A Barratt Story Rather Than a Dip Dab Origin Story
There is not a neat, well-sourced origin tale for Dip Dab in the information we have, so it is better not to dress it up as one. What we can say is that the Barratt name sits in a long line of British sweet making. The firm became a limited company in 1909, valued at £330,000, which was a substantial confectionery concern by any sensible measure. Its early range was mainly boiled sweets, including butter, raspberry and ginger toffees, before expanding into lines such as Almond Rock, Brandy Snaps and Stickjaw. In the 1880s Barratt also introduced Yankee Panky, described as a low-boiled sweet wrapped in wax paper, an early example of the company thinking carefully about how sweets were packaged as well as how they tasted.
Hoxton, Sugar Boilers, and a Pony and Trap
The Barratt business began much earlier, in 1848, when George Osborne Barratt started a sugar confectionery business at 32 Shepherdess Walk in Hoxton, London. The beginnings sound wonderfully small compared with the later scale: one sugar boiler, a London address, and a founder who had previously worked in a lawyer’s office and briefly as a pastry cook. Barratt is said to have delivered and promoted his products around London by pony and trap, which is the sort of detail corporate histories would invent if it were not already sitting there, stubbornly Victorian and rather charming.
From Hoxton to Wood Green
As the business grew, the Hoxton site became too small, and Barratt moved to a former piano factory on Mayes Road in Wood Green, north London. The first building there was ready in 1882. That move matters because Barratt was not simply a name on a packet. It became a large manufacturing presence, tied to the expansion of British sugar confectionery at a time when boiled sweets, toffees and sherbet products were becoming everyday pleasures for working families. By 1906, the company employed around 2,000 people and produced large quantities of sweets each week. That is quite a leap from one sugar boiler in Hoxton, though one suspects the paperwork also became less fun.
The Sweetshop Family Tree
Barratt’s later history is a bit of a sweetshop family tree, with branches that do not always sit neatly on the modern packet. Barratt & Co. Ltd. was acquired by Bassett’s in 1966, and Bassett’s was later taken over by Cadbury Schweppes in 1989. Since 2008, the Barratt brand has been part of the Tangerine Confectionery portfolio, later known as Valeo Confectionery. The Barratt name itself was brought back into active use in 2018. For shoppers, the important point is simpler: the modern Dip Dab packet carries a name that has been attached to British sweets for generations, even if the ownership behind it has been through the usual confectionery reshuffling.
Why It Still Works
Dip Dab survives because it understands the assignment. It is not a quiet sweet. It fizzes, coats the fingers, turns a lolly into a utensil, and makes grown adults remember newsagents, corner shops, party bags and the serious business of choosing something with maximum value from a small amount of pocket money. For British expats in Canada, it can be oddly specific nostalgia: not just “sweets from home”, but that exact sherbet-lolly routine, the rustle of the packet, and the faint sense that you are making a small mess on purpose. The Great British Shop is happy to leave that sort of memory well alone, apart from making sure the packet can still find its way to the right cupboard.
