Chocolate Surprise is the sweet that Folha readers miss the most

THE Sheet asked which sweets most marked the childhood of his readers. The responses included homemade goodies and chocolates from well-known brands. For the vast majority, the unforgettable flavor that each one brings was added to the taste of nostalgia.

The inspiration was an article published days earlier by the newspaper that said how affective memory can explain why chocolate and snacks taste better in childhood.

“Maria mole was one of the mysteries of my childhood, it looked like jelly, but it didn’t shine or tremble. It was a relative of the sigh, airy like cotton candy, which melted like a delicious candy and then even had a ‘croc’ of grated coconut to say that there was nothing soft”. This is how university professor Fabiana de Menezes Soares, 53, from Belo Horizonte (MG), describes the sweets that her grandmother used to make, which she called “taste in the form of affection”.

Journalist Dário Régoli Júnior, 55, from Atibaia (SP), in addition to maria mole, also mentioned two-color gelatin that, in the 1970s, cost exactly the same amount of change as the money he received from his grandmother to buy milk and bread, during their school holidays.

“It took forever to choose, because the change money was enough for just one candy and, invariably, I ended up choosing either the maria mole, covered in an indelible grated coconut, or the gelatin, made from who knows what and wrapped in a crystal sugar that caused cavities just by looking at it. Saudade”, he adds.

Almost 25% of readers who responded to the form mentioned Chocolate Surpresa, a Nestlé milk formula with a high-relief figure stamped on the candy and which came with collectible educational cards.

“I can even smell French bread from the small neighborhood market where my grandfather bought me a bar with a figurine from outer space. I was five years old. lawyer Pedro Altair, from São Paulo (SP).

“I had a taste for imagination for a child who should have been seven, eight, nine years old,” recalls public servant Luís Filipe Trois Bueno, 44, from Florianópolis (SP).

For businesswoman Ana Marques, 67, from Jundiaí (SP), the taste of the small sugar cones sold door-to-door was stuck in her brain and mouth. “It was a source of income for someone in need and joy for many children. It is a comforting memory. Nothing came from the factory, everything was made in the homes of talented people”.

The cube-shaped peanut candy, Dadinho, was what secretary Rosana Salvador, 52, from Osasco (SP), waited all day, when she was little, for her metallurgist father to bring her on her way home from work. “How nice it is to be remembered and especially to be presented with a sweet”, she says. She feels that the candy still produced today is not as tasty as it used to be.

There are those who associate the satisfaction of eating their favorite candy from childhood with the moments they lived before adulthood. This is the case of Cristina Braga, a 60-year-old engineer from Curitiba. She says that Choco Soy Break chocolate stirs up a “lingering memory” of her freshman year of college, when she would have fun with her classmates in between classes. Today, she wonders if her lack of candy actually means the lack of friends from that time.

Even those sweets not considered so delicious bring fond memories to some of the readers. The well-known chocolate umbrellas, even if they “taste like paraffin”, according to Roberto Ligeiro, 42, left the software engineer, who now resides in Washington, in the United States longing.