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Child's Surprise Bag - Bunker Bag?

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  • Child's Surprise Bag - Bunker Bag?

    I am going nuts trying to remember the name of something that is from my childhood, and I also saw mentioned in a Jack the Ripper book.

    When I was young (early 70s) my sister and I would buy a treat from local shops. The newsagent and two grocery stores sold them. I am pretty sure others did too.

    It was a paper bag, often striped, that would contain a small assortment of "surprises".

    So, sweets, stickers and/or waterslide tattoos, a cheap toy such as a bouncy ball or one of those plastic parachute men, small printed cartoons or jokes. Things like that.

    They were inexpensive, and we bought them quite often. I think they were put together by the shop owner rather than being a commercial product, though I may have been too young to notice the difference,

    I know we had a name for them, it was something like "bunker bag", but Google search is not finding anything for that, so I may well be wrong.

    A few months ago I saw this exact term in a newspaper article, referenced in one of my Jack the Ripper books - I think it was The Sourcebook. The quote was something roughly like "He was going to buy bunker bags when he saw the lady by the public house."

    I can't find the quote again, and can't search for it online because a) I can't remember the name of the blinking bags, and b) I can't remember the exact word order etc to make it searchable!

    Please, does anyone remember these bags and what they may have been called? It is driving me insane!

  • #2
    Hi Azarna - I remember this sort of thing being commercially produced and sold when I was a child in the mid to late '60s. They were known as Lucky Bags.

    Best regards,
    OneRound

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    • #3
      Jamboree Bags?

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      • #4
        They were also called Lucky Bags, and Surprise Bag, but there was definitely another word that was pretty close to "bunker".

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        • #5
          I remember them as Lucky Bags too. I’d never heard of Jamboree Bags I just googled them and they existed (not that I thought Gary was on some kind of LSD trip or anything)

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          • #6
            I’ve just found Booty Bags? Any good?

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
              I remember them as Lucky Bags too. I’d never heard of Jamboree Bags I just googled them and they existed (not that I thought Gary was on some kind of LSD trip or anything)
              It was the 60s...

              There were blue JB’s for boys and pink uns for girls. They always contained toffees and ‘cachous’, I seem to recall, plus other sweets and some kind of novelty or toy.

              ‘Bunker’ bag is not ringing any bells, I’m afraid.

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              • #8
                Dick Turtle Lucky Bags. Full of crap.
                Thems the Vagaries.....

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by MrBarnett View Post
                  Jamboree Bags?
                  Takes me back - i knew them as jamboree bags too.

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                  • #10
                    Bumper bag, perhaps?
                    " Queen Vic lured her victims into dark corners with offers of free fish and chips, washed down with White Satin." - forum user C4

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                    • #11
                      Oh, how embarrassing!
                      I rang my mother. Asked her about "bunker bags", did she remember the name?

                      She pointed out that the local sweet shop was called... "Bunkers".

                      So I guess it was a very local name. So whatever I saw in the Ripper book was not going to be referring to the same thing at all.

                      Sorry to waste your time, guys

                      Thank you very much for trying to help this dozy old bat.

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                      • #12
                        Pictures of Jamboree and Lucky Bags at the link. I remember Jamboree Bags.
                        https://memoriesofgrowingupin50sand6...e-jamboree-bag

                        I was telling somebody recently, who has just turned 40, that up to my late teens the local newspaper shop near me sold single tailor-made cigarettes. She couldn't believe it.
                        These are not clues, Fred.
                        It is not yarn leading us to the dark heart of this place.
                        They are half-glimpsed imaginings, tangle of shadows.
                        And you and I floundering at them in the ever vainer hope that we might corral them into meaning when we will not.
                        We will not.

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                        • #13
                          Definitely not a waste of time, I think we all love a delve into nostalgia!

                          I'll see Ozzy's newsagent of yesteryear, and I'll raise him Pinocchio's Chippy in Leicester, selling single cigarettes to 'substantially refreshed' revellers well into the 2010's. Legitimately officer. All duty paid. Ahem.

                          Potato Puffs. Cheapest crisps going, were meant to look like Macaroni, always ended up being a bag full of smashed up shards. And chocolate cigarettes. They were awful, with actual paper round them. Made irresistible by virtue of the fact that I was never allowed to buy them. Truly, a golden age.
                          Thems the Vagaries.....

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                          • #15
                            Herlock, were you really reluctant to mention the Trebor and Barratt Booty Bags?

                            I can't imagine a company calling one that nowadays, hehe.

                            Sigh, it has been a long time since I had Trebor Fruit Salads and Black Jacks. I loved those!

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