Rowntree’s much-missed Lone Star bar, Texan (1973).

TEXAN

The history of British sweets marketed by knock-off cowboys is long and baffling. When the Milky Bar kid first flaunted the only NHS prescription in nineteenth-century Nevada, kids did indeed still flock to the flicks for historically dubious tales of ethnic cleansing in fetching hats. By the time Rowntree Mackintosh launched their Mighty Chew on the knee-high populace, however, the predominant Western image was of Gran dozing off in front of The High Chaparral.

Nevertheless, in the strong, silent, jaw-jutting mould of Eastwood and Wayne, the Texan Man was effective enough. But whereas Nestlé’s bespectacled law enforcer was an Aryan-tressed riot of six-shooting roundup action, our cartoon friend’s capabilities were limited to getting caught by a variety of racial stereotypes. Injuns and Mexicans alike tied him up, frugged wildly about, then foolishly granted him a last request: a chance to scoff his Texan bar. The resulting postponement of atrocities via the prolonged mastication of chocolate and nougatine eventually rendered his foes unconscious, whereupon he would untie himself, tiptoe over his dozing captors, and mooch off to bore the crap out of some other ethnic minority. He livened up in later ads, effecting daring escapes from ice floes and stagecoaches, and even performed a rather lasciviously chocophiliac hoedown (‘Take your Texan by the hand/Strip it down! My, that’s grand!’), but mainly it was a case of trudging about, sending foreigners to sleep and being, by cowboy standards, a bit of a useless arse.

Not that any of this dented the success of the bar itself. It may not have been the first nougat bar to sell itself on sheer longevity of the chewing experience (several children who purchased the short-lived Cadbury’s Big One in 1971 are still finishing it today as they leaf through their unit trust portfolios), but the combination of that star-spangled wrapper and a block booking of ad breaks on Tiswas enticed a generation to ‘bite through the chocolate and chew... real slow’. Just don’t mention the suffocating tedium.

Rope ’em in. Move ‘em out. Eat ’em up. TV’s ten-gallon toffee-lover, circa 1977.