "Junior" models, although more than 10 times more Juniors were produced than Seniors. This was because the 120 models were built using thoroughly modern mass production techniques, while the Senior Packards used a great deal more hand labor and traditional craftsmanship. Although Packard almost certainly could not have survived the Depression without the highly successful Junior models,[27] they did have the effect of diminishing the Senior models’ exclusive image among those few who could still afford an expensive luxury car. The 120 models were more modern in basic design than the Senior models; for example, the 1935 Packard 120 featured independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes, features that would not appear on the Senior Packards until 1937.
1937–1941[edit]
1939 Packard Packard Twelve, 17th series
1941 Packard Custom Super Eight One-Eighty Formal sedan; 19th series, Model 1907
1941 Packard Station Wagon advertisement; either One-Ten Model 1900 or One-Twenty Model 1901
Packard was still the premier luxury automobile, even though the majority of cars being built were the 120 and Super Eight model ranges. Hoping to catch still more of the market, Packard decided to issue the Packard 115C in 1937, which was powered by Packard’s first six-cylinder engine since the Fifth Series cars in 1928. While the move to introduce the Six, priced at around 00,[28] was brilliant, for the car arrived just in time for the 1938 recession, it also tagged Packards as something less exclusive than they had been in the public’s mind, and in the long run hurt Packard’s reputation of building some of America’s finest luxury cars. The Six, redesignated 110 in 1940–41, continued for three years after the war, with many serving as taxicabs.[citation needed]
In 1939, Packard introduced Econo-Drive, a kind of overdrive, claimed able to reduce engine speed 27.8%; it could be engaged at any speed over 30 mph (48 km/h).[29] The same year, the company introduced a fifth, transverse shock absorber and made column shift (known as Handishift) available on the 120 and Six.[30]
1942–1945[edit]
In 1942, the Packard Motor Car Company converted to 100% war production.[31] During World War II, Packard again built airplane engines, licensing the Merlin engine from Rolls-Royce as the V-1650, which powered the famous P-51 Mustang fighter, ironically known as the "Cadillac of the Skies" by GIs in WWII.[32][33] Packard also built 1350-, 1400-, and 1500-hp V-12 marine engines for American PT boats (each boat used three) and some of Britain’s patrol boats. Packard ranked 18th among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.[34]
By the end of the war in Europe, Packard Motor Car Company had produced over 55,000 combat engines. Sales in 1944 were 5,118,600. By May 6, 1945, Packard had a backlog on war orders of 8,000,000.[31]
1946–1956[edit]
Packard dealer in New York State, ca. 1950–1955
By the end of World War II, Packard was in excellent financial condition, but several management mistakes became ever more visible as time went on. Like other U.S. auto companies, Packard resumed civilian car production in late 1945, labelling them as 1946 models by modestly updating their 1942 models. As only tooling for the Clipper was at hand, the Senior-series cars were not rescheduled. One version of the story is that the Senior dies were left out in the elements to rust and were no longer usable. Another long-rumored tale is that Roosevelt gave Stalin the dies to the Senior series, but the ZiS-110 state limousines were a separate design.
Although the postwar Packards sold well, the ability to distinguish expensive models from lower-priced models disappeared as all Packards, whether sixes or eights, became virtually alike in styling. Further, amid a booming seller’s market, management had decided to direct the company more to volume middle-class models, thus concentrating on selling lower-priced cars instead of more expensive—and more profitable—models. Worse, they also tried to enter the taxi cab and fleet car market. The idea was to gain volume for the years ahead, but that target was missed: Packard simply was not big enough to offer a real challenge to the Big Three, and they lacked the deep pockets with which a parent company could shelter them, as well as the model lineup through which to spread the pricing.
As a result, Packard’s image as a luxury brand was further diluted. As Packard lost buyers of expensive cars, it could not find enough customers for the lesser models to compensate. The shortage of raw materials immediately after the war—which was felt by all manufacturers—hurt Packard more with its volume business than it would have had it had focused on the specialty luxury car market.
The Clipper became outdated as the new envelope bodies started appearing, led by Studebaker and Kaiser-Frazer. Had they been a European car maker, this would have meant nothing; they could have continued to offer the classic shape not so different from the later Rolls-Royce with its vertical grill. Although Packard was in solid financial shape as the war ended, they had not sold enough cars to pay the cost of tooling for the 1941 design. While most automakers were able to come out with new vehicles for 1948–49, Packard could not until 1951. They therefore updated by adding sheet metal to the existing body (which added 200 lb (91 kg) of curb weight).[citation needed] Six-cylinder cars were dropped for the home market, and a convertible was added. These new designs hid their relationship to the Clipper. Even that name was dropped—for a while.
