About the Retro Sweet Shop Spot the Difference Game
Remember handing over pocket money for a paper bag of pick-and-mix? Sherbet fountains, gobstoppers, flying saucers and toffees — the retro sweet shop deck is sugar-coated nostalgia with zero calories.
What's on the Retro Sweet Shop boards
The pictures the two boards are built from — 12 in all: 🍬 Bonbon🍭 Lollipop🍫 Chocolate🍪 Biscuit🧁 Cupcake🍩 Doughnut🍡 Candy Stick🍮 Toffee🍨 Ice Cream🍯 Honeycomb🥤 Fizzy Pop🍦 Whippy
Study tip: scan the left board in the same order every time — top-left to bottom-right — and check its twin against that order. The difference between bonbon and lollipop is easy to spot; a missing chocolate in the wrong corner is not, unless your scan is systematic.
How to memorise a retro board
Retro decks come with nostalgia hooks already installed. For each item, tag it with a memory — the cassette you unwrapped, the console a friend had, the sweet shop on the way home. Tagging takes one glance per card and converts abstract pictures into personal souvenirs, which survive the memory test dramatically better.
If the nostalgia is not yours (you did not live the decade), anchor on design instead: chunky shapes, bright plastics, pixel art. Retro items are deliberately exaggerated, and exaggeration is memorable — notice what makes each item ridiculous and the board remembers itself.
How to Play
- Press Start. Two boards appear, looking identical.
- Compare them tile by tile — one has been swapped for something different.
- Tap the changed tile, on either board, before the timer runs out.
- Each round adds more tiles and less time. Three misses ends the run.
Fun Facts About Retro Sweet Shop
- The candy floss machine was co-invented in 1897 by William Morrison — who was, of all things, a dentist.
- Gobstoppers earn their name honestly: the biggest ones can take days of licking to finish.
- Sherbet gets its fizz from a reaction between bicarbonate of soda and citric acid on your tongue.
- Traditional British sweet shops sold sweets by the quarter — a quarter of a pound, about 113 grams.
Retro deck questions
Good theme for a mixed-age family game?
The best one on the site. The adults recognise the 80s and 90s items on sight, the children meet them as new discoveries, and both sides think they have the advantage. Best-of-five settles it.
Do the retro decks differ much between themes?
Yes — the decades decks, the arcade deck and the sweets deck share a mood but almost no items. If one feels too easy, the others will not.