The Best Novelty Sweets in the UK: Spray, Pop, Dip, Peel and Lick
The Best Novelty Sweets in the UK: Spray, Pop, Dip, Peel and Lick
"The best candy is the kind that makes you do something." — every child who ever opened a Fun Dip
Most sweets are passive. You unwrap them, put them in your mouth, and eat them. That's fine. Fine is fine. But novelty sweets are a different proposition entirely. Novelty sweets ask something of you. You have to spray them, dip them, pop them, peel them, roll them, lick them, wear them, or — in the case of the Toxic Waste Slime Licker — squeeze a tube of sour gel directly onto your tongue while your face does something involuntary.
The experience is the product. That's what makes novelty sweets genuinely irresistible to anyone under sixteen and quietly compelling to everyone else. This guide organises the best novelty sweets by what they actually do — because that's the only taxonomy that makes sense.
What Makes a Novelty Sweet?
A novelty sweet is any confectionery where the fun goes beyond the flavour. The shape, the format, the interaction, the sound, the sensation — something about the experience is designed to surprise or delight in a way that a standard sweet does not.
The category is deliberately broad. Flying saucers from the 1970s and Toxic Waste Slime Licker from the TikTok era are both novelty sweets. Brain Licker roller candy and a candy necklace are both novelty sweets. A Ring Pop and a Pac-Man Arcade Tin are both novelty sweets. What they share is the play factor — the thing that makes them more than just something to eat.
Novelty sweets sell themselves. A Brain Licker on a counter doesn't need a sign. A customer picks it up, looks at it, figures out roughly how it works, and buys it. The format is its own marketing. For retailers, this makes novelty sweets one of the highest-converting impulse purchase categories — particularly near tills and at children's eye level.
Spray Candy — Point, Aim, Open Mouth
Spray candy is exactly what it sounds like: a bottle of flavoured liquid sugar with a nozzle that you point at your mouth. The novelty is the delivery mechanism. The experience is somewhere between refreshing and absurd, which is precisely why children love it and adults are secretly impressed by it.
The spray candy category runs from the straightforward — a bottle of sweet liquid with a nozzle — to the genuinely theatrical. The best spray products borrow their identity from brands customers already know and love. Tango, Slush Puppie, Vimto, Icee — these are names that create instant recognition at the point of sale. You don't need to explain what a Tango spray is. The name explains itself.
The KoKo's range is the most extensive spray candy line available from Sweet and Glory — Icee sprays, Slush Puppie sprays, and novelty formats that go beyond the standard bottle, including a snake-shaped spray that fires from the head and a giant Icee spray that is a display product as much as a confectionery product. The Candy Castle Mutations range adds a fire extinguisher format to the mix. Dr Sour Light Up Blast Spray takes the category to its logical extreme: the bottle lights up when you use it. The sweet is almost secondary.
For sour spray fans: Warheads produces a spray format — the extreme sour brand applied to a liquid delivery mechanism. See our full sour candy guide for the complete sour range.
Browse the full spray candy range in our candy section.
Dipping Candy — The Lick, Dip, Repeat Format
Dipping candy is one of the most enduring novelty formats in confectionery history. The concept is ancient and perfect: a stick or lollipop to dip into flavoured powder or gel, repeat indefinitely until either the powder runs out or you have to go somewhere.
Fun Dip has been doing the lick-dip-repeat thing since the 1940s and has never needed to change. A flavoured candy stick, a packet of flavoured sugar powder, and the unspoken understanding that when the stick runs out you just tip the powder directly into your mouth. The Lik-M-Aid name is the original — both versions are available from Sweet and Glory.
The KoKo's brand has taken the dipping format and run with it harder than anyone else — an enormous range of Dip-N-Lik formats where the container itself is the novelty - a gnome, a puppy, an Icee cup, a locking jaw that snaps shut. The container is what the customer picks up; the powder inside is almost incidental. The Lil Dips are the pocket money entry point; the character formats are the display anchors.
Bazooka's Juicy Drop range upgrades the format from powder to liquid gel — a sour gel you dip a hard candy lollipop into. The gel adds a second dimension that powder alone can't achieve: an immediate sour hit that powder takes longer to deliver.
Candy Castle's dipping range adds themed containers — an ice cream cone, a unicorn — where the shape of the container creates the reaction before the sweet is even opened. Browse the full dipping candy range in our candy section.
Popping Candy — The One That Crackles
Popping candy was invented in 1956 by General Foods chemist William Mitchell — who also invented Tang, Cool Whip, and instant Jell-O, a run of achievements that is frankly difficult to top. The concept is simple: carbon dioxide gas is trapped inside sugar crystals at high pressure during manufacturing. When the crystals dissolve on your tongue, the gas is released and the candy crackles. It sounds alarming. It is completely harmless. Children love it unconditionally.
