teas.co.uk
Tea and coffee from the brands you know
Texan bar
Texan takes time a chewin. The chocolate covered chew bar with the cowboy adverts was once voted the favourite sweet of all time.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
The Texan was a chocolate covered bar of nougat and toffee, sold in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. It was very chewy, and that was the whole joke.
The cowboy adverts
The television adverts starred a cartoon cowboy captured by bandits and tied to a stake. Asked if he had a last request, he asked for a Texan bar. It took him so long to eat that his captors fell asleep, and he escaped. His catchphrases were that someone should have told them a Texan takes time a chewin, and that it sure is a mighty chew.
The adverts made the point perfectly: this was not a bar you finished in a hurry. Building a whole advertising campaign around how long a sweet takes to eat was a bold idea, and it is a big part of why people still remember the Texan decades after it disappeared.
Voted the best
The Texan was withdrawn from sale in 1984. But it was not forgotten: in a 2004 survey of sweet shop customers, the Texan bar was rated their favourite sweet of all time, by a large margin.
The 2005 comeback
That affection did not go unnoticed. In 2005 Nestlé brought the Texan back as a limited nostalgia edition. It was a brief return rather than a permanent one.
A bar of its time
Chewy chocolate bars built around nougat and toffee were a big part of the 1970s sweet counter, alongside rivals such as Cadbury's Aztec. Many of them have gone, but their names are still a quick way to take people back to their childhood, much like Spangles.
More lost sweets
For the rest of the list of sweets and bars people most want back, see sweets you can no longer buy and what sweets were popular in the 1980s?.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
What was a Texan bar?
A chewy bar of nougat and toffee covered in chocolate, sold in the 1970s and 1980s.
When was the Texan bar discontinued?
It was withdrawn in 1984, and briefly relaunched by Nestlé as a limited nostalgia edition in 2005.
What was the Texan bar advert?
A cartoon cowboy, tied to a stake by bandits, asked for a Texan bar as his last request. It took so long to chew that his captors fell asleep and he escaped.
Sources
- Texan (chocolate bar), Wikipedia
- Nestlé, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- British heritage sweetsAztec barThe Aztec was a Cadbury bar of nougat and caramel, launched in 1967 to take on the Mars bar and discontinued in 1978. A 2000 revival did not last.
- British heritage sweetsSpanglesSpangles were square boiled sweets with a dimple on each side, made by Mars from 1950 to 1984. In 2008 they topped a poll of brands Britons most wanted back.
- British heritage sweetsSweets you can no longer buySpangles, Pacers, Aztec, Texan, Opal Fruits and Marathon: the British sweets and bars that disappeared or changed their names, and the few that came back.
- Questions people askWhat sweets were popular in the 1980s?Drifter, Wispa, Wham bars, Boost, Cabana and Secret all arrived in 1980s Britain, while Spangles, Texan and Pacers bowed out. Here is the decade year by year.
- Sweet scandals and controversiesWhen Nestle bought RowntreeIn 1988 a dawn raid on Rowntree's of York ended with the Swiss giant Nestlé buying the maker of KitKat, Aero and Smarties for £2.55bn. Here is how it happened.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned sweets: the A to ZAn A to Z of old fashioned British sweets, from acid drops and aniseed balls to Wham bars and yellowman, with a line on each and a link to its full story.