SOOTHING, nausea-quelling travel sweets. The perfect companions on short hops, protracted traffic jam filled trips and adventure odysseys. In fact, why leave home without the mini drops that pack a flavourful, often fruity punch the moment they touch the tongue? Some even come with provenance and pedigree.
A. L. Simpkin & Co began making glucose filled confections exactly a century ago and its products have since been taken on record-breaking and history-making journeys around the globe—as well as more mundane sorties, of course. The company supplied RAF personnel throughout the Second World War with its Vita-Glucose tablets (the precursor to today’s vast range of travel sweets). Then, in 1953, its wares, packaged in a small square box, as opposed to today’s trademark circular gold tin, found themselves heading up the world’s most famous mountain.
Simpkins dispatched a couple of tons to help energise the 15 mountaineers, 20 sherpas and 362 porters on that unforgettable British Mount Everest expedition and Edmund Hillary visited the Sheffield factory before setting off for Nepal. Whether or not those sugar tablets were tucked into the bottom of the New Zealander’s canvas kit bag as he edged his way up the South Summit and Hillary Step or whether he savoured the fruit flavour when he stood on top of the world for 18 minutes, admiring the view and taking pictures of Tenzing Norgay, is open to debate.
Joint managing director Adrian Simpkin, grandson of founder Albert Leslie Simpkin, elaborates: ‘I was told that they had taken [our products] with them all the way in their packs, but anything more than that is lost in the annals of time. I do know that, with my grandfather being from Yorkshire, he wasn’t too happy about all that stock going out!’
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