What did you think Turkish Delight was, when you first read Narnia?

She did briefly wind up in London during the events of The Magician’s Nephew, but I don’t think she had much time to peruse the sweetshop while she was there.

It’s probably for the best that both attempts to adapt the Narnia books for the screen fizzled out after the first few installments; that book, and The Last Battle, would have been nigh unfilmable.

I also thought it was some kind of cubic taffy, and assumed it was magicked in an addictive way that didn’t really require it to have a great flavor. In fact, I remember not even being sure it actually existed, vs. being something he made up.

So, you’re saying Turkish Delight is not the same as a Happy Ending? My childhood reading now seems less colorful. :slightly_frowning_face:

I never had Turkish Delight, but I did get a lot of Turkish Taffy in my Halloween bag as a kid.

I’ve never read any of the Narnia books, but the first time I came across the term “Turkish Delight,” I thought of something pistachio and/or honey based, maybe fudge-like.

I was a weird kid, and had Turkish Delight by the time I was 6 or 7. At the time, I’d rather have had some Haribo gummy bears, but the TD was passable.

Sounds like you two had the same idea.

I’m not sure I had any clear idea of what it was except a really yummy candy.

As such, I was totally psyched the first time I got to try it.

Hated it. Hated it so much it diminished my enjoyment of the book.

I used to have a ton of those tins. I used them to store my necklaces (after them being well cleaned out) when I was in high school and college. There was a shop in Westwood Village (adjacent to UCLA) called Tomnoddy Faire. They must have have 10 or 12 different flavours. I liked the violet onces.

To me it just reinforces how much of a prat that Edmund was.

There was a great moment in the movie when Tilda Swinton taunts him: “You betrayed your family – for sweeties.”

As a kid, I didn’t have any idea, I just knew it was probably some kind of old-school candy.

As an adult, I think I just assumed it was something along the lines of halvah or Italian-style nougat. Something old-school and not as intensely sweet as modern confections.

Both of those are much better than turkish delight. I wouldn’t mind either of them right now.

Well this is interesting. I mentioned this thread to my mom, because she’s the one who introduced me to Narnia. Well, she recently went on a vacation to Greece and Turkey. She says that they were served Turkish Delight in Greece, and it was the rosewater gelatin stuff that we’re all talking about… but they were also served something called Turkish Delight in Turkey, and that was a confection of honey, nuts, and shredded wheat. So maybe all the folks who were thinking of baklava weren’t so far off, after all.

I just went back to the cartoon version I watched as a kid (neighbours had it on video). The Turkish Delight scene is at 18:24. It’s very clearly a chocolate / candy box with vaguely pink things in it. So I guess from this I must have read the book before I saw the cartoon, even though I feel that the cartoon came first.

Now I’m curious to try aplets and cotlets.

I don’t care for them mainly because the one from Liberty Orchards include walnuts and those are low on my list of favorite tree nuts.

For the same reason I much prefer the variety of baklava that has pistachios rather than walnuts.

As a child of the 70s and 80s in England I was already familiar with it, but more often of the ‘Fry’s’ chocolate covered variety. Never was a mad fan of it, something of an acquired taste. My Dad loves the sugar powdered ‘proper’ variety, so we always had it around the house at Christmas.

I haven’t read the books for twenty years, so my memory is a bit hazy, but what in particular do you think is unfilmable about these two? Surely the scenery and magic would pose no problem with today’s CGI, so I can only imagine you think it’s something to do with the plot, or maybe that the more overtly Christian elements of the books wouldn’t play well with today’s audiences.

Getting back to the OP’s question, though, I read the books before I first had Turkish Delight, but I did both so long ago that I don’t remember if my impression of the sweet matched my expectations. Here in Europe it’s easy to get authentic Turkish Delight (not simply from Turkey but from anywhere in the Balkans or Middle East—it’s all pretty much the same, and delicious).

The rise of the (subtly Muslim and portrayed by a monkey) Antichrist, the Eschaton as performed by talking animals, the physical end of the world, and the kids following Lion Jesus physically into Heaven, which exactly resembles Edwardian England?

It’s less a matter of “you can’t film it” than “you shouldn’t film it”.

The 'Muslims are evil" is not something I’d want to see in a modern film. But heaven only looked (at first) like Edwardian England because it looked like their home, or at least, the home of their childhood, which was Edwardian England.

And they soon broke out of that into “tame” wilderness, at least in my recollection. I think those mountains could have been in the US.