Sugar Candy Mountain

Candy girl, you are my world.
Sucking to hard on your lollipop, oh love won’t get you down.
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey.
I used to work in an old fashioned candy shop (yes it was the best job ever and I could eat all the sweets I wanted) and these songs were played on rotation. It drove me nuts.
Anyway, Sugar Candy Mountain, bang on the centre of the affluent suburb of Milngavie, sells all the old fashioned sweets from your childhood in the original jars stacked on shelves around the shop.
I agree with the previous reviewers points that the new trend for retro shops has resulted in some overstyled twee places. However, I really don’t think Sugar Candy Mountain falls into that same irritating bracket. When I visited yesterday, schoolchildren were gathered round the sweets asking the prices excitedly and an elderly woman was sitting at the counter, enjoying a cup of tea with the owner.
It appeared to be a meeting place for the community, not just kitsch place for faux bohemians to spend £2 on half a bar of macaroon (a similar west end establishment springs to mind here). And that’s can’t be a bad thing can it?

While I would tend to agree with the concerns of fellow Unilocalers here if another of these shops were to pop up in, say, Glasgow city centre, I can’t help but like this place.
Yes, it makes no attempt to hide its desire to come across as achingly kitsch, but at the same time I feel it adds to the high street feel in Milngavie.
The whole vintage sweet jar thing doesn’t particularly interest me, but Sugar Mountain has also added another dimension by featuring a small café area which offers a range of hot and cold drinks. The bottom line is that while designated retail areas across the country are dropping like flies, it’s nice to see some specialist, individual businesses survive.
A tad contrived, no doubt, but Sugar Mountain still feels like it is run as a labour of love.

Chrissy boy is dead on here, the over stylised kitschness of these shops grates like fingernails down a blackboard, and I find it frankly bizarre that sweet shops have turned into little boutiques aimed at irony-​peddling teenage girls.
That wouldn’t be a problem if the confectionary on offer still tasted as nice as you remember, but whilst the more mature palate adapts to olives and anchovies, it also begins to notice that soor plooms, rhubarb and custard and chelsea whoppers are bloody disgusting.

Is it just me or is anyone else getting a little bit bored of these ’ retro’ sweet shops? What would previously been the domain of the local post office, newsagents or grocer has become a niche boutique outlet of the quirky and kitsch variety.
Ok maybe i’m being a little negative and am probably a little guilty of tarring this place with the same kitsch by numbers brush, but hey ho that’s the way it is. Sugar Candy Mountain is however a nice wee place. In addition to the glorious walls of jars filled with sugary treats, they also do a rather fine hot chocolate (fair trade coffee is also on offer) with everything priced as we have come to expect form these places.
An nice addition to Milne shopping experience and the type of place you’ll find yourself in when hankering after a quick sugar fix or a saccharine shot in the arm from childhood nostalgia-ville…Kola Kubes please