Pop Rocks is the original — invented in 1956, on sale from the mid-1970s, and still the benchmark. A full flavour range from Sweet and Glory, plus the Pop Rocks Dips format that combines a lollipop with popping candy for a simultaneous hit.
Aftershock takes the format upmarket — a harder, more intense crackle, in individual sachets or the twin-flavour 30g pack. The KoKo's range pairs popping candy with a lollipop in the Icee format.
Browse the full popping candy range in our candy section.
Lick and Roll — Liquid Candy in a Roller
The roller licker is one of the most successful novelty candy formats of the past decade. The concept is straightforward — sour liquid candy in a bottle with a roller ball applicator — but the experience of applying flavoured sugar directly to your tongue via a ball-point mechanism creates a reaction that never gets old, particularly for anyone under twelve and for anyone who has had a Brain Licker for the first time after a decade of not thinking about them.
Brain Licker arguably started the whole roller licker format in the UK — sour liquid candy applied to the tongue via a roller ball. The name generates curiosity on its own. The packaging closes the sale. Lickedy Lips is the gentler sister product for younger or less sour-inclined customers, and the Vimto Roller Licker brings the format to a brand that needs no introduction.
Then there's the Toxic Waste Slime Licker — a squeeze tube of sour gel applied directly to the tongue. A TikTok staple. Reaction videos of people trying it for the first time are a genre unto themselves. It is one of the most recognised novelty candy products among the 10-25 age group in the UK. The Slime Licker Spray version adds a nozzle for those who prefer their sour gel at a slight distance. See our TikTok candy guide for more on viral candy formats.
The Warheads Double Drops Liquid brings the extreme sour brand into liquid candy territory. Browse the full liquid candy and roller licker range in our candy section.
Peel and Play — Gummies That Do Something
A relatively new novelty format that has grown significantly in the past few years — gummy sweets with a peelable outer skin that you pull away to reveal the candy inside. The peeling action adds a tactile satisfaction to the eating experience that standard gummies don't have. It also makes the format inherently shareable and TikTok-friendly — the reveal is photogenic.
Amos Peelerz and Cravers Peelz are the two main ranges — gummies with a soft peelable outer skin that you pull back to reveal a chewier centre. The two textures are the selling point. The Amos 4D Gummy Blocks push the concept further — multi-layered gummies with a liquid centre that bursts when you bite through. Three novelty moments in one product: the shape, the layers, the burst. Browse the full peel and gummy range in our candy section.
Wearable Sweets — The Ones You Put On
Wearable sweets are exactly what they sound like — candy you wear before you eat. The format has been a novelty staple for decades, from the candy necklace and the candy watch to the Ring Pop and the Push Pop. The wearing is part of the experience: it extends the time between purchase and consumption, creates a display element, and makes the sweet interactive in a way that a standard lollipop does not.
Bazooka's Ring Pop has been generating playground social currency since 1979 and has never needed updating. You wear it, you lick it, you wear it some more. The Push Pop adds the retractable mechanism — push the candy up, lick it, cap it off. The Flip n Dip Push Pop combines both concepts: retractable lollipop with a built-in powder dip compartment.
Licensed products dominate the wearable and character format category — Barbie Candy Lip Gloss (sweet candy in a cosmetic container), Stitch Eating Paper with a candy tattoo, K-Pop Stars lollipops with a collectible photocard (every card different — the Pokémon card mechanic applied to confectionery). The Candy Lips drinks range blurs the line between novelty beverage and candy. Browse the full wearable and novelty format range in our candy section.
Novelty Shapes — Sweets That Look Like Other Things
Novelty-shaped sweets have been a confectionery staple since the beginning. The premise is simple: a sweet that looks like something unexpected creates a double-take moment, and the double-take moment creates the sale. Gummy pizzas, gummy burgers, gummy hotdogs — the food-as-sweet crossover is a format that has never stopped working.
The double-take reaction when you spot a gummy shaped like fast food is as reliable as it was twenty years ago. Miniature candy jars add a premium feel to a pocket money product — the format signals something considered even when the price doesn't. The KoKo's Icee Giant Gummy takes the scale approach: a single enormous gummy shaped like an Icee cup. Nobody sees it and says nothing.
Browse the full novelty-shaped range in our candy section.
Licensed Character and Gaming Candy — Nostalgia That Sells Itself
Licensed confectionery has always been one of the most reliable novelty formats — a familiar face does the selling without any further explanation needed. The Sweet and Glory range includes two particularly strong areas: Nintendo gaming candy and character formats for younger audiences.
The Nintendo range is the clearest example of licensed candy done properly. Rather than printing a character on a wrapper, each format takes one piece of Nintendo's visual language and rebuilds it as confectionery - the controller, the coin, the mushroom, the Question Mark Box. The result is a sweet that reads as a collectible before it reads as candy, which is why the tins in particular get bought by adults for themselves rather than for children. Anyone who has played a Nintendo game in the last few decades will clock the reference immediately. The Pac-Man Arcade Tins, Rubik's Cube Tins, Pusheen Strawberry Candy, and The Simpsons Donut Tin extend the licensed gaming and pop culture range further. The tin formats in particular are gift-quality products — they look considered on a shelf and reusable as storage after the sweets are gone.
