Personalised Sweet Jars, Chocolate Bars and Mints: Sweet Gifts and Favours

A jar of sweets with someone's name on the label is one of the simplest personalised gifts there is, and one of the most popular. It is affordable, it suits almost any age and it taps straight into childhood memories of the corner sweet shop.

The sweet jar: a British classic

The tall glass jars lining the shelves of the traditional British sweet shop, from which sweets were weighed out by the quarter, are part of the national memory. Personalised sweet jars borrow that look: a glass or plastic jar filled with retro favourites and finished with a printed label carrying a name and message.

Some favourite fillings:

• Retro boiled sweets: sherbet lemons, pear drops, rhubarb and custards, humbugs, cola cubes.
• Chewy favourites: jelly beans, fruit jellies, foam bananas.
• Chocolate: chocolate éclairs, toffees and soft centres for a more grown-up jar.
• Themed: all red sweets for a ruby wedding, gold-wrapped chocolates for a golden anniversary.

Personalised chocolate bars

A chocolate bar with a personalised wrapper is a favourite for wedding favours, christening tables, thank-yous and corporate gifts. The wrapper is printed with names, a date or a photo, and wrapped around a standard bar. Allow time for printing, and check the best-before date if you are ordering well ahead of an event.

Mints: the favour that works for everyone

Personalised mint tins and after-dinner mints are a neat alternative to sweets: small, inexpensive, long-lasting and suitable for guests of all ages. They are popular as wedding favours, conference giveaways and place-setting gifts.

The tombola, the raffle and the jar on the prize table

A big jar of sweets is the classic prize on the tombola stall at a village fête or school fair, and the jar-guessing game ("How many sweets in the jar? 20p a guess") is just as familiar. Both are small slices of gambling history. Raffles and tombolas are lotteries in law, and the Gambling Act 2005 allows them at non-commercial events such as fêtes, dinners and fundraising evenings as "incidental lotteries", without a licence, provided they stick to some simple rules: tickets are sold only at the event, the profits go to good causes rather than private gain, and there are modest limits on how much can be spent on expenses and bought prizes. Donated prizes, such as a personalised sweet jar given by a local business, are exactly what the rules have in mind.

Sweets also make the best favours at grown-up games nights. At a home casino-night party, personalised chocolate coins can double as tokens on the roulette table, and a mint tin printed "Lucky Seven" or with the host's name goes home with every guest. For an anniversary or birthday table, try a jar of red and black sweets with a roulette-wheel label as a centrepiece.

Labels, allergens and practicalities

• Keep messages short: sweet-jar labels are small, typically a name and one or two lines.
• Check allergen information carefully, especially for nuts, gluten and gelatine; many retro sweets contain gelatine, which matters to vegetarian and some religious guests.
• Glass jars make better keepsakes; plastic jars are safer for posting and for children's parties.
• Order favours early: wedding season and Christmas are busy times for printers.

For more on what to write, see our wording guide; for children's party bags and sweets for little ones, see personalised gifts for children.

Written by the Ribbon & Tag editors.