The design chosen was a "bathtub" type. While this was considered futuristic during the war and the concept was taken further with the 1949 Nash—and survived for decades in the Saab 92-96 in Europe—the 1948–1950 Packard styling was polarizing. To some it was sleek and blended classic with modern; others nicknamed it the "pregnant elephant". Test driver for Modern Mechanix, Tom McCahill, referred to the newly designed Packard as "a goat" and "a dowager in a Queen Mary hat". Still, in this era, demand for any car was high, and Packard sold 92,000 vehicles for 1948 and 116,000 of the 1949 models.
Packard outsold Cadillac until about 1950; most sales were the midrange volume models. A buyer of a Super Eight paying a premium price did not enjoy seeing a lesser automobile with nearly all the Super Eight’s features, with just slight distinction in exterior styling. During this time, Cadillac was among the earliest U.S. makers to offer an automatic transmission (the Hydramatic in 1941), but Packard caught up with the Ultramatic, offered on top models in 1949 and all models from 1950 onward. Packard’s Ultramatic automatic transmission was the only one developed by an independent automaker was smoother than the GM Hydramatic, though acceleration was sluggish and owners were often tempted to put it into low gear for faster starts, which put extra strain on the transmission. However, while the Ultramatic was competitive, Packard was not able to immediately respond to Cadillac’s introduction of a powerful overhead valve V8 in 1949. Also, when a new body style was added in addition to standard sedans, coupes, and convertibles, Packard introduced a station wagon instead of a two-door hardtop in response to Cadillac’s Coupe DeVille. The Station Sedan, a wagon-like body that was mostly steel, with good deal of decorative wood in the back; only 3,864 were sold over its three years of production. Although the Custom Clippers and Custom Eights were built in its old tradition with craftsmanship and the best materials, all was not well. The combination of the lower priced Packards undermining sales and prestige of their higher end brethren, controversial styling, and some questionable marketing decisions, Packard seemed to lose focus on the luxury car market—relinquishing to a rising Cadillac. In 1950, sales dropped to 42,000 cars for the model year. When Packard’s president George T. Christopher announced the "bathtub" would get another facelift for 1951, influential parts of the management revolted. Christopher was forced to resign and loyal Packard treasurer Hugh Ferry became president.
The 1951 Packards were completely redesigned. Designer John Reinhart introduced a high-waisted, more squared-off profile that fit the contemporary styling trends of the era—very different from the design of 1948–50. New styling features included a one-piece windshield, a wrap-around rear window, small tailfins on the long-wheelbase models, a full-width grill, and "guideline fenders" with the hood and front fenders at the same height. The 122-inch (3,099 mm) wheelbase supported low-end 200-series standard and Deluxe two- and four-doors, and 250-series Mayfair hardtop coupes (Packard’s first) and convertibles. Upmarket 300 and Patrician 400 models rode a 127-inch (3,226 mm) wheelbase. The 200-series models were again low-end models and now included a low priced business coupe.
The 250, 300, and 400/Patricians were Packard’s flagship models and comprised the majority of production for that year. The Patrician was now the top-shelf Packard, replacing the Custom Eight line. Original plans were to equip it with a 356 cu in (5.8 L) engine, but the company decided that sales would probably not be high enough to justify producing the larger, more expensive power plant, and so instead the debored 327 cu in (5.4 L) (previously the middle engine) was used instead. While the smaller powerplant offered nearly equal performance in the new Packards to that of the 356, the move was seen by some as further denigrating Packard’s image as a luxury car.
