My wife and I were musing the other day – as we often do, and the subject came around to chocolate bars. In particular the Snickers bar.
For those of you Brits of a particular age, and I include myself in this category, these things will always be Marathons. I quite often say I’d like a Marathon – primarily out of habit, but also cos it winds the kids up something rotten. What’s a Marathon, Dad? Well if you don’t know, perhaps you should find out? And so they do, only to forget the next time that I fancy a naughty snack.
On the subject of the name, Snickers is such an un-British one don’t you think? OK, so that’s what they were always called in Australia – but then they call Castlemaine XXXX beer. Anyway, enough such national stereotyping, I was looking for one of the ads that ran in the run up to the name change. It has an Aussie, recently arrived in Blighty, desperate for a Snickers, but since we called them Marathons at the time, he couldn’t locate what he wanted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it for you, but I have got this one from around 1980. ‘Comes up peanuts, slice after slice.’ Just look at the strange angle that the actors are obliged to hold the bar to show the name. Like we’re gonna forget?!