IT HAS been some time since I last saw a shop assistant as enthusiastic as this one as she leans over to hand over sweets to these young customers. This was a special day in April 1949, as sweets were taken off the ration introduced during the war, and all shops were besieged with youngsters who had saved up their pocket money for such an occasion.

The photographer who took this picture in a Glasgow shop noted that “the boy on the right seems to have laid on a goodly stock”.

In fact, that was the problem. So many people wanted to gorge themselves with the ending of rationing that shops quickly ran out of sweets, and with manufacturers still rationed on how much sugar they could buy, supplies could not keep up with demand, and within four months sweets were put back on the ration.

It was not until 1953 that the Government felt manufacturers could cope, and sweets came off rationing for a second time.

The Herald noted back in 1949 that children were buying so many sweets that one shop-owner said he would have to keep supplies “under the counter” for his regular customers.

Just out of sight is the shop’s scales, as many sweets then still came in jars and were weighed out in quarter pounds.