Since 1951 was a quiet year with little new from the other auto manufacturers, Packard’s redesigned lineup sold nearly 101,000 cars. The 1951 Packards were a quirky mixture of the modern (the automatic transmissions) and aging (still using flathead inline eights when OHV V8 engines were rapidly becoming the norm). No domestic car lines had OHV V8s in 1948, but by 1955, every car line offered a version. The Packard inline eight, despite being an older design that lacked the power of Cadillac’s engines, was very smooth. When combined with an Ultramatic transmission, the drivetrain made for a nearly quiet and smooth experience on the road. However, it struggled to keep pace with the horsepower race. In May 1952, aging Packard president Hugh Ferry resigned and was succeeded by James J. Nance, a marketing hotshot recruited from Hotpoint to turn the stagnant company around (its main factory on Detroit’s East Grand Boulevard was operating at only 50% capacity). Nance worked to snag Korean War military contracts and turn around Packard’s badly diluted image. He declared that from now on, Packard would cease producing midpriced cars and build only luxury models to compete with Cadillac. As part of this strategy, Nance unveiled a low-production (only 750 made) glamour model for 1953, the Caribbean convertible. Competing directly with the other novelty ragtops of that year (Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Fiesta, and Cadillac Eldorado), it was equally well received, and outsold its competition. However, overall sales declined in 1953. While the limited edition luxury models as the Caribbean convertible and the Patrician 400 Sedan, and the Derham custom formal sedan brought back some of the lost prestige from better days, the "high pocket" styling that had looked new two years earlier was no longer bringing people into the showrooms for the bread and butter Packards.
While American independent manufacturers like Packard did well during the early postwar period, supply had caught up with demand and by the early 1950s and they were increasingly challenged as the "Big Three"—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—battled intensely for sales in the economy, medium-priced, and luxury markets.[37] Those independents that remained alive in the early ’50s, merged. In 1953, Kaiser merged with Willys to become Kaiser-Willys. Nash and Hudson became American Motors (AMC). The strategy for these mergers included cutting costs and strengthening their sales organizations to meet the intense competition from the Big Three.
In 1953–54, Ford and GM waged a brutal sales war, cutting prices and forcing cars on dealers. While this had little effect on either company, it gravely damaged the independent automakers. Nash president George Mason thus proposed that the four major independents (Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker) all merge into one large outfit to be named American Motors Corporation. Mason held informal discussions with Nance to outline his strategic vision, and an agreement was reached for AMC to buy Packard’s Ultramatic transmissions and V8 engines, and they were used in 1955 Hudsons and Nashes. However, SPC’s Nance refused to consider merging with AMC unless he could take the top command position (Mason and Nance were former competitors as heads of the Kelvinator and Hotpoint appliance companies, respectively), but Mason’s grand vision of a Big Four American auto industry ended in October 1954 with his sudden death from a heart attack. A week after the death of Mason, the new president of AMC, George W. Romney, announced "there are no mergers under way either directly or indirectly".[39] Nevertheless, Romney continued with Mason’s commitment to buy components from SPC. Although Mason and Nance had previously agreed that SPC would purchase parts from AMC, it did not do so. Moreover, Packard’s engines and transmissions were comparatively expensive, so AMC began development of its own V8 engine, and replaced the outsourced unit by mid-1956.[40] Although Nash and Hudson merged along with Studebaker and Packard joining, the four-way merger Mason hoped for did not materialize. The S-P marriage (really a Packard buyout), proved to be a crippling mistake. Although Packard was still in fair financial shape, Studebaker was not, struggling with high overhead and production costs and needing the impossible figure of 250,000 cars a year to break even. Due diligence was placed behind "merger fever", and the deal was rushed. It became clear after the merger that Studebaker’s deteriorating financial situation put Packard’s survival at risk.
Nance had hoped for a total redesign in 1954, but the necessary time and money were lacking. Packard that year (total production 89,796) comprised the bread-and-butter Clipper line (the 250 series was dropped), Mayfair hardtop coupes and convertibles, and a new entry level long-wheelbase sedan named Cavalier. Among the Clippers was a novelty pillared coupe, the Sportster, styled to resemble a hardtop.
With time and money again lacking, 1954 styling was unchanged except for modified headlights and taillights, essentially trim items. A new hardtop named Pacific was added to the flagship Patrician series and all higher-end Packards sported a bored-out 359-cid engine. Air conditioning became available for the first time since 1942. Packard had introduced air conditioning in the 1930s. Clippers (which comprised over 80% of production) also got a hardtop model, Super Panama, but sales tanked, falling to only 31,000 cars.
The revolutionary new model Nance hoped for was delayed until 1955, partially because of Packard’s merger with Studebaker. Packard stylist Richard A. Teague was called upon by Nance to design the 1955 line, and to Teague’s credit, the 1955 Packard was indeed a sensation when it appeared. Not only was the body completely updated and modernized, but the suspension also was totally new, with torsion bars front and rear, along with an electric control that kept the car level regardless of load or road conditions. Crowning this stunning new design was Packard’s brand new ultra-modern overhead-valve V8, displacing 352 cu in (5.8 l), replacing the old, heavy, cast-iron side-valve straight-eight that had been used for decades. In addition, Packard offered the entire host of power, comfort, and convenience features, such as power steering and brakes, electric window lifts, and air conditioning (even in the Caribbean convertible), a Packard exclusive at the time. Sales rebounded to 101,000 for 1955, although that was a very strong year across the industry.
