Sweet Child of Mine: Crystal Palace's new retro sweet shop aims to awaken your inner child - and it works

Growing up in New Zealand, it was 50 cent or one dollar mixtures for me; made up of blackballs (a striped, minty hard candy), the similarly mint-flavoured Spearmint Leaf gummies, Jaffas (an orange-flavoured chocolate ball), the perhaps more familiar Milk Bottles, and the pastel-hued, recently renamed ‘Explorers’. Each one triggers a vivid recollection of wandering the quiet, small-town streets between my house and the local dairy - a corner store for you Brits - with my little sisters, a blissfully stress-less time where we had nothing to do and nowhere to be.

My current neck of the woods, South London’s Crystal Palace, has a new addition to its main shopping drag, known by locals as ‘the Triangle.’ Sweet Child of Mine is an old-school sweet shop and ice cream parlour, with a contemporary twist.

The store is the brainchild of Sue Allison, who’s spent the last 25 years as a TV producer for some of Britain’s most beloved game and quiz shows. She worked on Ant & Dec’s PokerFace, Tetris-inspired Hole In The Wall with Dale Winton, and was the original series producer for The Chase - who helped take it from just an idea on paper to the ratings-busting success it is today.

But, as she told me, the TV industry isn’t what it used to be, with less room and budget for ambitious new shows, and she opted to try something new - something she wanted to be “enchanting”. The name itself proclaims the store’s purpose. Candy stores seem to fall naturally into the domain of the young, but with its big glass jars of sweets harkening back to bygone days to its hand-painted sign, it also serves up a big helping of nostalgia to grown-up visitors - alongside its pick and mix confectionary.

While certainly Britain-inspired, the lollies I grew up with were a little different. This meant Sweet Child of Mine offered a bit of cultural insight to me. From the classic boiled sweets of yesteryear, your pear drops and sherbet lemons, to the more ‘retro’ offerings like foam shrimp and flying saucers, the store was a stroll down a memory lane not of my own making, but created by generations of delighted children.

Flying saucers - which came with the very highest of recommendations from my British flatmate - were strange as an outsider, reminiscent of Catholic school communion wafers with a zing of zesty sherbet inside. At the same time the sensation of their rice paper shells melting in your mouth was oddly moreish, leaving you longing for another. Another unfamiliar offering was the chocolate lime, a hard candy with a strong lime oil flavour. But by the time you’d sucked your way down to its core, the titular chocolate made a sudden appearance with a burst of surprising sweetness.

They’re not my childhood memories, but the magic is there all the same. That was the feeling Sue said she was trying to evoke in her adult customers, that feeling of being a little kid gazing up at the rows of colourful jars and the options they represented in wonder. One elderly woman who had come in recently had asked for one of each of the 50 sweets currently on offer, she told me, a request she was more than happy to oblige.

The decadent ice cream on offer is worth a mention too, and with the shop just a stone’s throw from Crystal Palace Park (buzzing with families on the weekends) it’s sure to be very popular. “Having tasted Marshfield's Farm ice cream on holiday, it was a no-brainer to partner with them for this venture,” Sue said. A good old-fashioned British ice cream company, its flavours range from classics like rum & raisin, to blackcurrant and clotted cream, to a plant-based salted caramel. You can even order a sundae in an edible cup, served with an edible spoon, for an extra touch of Wonka-esque whimsy.

There’s something a bit special about finding a candy store that’s as charming and fun for grown-ups as it is for the little ones. But that sense of childlike wonder is something that’s worth holding on to, and as far as I’m concerned, everyone’s life could use a little more of that magic you felt as a kid transfixed by rows upon rows of sweets.

Sweet Child of Mine can be found at 16 Church Road, in the Crystal Palace triangle, Southeast London. It’s open from Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm to 6pm.