Last week I was made aware of a TV programme on this theme, featuring celebrity chef & food writer Nigel Slater: Life is Sweets (5th November, BBC4).
The programme is primarily concerned with Slater's personal recollections of childhood in the 1960s, and the role that sweets played. It also takes a look at the history of confectionary production in the UK, and the origins of many items as Victorian medical supplies.
Association
Slater is clearly affected emotionally by the experience of "being surrounded by all the colours and flavours of so long ago [...] immediately transported back to the days of short trousers and satchels." This potency brings Slater initial feelings of joy, followed by pangs of sadness for events from that period in his life (such as the death of his mother, which he associates with marshmallows).
“Sweets are memorials of our innocence; they remind us of what-it-was-like when we were children.”This suggests an issue which is not addressed within the programme, but is relevant to my research: the strength of emotional reaction relates to an individual's mental associations & recollections. It is very difficult to gauge a person's reaction to a trigger, and its relative effect emotionally, unless you are familiar with that person's emotional history and childhood surroundings. In Slater's case, sweets resonate with troubled times of desperately seeking approval from his father, and youthful rebellion & isolation -- powerful emotions.
— Tim Richardson, sweet historian
Therefore, if attempting to artificially trigger a reaction, we must rely upon common experiences. For example, the excitement of buying "a quarter of..." is likely to be the same for many children of the 1960s or 1970s, regardless of what product they bought or its price -- given that such an event would be relatively exciting compared with day-to-day life. Of course, kids who grew up surrounded by videos & computer games in the 1980s & 1990s are far less likely to have the same response.
Triggers
The retro sweet shop which he visits is interesting in itself, because it is quite evident that it has been designed specifically to reflect the mental picture of "old time" sweet shops, regardless of historical accuracy.
Long shelves of jars of sweets; a mechanical cash register; dim lighting; paper bags; old brand names & logos on display -- all these things evoke the desired response in a customer.
Of course, none of the jars contain 50-year-old confectionary! Despite the fact that many of the branded sweets are related to the originals by name & appearance only, the effect is the same.
This reinforces a belief that I've forged during my nostalgia research: that it's vital to identify with the mental recollection that people have. Truth & accuracy are an irrelevant distraction, unless they can add extra detail which can be exploited.
This can be seen in case of the famous Star Wars toy figure Boba Fett, which was allegedly released with a working projectile rocket back-pack. Many people continue to propagate this urban legend, and will swear blind that they had a friend who had one. Highlighting the fallacy of this will diminish the enjoyment of a group of 40-year-old men recollecting their common experience of playing with Star Wars toys.