As the 1955 models went into production, an old problem flared up. Back in 1941, Packard had outsourced its bodies to Briggs Manufacturing. In December 1953, Briggs was sold to Chrysler, which notified Packard that they would need to find a new body supplier after the 1954 model year ended. Packard then leased a building on Conner Avenue from Chrysler, and moved its body-making and final assembly there. The facility proved too small and caused endless tie-ups and quality problems.[citation needed] Packard would have fared better building the bodies in its old, but amply-sized, main facility on East Grand Boulevard.[citation needed] Bad quality control hurt the company’s image and caused sales to plummet for 1956, though the problems had largely been resolved by that point.[citation needed] Additionally, a "brain drain" of talent away from Packard was underway, most notably John Z. DeLorean.[citation needed]
For 1956, the Clipper became a separate make, with Clipper Custom and Deluxe models available. Now the Packard-Clipper business model was a mirror to Lincoln-Mercury. "Senior" Packards were built in four body styles, each with a unique model name. Patrician was used for the four-door top of the line sedans, Four Hundred for the hardtop coupes, and Caribbean for the convertible and vinyl-roof two-door hardtop. In the spring of 1956, the Executive was introduced. Coming in a four-door sedan and a two-door hardtop, the Executive was aimed at the buyer who wanted a luxury car but could not justify Packard’s pricing. It was an intermediate model using the Packard name and the Senior models’ front end, but using the Clipper platform and rear fenders. This was to some confusing and went against what James Nance had been attempting for several years to accomplish, the separation of the Clipper line from Packard. However, as late as the cars’ introduction to the market, was there was reasoning for in 1957 this car was to be continued. It then became a baseline Packard on the all-new 1957 Senior shell. Clippers would share bodies with Studebaker from 1957.
Despite the new 1955/56 design, Cadillac continued to lead the luxury market, followed by Lincoln, Packard, and Imperial. Reliability problems with the automatic transmission and all electrical accessories further eroded the public’s opinion of Packard. Sales were good for 1955 compared to 1954. The year was also an industry banner year. Packard’s sales slid in 1956 due to the fit and finish of the 1955 models, and mechanical issues relating to the new engineering features. These defects cost Packard millions in recalls and tarnished a newly won image just in its infancy. Along with Studebaker sales dragging Packard down, things looked more terminal than ever for SPC.
For 1956, Teague kept the basic 1955 design, and added more styling touches to the body such as then−fashionable three toning. Headlamps hooded in a more radical style in the front fenders and a slight shuffling of chrome distinguished the 1956 models. "Electronic Push-button Ultramatic", which located transmission push buttons on a stalk on the steering column, proved trouble-prone, adding to the car’s negative reputation, possibly soon to become an orphan. Model series remained the same, but the V8 was now enlarged to 374 cu in (6.1 L) for Senior series, the largest in the industry. In the top-of-the-line Caribbean, that engine produced 310 hp (230 kW). Clippers continued to use the 352 engine. There were plans for an all−new 1957 line of Senior Packards based on the showcar Predictor. Clippers and Studebakers would also share many inner and outer body panels. (A private presentation of this 1957 new-car program was made to Wall Street’s investment bankers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in January 1956.) These models were in many ways far advanced from what would be produced by any automaker other at the time, save Chrysler, which would soon feel public wrath for its own poor quality issues after rushing its all−new 1957 lines into production. Nance was dismissed and moved to Ford as the head of the new Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division. Although Nance tried everything, the company failed to secure funding for new retooling, forcing Packard to share Studebaker platforms and body designs. With no funding to retool for the advanced new models envisioned, SPC’s fate was sealed; the large Packard was effectively dead in an executive decision to kill "the car we could not afford to lose". The last fully-Packard-designed vehicle, a Patrician four-door sedan, rolled off the Conner Avenue assembly line on June 25, 1956.[citation needed]
1957–1958
In 1957, no more Packards were built in Detroit and the Clipper disappeared as a separate brand name. Instead, a Studebaker President–based car bearing the Packard Clipper nameplate appeared on the market, but sales were slow. Available in just two body styles, Town Sedan (four-door sedan) and Country Sedan (four-door station wagon), they were powered by Studebaker’s 289 cu in (4.7 l) V8 with a McCulloch supercharger, delivering the same 275 hp (205 kW) as the 1956 Clipper Custom, although at higher revolutions. Borrowing design cues from the 1956 Clipper (visual in the grille and dash), with wheel covers, tail lamps, and dials from 1956 along with the Packard cormorant hood mascot and trunk chrome trim from 1955 senior Packards, the 1957 Packard Clipper was more than a badge-engineered Studebaker—but also far from a Patrician. Had the company been able to invest more money to finish the transformation and position the car under a senior line of "true Packards", it might have been a successful Clipper. However, standing alone the cars sold in very limited numbers—and a number of Packard dealers dropped their franchises while customers stayed away, despite with huge price discounts, fearful of buying a car that could soon be an orphaned make. With the market flooded by inexpensive cars, minor automakers struggled to sell vehicles at loss leader prices to keep up with Ford and GM.[41] Also, a general decline in demand for large cars heralded an industry switch to compact cars such as the Studebaker Lark.
