How can they do this to me?

Not only have Kraft outraged the good people of York with their decision to pull Terry's out of its birthplace city - they've decided to axe a landmark treat of my childhood while they're at it.

Terry's Neapolitans. Just the mention of their name and my senses are overcome.

I can still smell that chocolate/coffee/orange smell I got when I first opened a box of them as a child. I can still feel the thick white-and-blue/pink/mocha/orange wrapping paper between my fingers, still hear the faint squeak of that slightly glossy paper as I opened every chocolate in turn.

I hadn't a clue what the name "Neapolitans" meant (I had the same problem with Neapolitan ice-cream, come to that). But to me, Neapolitans oozed class. They reeked of sophistication.

Now, the Clees were essentially a Rowntree's family on high days and holidays; though, as Westies, we were faithful to the Halifax factory, not to York.

My mum's kitchen storage tins still bear witness to the groaning excesses of Christmas and birthdays gone by; all of them carry the image of the Quality Street lady and her soldier-boy escort.

But my mum's mum, Grandma Betts, was a bit posher than that, and I used to long for the days when she would pop round with her idea of what constituted proper chocolate. We kids always got a Thornton's chocolate egg for Easter. A tasteful, smallish egg, in a mug, covered with thick cellophane, and with our names inscribed in icing sugar on each one.

At Christmas, it was Neapolitans for the family, and for my mum it was the mysterious pleasure of Terry's All Gold, or, infinitely better as far as I was concerned, the 1767 selection.

I longed for mum to get this box of chocolates, but not because I had a palate advanced enough to enjoy bitter, dark langue-du-chat chocolates. I nicked one on the sly once, and I hated it.

No, what I loved was the grown-up romance of the 1767 box with its parchment-effect cover, its red satin ribbon and the pretend seal that adorned its top.

The thick cardboard trays that lay within each box also enhanced its appeal. That box was perfect for containing all the secrets my eight-year-old self had to keep - my autograph book, my Caran D'Ache pastel crayons, my free love-heart badge from Jackie magazine.

I wonder how many other 1767 boxes ended up being put to a similar use? How many of them are even now still tucked in someone's wardrobe or under someone's bed, crammed with personal memorabilia? Has any other chocolate box ever had the same cachet?

Since my childhood days I have had passing fancies for, say, Thornton's Continentals, and these days I'm hooked on Green and Blacks, Aero and Cadbury's Twirl.

But I can't be the only person filled with dismay at the thought that someday soon I will have tasted my last Terry's Neapolitan.

A quick look on the internet confirms this, and throws up a site devoted to people nostalgic for chocs gone by.

Snackspot.org.uk is a food obsessive's paradise, crammed with sightings of rare and sought-after morsels.

Currently a Snackspot debate is raging about the merits of old Quality Street favourites like the chocolate octagon and the gooseberry cream.

They don't seem to have started talking about Neapolitans just yet.

I'd better log on to eBay soon and snap up the supplies while there is still time.

Updated: 10:30 Wednesday, November 23, 2005