Discontinued UK biscuits spark nostalgia and petitions

A number of once‑ubiquitous British biscuits, spanning favourites from the 1970s through the early 2000s, have been discontinued or are now difficult to find on supermarket shelves, prompting nostalgia and petitions from longtime fans. Among the most missed are Cartoonies, Garibaldis, Penguin Flipper Dippers, the Bisc bar range, Foxs Echo bar, a buttercream‑filled McVities biscuit popular in the 1970s, and Cafe Noir, a coffee‑flavoured McVities treat still reported as rare.

Cartoonies were bite‑sized chocolate‑filled biscuits with a decorated crunchy shell that were particularly popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. They became much harder to locate after their maker, Burtons Biscuits, was taken over in 2013, according to industry accounts and consumer reports. Fans have described them as among the best biscuits of that era.

Garibaldi biscuits, named after the Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, once lined supermarket shelves across the UK. The rectangular, perforated raisin biscuits—often sold in snap‑apart strips—have declined in popularity in recent decades. The snack is sometimes dismissed by consumers as the so‑called squashed fly biscuit, a derisive nickname that has...