Hundreds & Thousands ‘my biscuit’
When the call went out for a new biscuit, Sandra Choate dum-dee-did it, writes Cherie Sivignon.
Like thousands of Kiwi kids in the 1970s, Sandra Choate was a member of the Hudson Cookie Bear Club. When the call went out for some dum-dee-doo delicious ideas for new biscuits, Choate (nee Hall) dum-deedid it, coming up with the Hundreds & Thousands bikkie.
That pre-teen claim to fame now earns the teacher aide, of Nelson, random hugs from pupils of Enner Glynn School who love the sweet, colourful treats.
‘‘I keep forgetting about it but then one of the kids was eating one and I said: You are eating one of my biscuits; and she goes: No, it is mine, my mum put it in for me. So I explained and now I have got kids coming running up to give me a hug because they love those biscuits.’’
Choate said she believed it was about
1978 when she invented the biscuit. She was 11 or 12 and living in the North Canterbury town of Oxford when the call went out for biscuit ideas via the monthly Cookie Bear Club page in the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.
‘‘I remember going to Mum saying I wanted to send in my idea and told her vanilla wine biscuit with pink icing and hundreds & thousands.’’
Choate said her idea was likely inspired by fairy bread, that classic Kiwi birthday party favourite of white bread and butter, topped with hundreds & thousands. ‘‘When you got posh, it could be cut in shapes.’’
There was meaning, too, behind the suggested use of vanilla wine biscuits.
‘‘Mum had a biscuit barrel and . . . vanilla wines were usually the last ones left,’’ Choate said.
Her mother, Sheila Hall, said she would buy a couple of packets to help stretch out her home baking, which she always made on a Friday.
Choate submitted her idea and then heard . . . nothing.
‘‘It would have been nice to say that they got it and to thank her and they were making them,’’ Hall said.
‘‘She did not expect anything but I thought they could have acknowledged it.’’ The pair wondered if perhaps another child came up with the same idea. Despite no official recognition, it had become ‘‘family lore that they are my biscuits’’, Choate said, adding that the finished product was just as she imagined. However, she admits to preferring chocolate biscuits these days.
Sandra Choate was 11 or 12 when she came up with the idea for the Hundreds & Thousands biscuit, now in cookie tins
at many New Zealand homes. ‘‘I would not say they are my favourites. Is that a terrible thing to say?’’
A spokesman for Griffin’s, which acquired Hudson in 1989, said archives from the Hudson era appeared to have all but disappeared.
‘‘We have been unable to identify the exact origin of the biscuit,’’ he said.
Nor was Griffin’s able to say when the Hundreds & Thousands biscuit first appeared on the market but it could confirm it was popular.
‘‘It is one of the top 10 selling biscuits in New Zealand,’’ the spokesman said.
The popularity of the Cookie Bear Club was also confirmed with a document outlining that at its peak, 25 per cent of children aged 12 and under belonged to it.