Predictably, many Packard devotees were disappointed by the marque’s perceived further loss of exclusivity and what they perceived as a reduction in quality. They joined competitors and media critics in christening the new models as "Packardbakers". The 1958 models were launched with no series name, simply as "Packard". New body styles were introduced, a two-door hardtop joined the four-door sedan. A new premier model appeared with a sporting profile: the Packard Hawk was based on the Studebaker Golden Hawk and featured a new nose and a fake spare wheel molded in the trunk lid reminiscent of the concurrent Imperial. The 1958 Packards were amongst the first in the industry to be "facelifted" with plastic parts. The housing for the new dual headlights and the complete fins were fiberglass parts grafted on Studebaker bodies. Very little chrome was on the lower front clip. Designer Duncan McCrae managed to include the 1956 Clipper tail lights for one last time, this time in a fin, and under a canted fin, a wild—or to some bizarre—mixture. Added to the front of all but the Hawk were tacked on pods for dual headlights, in a desperate attempt to keep up with late-1950s styling cues. All Packards were given 14 in (36 cm) wheels to lower the profile. The public reaction was predictable and sales were almost nonexistent. The Studebaker factory was older than Packard’s Detroit plant, with higher production requirements, which added to dipping sales. A new compact car on which the company staked its survival, the Lark, was a year away, and failed to sell in sufficient numbers to keep the marque afloat. Several makes were discontinued around this time. Not since the 1930s had so many makes disappeared: Packard, Edsel, Hudson, Nash, DeSoto, and Kaiser.
CONCEPT PACKARDS
1956 Predictor concept, at the Studebaker National Museum
During the 1950s, a number of "dream cars" were built by Packard in an attempt to keep the marque alive in the imaginations of the American car-buying public. Included in this category are the 1952 Pan American that led to the production Caribbean and the Panther (also known as Daytona), based on a 1954 platform. Shortly after the introduction of the Caribbean, Packard showed a prototype hardtop called the Balboa.[42] It featured a reverse-slanted rear window that could be lowered for ventilation, a feature introduced in a production car by Mercury in 1957 and still in production in 1966. The Request was based on the 1955 Four Hundred hardtop, but featured a classic upright Packard fluted grille reminiscent of the prewar models. In addition, the 1957 engineering mule "Black Bess" was built to test new features for a future car. This car had a resemblance to the 1958 Edsel. It featured Packard’s return to a vertical grill. This grill was very narrow with the familiar ox-yoke shape that was characteristic for Packard, and with front fenders with dual headlights resembling Chrysler products from that era. The engineering mule Black Bess was destroyed by the company shortly after the Packard plant was shuttered. Of the 10 Requests built, only four were sold off the showroom floor. Richard A. Teague also designed the last Packard show car, the Predictor. This hardtop coupe’s design followed the lines of the planned 1957 cars. It had many unusual features, among them a roof section that opened either by opening a door or activating a switch, well ahead of later T-tops. The car had seats that rotated out, allowing the passenger easy access, a feature later used on some Chrysler and GM products. The Predictor also had the opera windows, or portholes, found on concurrent Thunderbirds. Other novel ideas were overhead switches—these were in the production Avanti—and a dash design that followed the hood profile, centering dials in the center console area. This feature has only recently been used on production cars. The Predictor survives and is on display at the Studebaker National Museum section of the Center for History in South Bend, Indiana.
ASTRAL
One very unusual prototype, the Studebaker-Packard Astral, was made in 1957 and first unveiled at the South Bend Art Centre on January 12, 1958, and then at the March 1958 Geneva Motor Show.
