More old food and drink I miss

As you may have seen on the World Of Crap facebook page, we have recently been enjoying a box of Kellogs Start at breakfast time.

I haven't had Start since I was about three, and even then I probably wouldn't have been able to eat it, since the best way to describe it is a very, very manly version of Cheerios. You have to leave it in the milk for roughly an hour before you start to nom.

Having said that, we're determined to finish the box for nostalgia purposes, because we're insane.

I'm not sure if they recently brought Start back, or if I just haven't noticed it around for twenty five years. Either way, it counts as blast from the past food.

And now, because that bit was so interesting to read, here are four more things I miss stuffing my face with -

Burger King BK Flamer

I was the kind of kid who hated any kind of weird food with weird stuff in, so whenever I had fast food I always had to have it specially done with no sauce or manky pickles or anything. My best ever plain burger was a BK flamer – I think it was probably meant to come with lettuce and mayo or something, but the small me was in seventh heaven eating a piece of reformed chicken breast between two slices of bread. It was called a Flamer because they cooked it by setting it on fire, or something. Nowadays you can get something very similar in the form of a Rustlers chicken burger, which is actually very nice to say you do it in the microwave.

Tab Clear

I only really remember having this once, when I went to see the poet Mike Harding doing a show at our school. I never really found out why he did this. I also don't remember how I came to have the can of Tab Clear – it wasn't the kind of drink my parents would have bought on a whim, so I must have asked for it. It was lovely – not quite a syrupy as normal Coke or Diet Coke. This year I've started drinking Tab regular, which I buy whenever I come across an American shop that sells it, and that's pretty similar. I've just realised how boring this bit is – it's essentially me droning on about not liking full fat Coke. Well done you if you're still reading this.

Gino Ginelli ice cream

This is more one for the mister, because although I remember the brilliant advert, I don't really remember what the ice cream tasted like. But he loved their toffee fudge flavour, which he is bound by law to always pronounce “toffee FAUDGE!” for reasons known only to him.

Some liquid coffee concentrate that I can't remember the name of, and that I can't find any bloody record of ever -

NOT Camp Coffee. This stuff was launched sometime in the early to mid 90s in the UK, and its main USP was that 'you find it in the chiller aisle!' Imagine! Buying coffee from next to the milk! The unusualness! Whatever next, marrying goats?

I vaguely remember the bottle; it was dark brown and shaped something like this -

And I'm sure the name ended in O, like Senseo or Tassimo, only not.

In my neverending quest to find out what this bloody coffee is called, I went to the Bramah museum of tea and coffee's website, only to find that the museum had shut down four years ago. It's got so bad that I'm seriously considering emailing Nescafe, Kenco and Douwe Egberts to ask them if they were responsible. But I'd look like a mad lady. They might ask why I want to know, and then I'd have to say something like “because it haunts my dreams at night, please help me!”

We've only got about eight bits of Start left in the box now, which is good because when it's finished I can use the box to make a pretend tank or something.