Whether you “liked it like that” or not, the soft drink Lilt is disappearing from the shelves. As its totally tropical taste gets a rebrand to become Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit, readers tell us about the products they have stockpiled when they found out their favourites were being discontinued.
Bhee Bellew, 54, started to stockpile her favourite Eau de Gucci perfume when the fashion house stopped making it 15 years ago. Bellew had worn it regularly since her parents brought it back from a holiday in the Greek islands for her when she was 17.
For her the smell has the power to transport her back to her youth, or special moments in her life. She bought five bottles when it began disappearing from the shelves. Now down to her last bottle, she rarely wears it. Instead it serves a different purpose.
“It’s like time travelling. I spray it and it takes me straight back to the 1980s, getting ready to go out, and all that excitement of going out as a teenager, wondering if I was going to meet that special someone, and feeling quite excited about life.”
Bellew, who lives in Oxford and works in university administration, keeps the last bottle of the carnation-based scent in its original box to try to preserve it.
“I use it, not only to take me back to that time, but also to stand behind myself and see how far I’ve come; wanting to tell that 17-year-old, it’s all going to be OK, especially at that time where there’s that anxiety about not knowing what your future is going to be like.
“I want to keep it until my 80s and 90s, and be able to get it out and be transported to my teenage years.”
It was taste rather than smell that sprang Juliette Totterdell into action in 2021 when she discovered that Bournville was adding milk powder to the ingredients of her favourite chocolate. Totterdell began squirrelling away the dark Cadbury’s chocolate when it changed the ingredients, making it unsuitable for people like her who are lactose intolerant.
She had discovered Bournville in 2019. For years the 25-year-old had persevered with milk chocolate, even though it made her ill, so finding an option that did not upset her stomach was a revelation.
“I had some and it tasted great. It had still got that Cadbury taste, and I could get 200g of it, dairy-free, and eat it without being worried,” said Totterdell, who, ironically, grew up on a dairy farm in Somerset.
However, two years later she found Cadbury’s had added skimmed milk powder, sparking a dash to buy the last remaining bars of the old stock.
“I went to the supermarket and bought about 20 of them, and whenever I went into a corner shop, I would see if they still had the old ones. Then I had to ask my boyfriend to hide them, as with chocolate I have absolutely no self-restraint, I just can’t stop myself.”
The last of the reserve was “long gone”, Totterdell, who lives in Bristol said, but added that even with her last bar, her non-lactose intolerant boyfriend would ask for a piece. “It was a really difficult tug of war,” she said. “But that’s love, I guess.”
Often the longing for discontinued items is nostalgia-driven. The past is a foreign country, they still have Brannigans crisps there.
The corner shop favourite is memorialised in a picture frame in Kurt Howard’s home in Nottingham. Brannigans crisps were halted by their owners, KP, in 2020. Among the brand’s flavours was an almost overpowering roast beef and mustard offering.
Howard’s love stemmed from getting them as a child. He took to the internet after seeing they were being shelved three years ago.
“I saw they were being sold for quite high prices already, so I bought 30 of them. For some reason they delivered 60. The buyer asked for me to send them back, and I just offered to pay him for them,” the 39-year-old said.
The final packet was disappointing, he said. “The flavour was still great, but it was a year out of date, so the quality of crisps had diminished.”