For younger audiences, Peppa Pig Marshmallows cover one of the most recognised characters in the 2-6 age group. It is a parent-friendly format — marshmallows rather than extreme sour or novelty challenge candy — and it carries the kind of character recognition that means a child spots it before the parent does.
The wider licensed range also includes the Hangover Helper Mints Tin and Memory Mints Tin — novelty gift-format mints for the adult end of the novelty category, and strong impulse purchases at the till for customers who want something funny rather than something sweet.
For Retailers: Making the Most of Novelty Sweets
Novelty sweets are the most reliable impulse-purchase category in confectionery retail. The format sells itself — a Brain Licker or a Toxic Waste Slime Licker does not need a sign. The key is visibility and positioning.
The golden rule: eye level, till point. Novelty sweets need to be seen to be bought. A Brain Licker at the back of a shelf sells nothing. The same Brain Licker at eye level beside the till sells consistently. The visual is the marketing.
Group by experience, not by brand. A spray section, a dipping section, a popping section, a roller licker section — customers browse by what they want to do, not by who made it. Grouping formats together creates a clear navigation that helps customers find what they're looking for and discover what they didn't know they wanted.
The TikTok display. Toxic Waste Slime Licker, Noomz freeze dried, and Warheads are among the most TikTok-recognised novelty candy products in the UK for the 10-25 age group. Display them together with a simple label — 'As Seen on TikTok' — and the display becomes self-explanatory to the primary customer demographic.
Pocket money pricing at the front. The entry-level novelty purchase — Lil Dips, individual Aftershock sachets, small KoKo's formats — at the front creates a first purchase that converts browsers into buyers. The first buy is the hardest. After that, they come back.
Licensed products as anchors. Nintendo gaming candy, Peppa Pig marshmallows, Stitch Eating Paper, Barbie Candy Lip Gloss, K-Pop Stars Lollipop — licensed products sell on recognition. They anchor the display with familiar faces and create a reason for parents as well as children to stop and look.
For the full guide to setting up your American candy and novelty display, see our American candy section setup guide. For the most viral novelty candy on TikTok right now, see our TikTok candy trends guide.
Browse the Full Novelty Range
Browse the full candy range for the complete novelty sweet selection.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented popping candy? William Mitchell, a General Foods chemist, in 1956. He also invented Tang and Cool Whip - three of the strangest products in American food history, all from the same man. Popping candy works by trapping carbon dioxide in sugar crystals under pressure; the crackle is the gas escaping as the sugar dissolves.
What is the oldest novelty sweet still sold today? Fun Dip is one of the oldest. Its lick-dip-repeat format dates from the 1940s, when it was sold as Lik-M-Aid, and it has barely changed since, because a flavoured stick and a packet of powder is about as simple as confectionery gets. The Ring Pop, from 1979, is one of the oldest wearable sweets still sold.
What is a Slime Licker? Liquid sour candy you apply straight to the tongue, made by Toxic Waste. It became one of the most-viewed products on TikTok and has since gone into squeeze and spray formats too.
What are novelty sweets? Any confectionery where the fun goes beyond the flavour - the shape, the format, the interaction or the challenge is the point. Spray candy, dipping powders, popping candy, roller lickers, peelable gummies and wearable sweets all sit in the category.
Which chocolate has popping candy in it? In the UK the best known is Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations, with Terry's Chocolate Orange Popping Candy close behind. Both work the same way as a packet of Pop Rocks: the popping candy is mixed into the chocolate as small crystals holding pressurised carbon dioxide, and it only starts to crackle when the chocolate melts on your tongue and lets moisture reach it. That is also why it stays silent in the wrapper.
How does a Push Pop work? The lollipop sits inside a plastic tube with a cap. Push the base and the sweet rises out of the top, lick it, then pull it back down and put the cap on to save the rest for later. Topps launched it in 1986, and the resealable tube is the whole point — it is one of the few lollipops you can put back in your pocket.
Related guides: TikTok candy trends guide · Best sour candy UK · Retro American candy: 80s and 90s brands · Pop Rocks complete UK guide · Airheads complete UK guide · Why pineapple is 2026's flavour of the year · American Super Bowl snacks guide · Candy Kittens complete UK guide
Sources
Wikipedia, Pop Rocks (William A. Mitchell, General Foods; patented 1961, test-marketed 1974): en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, Ring Pop (Topps, 1979): en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, Push Pop (1986, capped tube): en.wikipedia.org
Written by Sharon Wilson, Sweet and Glory. Sweet and Glory has imported American and world confectionery into the UK from Trafford Park, Manchester, since 2015.