It had a single gyroscopic balanced wheel and the publicity data suggested it could be nuclear powered or have what the designers described as an ionic engine. No working prototype was ever made, nor was it likely that one was ever intended.
The Astral was designed by Edward E. Herrmann, Studebaker-Packard’s director of interior design, as a project to give his team experience in working with glass-reinforced plastic. It was put on show at various Studebaker dealerships before being put into storage. Rediscovered 30 years later, the car was restored and put on display by the Studebaker museum.
THE END
Studebaker-Packard pulled the Packard nameplate from the marketplace in 1959. It kept its name until 1962 when "Packard" was dropped off the corporation’s name at a time when it was introducing the all new Avanti, and a less anachronistic image was being sought, thus finishing the story of the great American Packard marque. Ironically, it was considered that the Packard name might be used for the new fiberglass sports car, as well as Pierce-Arrow, the make Studebaker controlled in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In the late 1950s, Studebaker-Packard was approached by enthusiasts to rebadge the French car maker Facel-Vega’s Excellence suicide-door, four-door hardtop as a "Packard" for sale in North America, using stock Packard V8s, and identifying trim including red hexagonal wheel covers, cormorant hood ornament, and classic vertical ox-yoke grille. The proposition was rejected when Daimler-Benz threatened to pull out of its 1957 marketing and distribution agreement, which would have cost Studebaker-Packard more in revenue than they could have made from the badge-engineered Packard. Daimler-Benz had little of its own dealer network at the time and used this agreement to enter and become more established in the American market through SPC’s dealer network, and felt this car was a threat to their models. By acquiescing, SPC did itself no favors and may have accelerated its exit from automobiles; Mercedes-Benz protecting their own turf helped ensure their future.
THE REVIVAL
In the 1990s, Roy Gullickson revived the Packard nameplate by buying the trademark and building a prototype Packard Twelve for the 1999 model year. His goal was to produce 2,000 of them per year, but lack of investment funds stalled that plan indefinitely and the Twelve were sold at an auto auction in Plymouth, MI, in July 2014.
PACKARD AUTOMOBILE ENGINES
Packard’s engineering staff designed and built excellent, reliable engines. Packard offered a 12-cylinder engine—the "Twin Six"—as well as a low-compression straight-eight, but never a 16-cylinder engine. After WWII, Packard continued with their successful straight-eight-cylinder flathead engines. While as fast as the new GM and Chrysler OHV V8s, they were perceived as obsolete by buyers. By waiting until 1955, Packard was almost the last U.S. automaker to introduce a high-compression V8 engine. The design was physically large and entirely conventional, copying many of the first-generation Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Studebaker Kettering features. It was produced in 320 cu in (5.2 L) and 352 cu in (5.8 L) displacements. The Caribbean version had two four-barrel carburetors and produced 275 hp (205 kW). For 1956, a 374 cu in (6.1 L) version was used in the Senior cars and the Caribbean two four-barrels produced 305 hp (227 kW).
In-house designed and built, their Ultramatic automatic transmission featured a lockup torque converter with two speeds. The early Ultramatics normally operated only in "high" with "low" having to be selected manually. Beginning with late 1954, the transmission could be set to operate only in "high" or to start in "low" and automatically shift into "high". Packard’s last major development was the Bill Allison–invented Torsion-Level suspension, an electronically controlled four-wheel torsion-bar suspension that balanced the car’s height front to rear and side to side, having electric motors to compensate each spring independently. Contemporary American competitors had serious difficulties with this suspension concept, trying to accomplish the same with air-bag springs before dropping the idea.
Packard also made large aeronautical and marine engines. Chief engineer Jesse G. Vincent developed a V12 airplane engine called the "Liberty engine" that was used widely in Entente air corps during World War I. Packard-powered boats and airplanes set several records during the 1920s. For Packard’s production of military and navy engines, see the Merlin engine and PT boats, which contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. Packard also developed a jet-propulsion engine for the US Air Force, one of the reasons for the Curtiss-Wright take-over in 1956, as they wanted to sell their own jet.[47]
PACKARD AIRCRAFT ENGINES
During the First World War, Packard played a key role both in the design and the production of the Liberty L-12 engine.
In the interbellum, Packard built one of the world’s first diesel aviation engines, the 225-hp DR-980 radial. It powered the Stinson SM-8D, among others. It also powered a Bellanca CH-300 on a record endurance flight of over 84 hours, a record that stood for more than 50 years.