What sweets have been discontinued in the UK?

Plenty of British sweets and chocolate bars have been discontinued. The best remembered, such as Spangles, Pacers, Aztec and Texan, have their own stories: see sweets you can no longer buy Here are more of the bars that have gone, with dates, and what the makers said.

Bars that have gone

• Drifter. Rowntree's launched Drifter in 1980, a wafer topped with caramel and covered in milk chocolate. Nestlé took it over with Rowntree's in 1988, dropped it in 2007 and brought it back in May 2008. In October 2018 Nestlé discontinued it again, due to low consumer demand. It had been made at Fawdon, in Newcastle upon Tyne. Asked about it in 2025, Nestlé said: "Unfortunately, the Drifter bar has been discontinued from our range."
• Secret. A Rowntree Mackintosh bar from the 1980s, with a nest of chocolate around a mousse centre, remembered for a 1990 advert in which a woman on a train cannot resist eating the bar she has been asked to guard. It was discontinued in the late 1990s because of high production costs and low sales volumes, and in 2025 Nestlé said it had no plans to bring it back.
• Fuse. Cadbury launched Fuse, milk chocolate packed with peanuts, raisins, crisp cereal and fudge pieces, on 24 September 1996, and 40 million bars sold in the first week. It was discontinued in November 2006. In 2015 Cadbury recreated it for 100 winners of an online vote. The Fuse sold in India since 2016 is a different bar.
• Coconut Boost. Boost began in Britain in 1985 as Coconut Boost, a coconut and caramel bar. The coconut version was discontinued in 1994, and the biscuit version is now the standard Boost.
• Time Out. Cadbury's original Time Out, launched in 1992, had been discontinued by 2016 because of declining sales, and was replaced in Britain by a single bar with more wafer and less chocolate.
• Mars Delight was discontinued in the UK in 2008.
• Variants. Plenty of versions of long running bars have come and gone. Fry's Five Centres was made from 1934 to 1992, and the peanut Yorkie was discontinued, brought back as a limited edition in 2014, and then discontinued again.

Gone, then back

Some sweets return. Freddo was launched in the UK in 1973 at 2p, withdrawn in 1979 and relaunched in 1994 at 10p. Its price has since become an informal measure of inflation, and a rise to 30p in 2017 drew criticism on social media. Fry's Orange Cream was discontinued in 2015 and relaunched in 2018. Wispa came back too, after a fan campaign: see the Wispa comeback

Why sweets disappear

The reasons on record are mostly commercial:

• Low demand or falling sales, as with Drifter, Secret and the original Time Out.
• High production costs, as with Secret.
• Takeovers and closures. Cadbury's takeover by Kraft in 2010 led to the closure of the old Fry's factory at Somerdale: see the Somerdale factory promise
• Global names. Some sweets never went away but lost their British names, such as Marathon, which became Snickers in 1990, and Opal Fruits, which became Starburst in 1998: see when Marathon became Snickers

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