Wonka Fun Dip [By Spectre] (Selfridges)

I mentioned my liking for Barrat's Sherbet Dip Dab in the Wham XTRM post. Another old favourite of mine is the orange flavour in Swizzels Matlow's Orange and Cherry Double Dip with Swizzelstick. I never particularly liked the cherry flavour and always ate that first to get it out of the way. Let's face it cherry flavoured things don't go down well with me - cherry sweets, cherry beers, cherry in cakes, whatever... I just don't like cherry flavouring in food. Weirdly, Cinabar made me eat a real black cherry the other day and I actually liked it! Both types of dips had the worrying moment when you either ran out of dip before finishing the Swizzelstick / lolly or visa versa, or the moment when your furious licking and munching punched a hole in the paper packaging. And let's face it, you do not want to sneeze when this stuff is around and devastation for a child is a broken Swizzelstick!

Owned by Nestle, the Wonka brand has a wide variety of products. Fun Dip started off life in 1942 under the name of Lik-m-aid, which is still subtitled on the packaging. Lik-m-aid was first produced by Sunline Inc., which was bought by Nestle in 1989. This Fun Dip has three flavours of dip with 2 candy stix in the usual paper packaging. The flavours are RazzApple Magic Dip, Grape-Yumpilous Dip and Cherry-Yum-Diddly Dip. Gah! What's the fascination with cherry flavour all the time? Three dips and two candy stix seems like Wonka is trying to trounce Swizzels Matlow with the more, more, more theory. Most people know what a Double Dip is though, and as far as I know the phrase hasn't turned into a euphemism yet.

Cherry flavour was first up, for reasons previously mentioned. I ripped open the top of the first stick, which is a white vanilla flavoured icelolly shaped stick with Lik-a-Stix embossed on both sides. With some trepidation I opened the cherry flavour compartment. Having said that, I had a shiver of excitement that reminded me of my school days on ripping open packets of these type of sweets on an almost daily basis. The usual sweet cherry flavouring complimented the vanilla stick very well and in no time I found myself hungrily dipping and licking away like a small child. In an office environment you can imagine this received some odd looks from my colleagues. One mentioned it reminded her of when she was a child eating Double Dips. "This is Triple Dip" I replied greedily. As with Double Dips I was still faced with the same problem, the stick is rounded at the ends so can't get all the sherbet out of the packet. The more you try, the more you lick, the more the paper packet starts to rip under the constant pressure from the wet stick.

Still on my first Lik-a-Stix I ripped open the raspberry apple flavour. The raspberry apple sherbet is blue in colour, which threw me a little to start with. The sherbet goes green when wet, so when the wet stick hit sherbet my initial confusion was ended. There's a subtle raspberry mixed with apple flavour to this sherbet that becomes very moreish very quickly. I found myself gorging on this flavour and wanting more and more. A thin film of raspberry apple flavoured sherbet started to cover my keyboard, monitor and desk. At one point I caught myself rocking back and forth whilst dipping and licking with a little too much excitement. During the cherry flavour I'd found myself missing the orange flavour from Double Dip. The raspberry apple flavour made up for the disappointment. At the end of the raspberry apple sherbet the wet packaging started to buckle and I dumped the Lik-a-Stix into my mouth realising I had one whole flavour left and one whole Lik-a-Stix...

Ripping open the second Lik-a-Stix compartment I noticed my heart was pounding faster in my chest and I was having a massive sugar rush. Watch out if you feed this to an already over active kid, it'd probably be like adding a Refresher to a bottle of Coca-Cola. In quick succession the grape flavour compartment was torn asunder. The sherbet is a violet / purple colour. Mistaken in my greedy rush I dipped the stick in and was slightly confused by the taste. I thought this flavour would be the greatest of all. Not really tasting of an actual real life purple grape, this sherbet has more of a medicinal flavour that would come in some child's grape / blackcurrent medicine tablet. What was first conceived as the best flavour of the three immediately became the worst. I must admit I couldn't finish the compartment and crashed out of my sugar high with a resounding wheeze. I ate the Lik-a-Stix though.

So "Triple" Fun Dip could easily become Double Dip by dropping the revolting grape flavour. The over rated cherry flavour could easily be taken over by an orange flavour, that with the raspberry apple flavour could therefore create the greatest Double Dip of all time. One Lik-a-Stick is quite enough though, and for crying out loud; make it a bit more pointy to reach the corners of each paper compartment! Not too pointy though, for obvious reasons...

By Spectre