There’s no way I can win with this list. Someone’s nose will be put out of joint, so potent are our ties to the snacks that form the foundations of our childhood.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to go in as hard as I can towards brutal honesty, feelings be damned. Here, then, are the 10 best snacks embraced by Australians.
11. Tim Tams
If you thought this absolute scrublord snack was going to be No 1 on this list, you’re dreaming. The Tim Tam is the most basic Australian snack food, and yes, I mean that as an insult.
Coveted for god knows what reason, this mediocrity is sitting here for two reasons: one, because if I don’t put it here, the comments section will blow up, and two, because putting it here outside the confines of the list is deeply amusing, and will guarantee the comments section will blow up. When it comes to hedonism, this sub-par biscuit is the equivalent of a sexy fireman calendar and a bath ringed with scented tea candles. May it burn in the pits of mediocrity forever.
If you’re still reading and didn’t log off because that last one touched too much of a nerve, welcome. Here begins the real list.
10. Double Dip
Double Dip is a corner-shop staple, and remains so to this very day. Why? Behold: the illusion of choice. Do you eat the orange sherbert? Do you eat the cherry sherbert? Or do you smash the system, and eat the very implement used for scooping and eating the sherbert? Ahh. But the makers of Double Dip know the terrible truth: you’ll eat it all in the end. It’s like The Matrix, if you take the blue pill AND the red pill. AND eat Morpheus.
9. Scribbler
The Tasmanian Tiger of Australian junk food, the Scribbler was an ice block sold by Streets back in the nineties. It looked like a large pencil, with yellow for the wooden interior and a red coating. A chocolate ball was the lead. There was something so illicit about chowing down on a giant pencil, but it was the combination of ice block and chocolate that really pushed the boat out here.
Streets wheeled out chocolate-free bastardisations over the years, but we’re not fooled. So obscure is the original Scribbler that you can only find images like the one above. See? It’s almost mythical. Also, being a kid who refused to pick up a pencil and do their damned homework, but who was only too happy to eat a pencil within full view of their parents? That’s power, my friends.
8. Iced Vovo
People regularly claim that the Iced Vovo used to be larger. Pillowy. And yet when you buy them now, they’re very small, and very flat.
god damn it i just made an angry iced vovo meme pic.twitter.com/xuhISJf9H8
— Paul F Verhoeven (@paulverhoeven) June 6, 2019
Now after much digging – and arguing – it turns out this is a prime case of the Mandela Effect, wherein a large number of people get confused about a thing, perpetuate it, and years later, the fake thing has replaced the real thing in their heads. Enter this thread:
Rewriting history #289. About 20 years ago, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, I photoshopped either this image, or one like it (I did some similar ones after the original) to show Australian Arnott's Iced Vovos with marshmallows on them. I think it was in response to a friend- pic.twitter.com/9vUfwksSaW
— Dana Sibera (@NanoRaptor) May 21, 2021
See, it turns out there’s a good chance that an old Photoshop job, mingled with real memories, convinced people that Iced Vovos are pillowy, marshmallow wonderment. With all of this in mind, why is the Iced Vovo still so low on this list? Because we’ve been had, that’s why. And someone has to pay. Why not the Iced Vovo?
7. Musk sticks
Musk is used primarily in perfume. Why do we eat it? Why is it compressed into pink sticks and thrown in jars? Because we have refined palates here in Australia, that’s why. In an age where gastronomical pioneering is championed, where sweet and savoury are blended, and where florals work their way into cocktails, what’s so wild about a musk flavoured lolly? Nothing, that’s what. Oh, and much like any good proctologist will tell you, soft ones are good ones, and avoid the hard, chalky ones at all costs.
6. Milo
Milo belongs on the periodic table. So primal and fundamental it is to the firmament, the very bedrock of Australian food culture, that its inclusion on a list of junk food is like including flour in a list of the 10 best cakes. How do you eat Milo? Do you pour then stir like crazy? Hot or cold? Do you deposit three heaped tablespoons atop a glass of milk and try not to sneeze? Or do you eat it from the tin like a filthy bin wizard? No judgement here.
The Milo website claims that the drink is named after “MILO® of Croton, a Greek wrestler who lived in the 6th century BC and possessed legendary strength”, which is all well and good. But beware any company so powerful it can literally trademark the name of an ancient Greek wrestler.
5. Bertie Beetle
Plenty of products have been ousted from the annals of Australia’s snack food history books, but much like insects, Bertie Beetle has hidden in the cracks and survived. Thrived? No. But escaping into the confectionary crawl space that is the cut-price showbag industry is an ingenious way to ride out the storm. They’re kind of tasty, I guess, but it’s their bizarre mascot that really makes them shine. Is Bertie Beetle a hero? A villain? Either way, he’ll outlive us all.
4. Tasty Toobs
You’ve got to respect a snack that dies in the early naughties then returns due to public demand. Discontinued in 2001, mounting pressure from Aussies brought the Tasty Toob back in 2007. It left again in 2015, and has come back again, hitting shelves in 2021. Tasty Toobs are the John Farnham of snacks. Smiling Jack? No. Smiling SNACK … I’ll show myself out.
3. Rainbow Paddlepop
“Actually, it’s just caramel flavoured” is the “actually, it’s Frankenstein’s MONSTER” of the Australian ice-cream world. Yes, Dad, we know the rainbow paddlepop is caramel flavoured. Although … is it? Remember climbing out of the local pool, hot pavement burning your feet as you run to the shade of the kiosk to order a paddlepop? Remember gazing upon the swirling eddies of colour, drunk on the possibilities? The sugar rockets straight to your young brain; the stick is tacky with melting icecream. We don’t care. Caramel? That’s not caramel we’re holding in our hands. That’s the universe.
2. Polly Waffle
Dads love two things: making excellent time, and Pollywaffles. Perhaps it’s because deep down, dads feel deeply misunderstood. Perhaps they love an underdog. Perhaps they’re running headfirst towards a diabetes diagnosis. Whatever the case, I’ve bought and handed a Pollywaffle to three dads in my life. Each time, they reacted like I was the Lady in the Lake handing Excalibur back to Arthur. Honestly, there’s something weird going on here, and who am I to get between a Papa and his Polly? Nobody. That’s who.
1. The Agro cone
It’s the most basic rule of economics: scarcity increases value. By that metric, the Agro cone is staggeringly valuable. Technically, the sugar content of many of the snacks on this list would all but guarantee they’d survive the nucleariest of nuclear winters. But the Agro cone? That was a moment in time. A cultural touchstone tethered to a perpetually petulant puppet. It’s the food equivalent of Nikki Webster being lowered into the Olympic stadium.
Sure, you can technically go and order an Agro cone from a Mister Whippy. Sure, you can technically knock on Nikki Webster’s door and ask her to perform for you. But both had a brief, shining window outside of which, unless you were there, you’ll never truly grasp what all the fuss was about.
