Old Fashioned Lolly Names Explained: Acid Drops, Humbugs and Butterballs

By Emily Patrikakos· 8 September 2026

By Emily Patrikakos, Brand Executive at The Gourmet Pantry.

An acid drop is a boiled sweet sharpened with citric acid. A humbug is a striped hard pillow, and ours are aniseed. A butterball is a smooth golden round tasting of butterscotch. Here is the rest of the confectionery shelf, name by name, and which jar each one is in.

Jar of VPC Koala Tucker Eucalyptus and Menthol Drops 170g, one of the traditional boiled sweets in this glossary

Two things worth knowing before you read a label

The first is that rock candy means something different here from what it means in a lolly shop overseas. On the Botanical Confectionery Co jars, Classic Rock Candy is the label for the hard boiled sweets themselves, not for crystals grown on a stick. Humbugs, butterballs, rosy apples and strawberries and cream all sit under that heading, which tells you nothing about which one you are buying.

The second is that most of these names describe a shape or a method rather than a flavour, which is why they are hard to shop for. Drops are round. Humbugs are pillows with stripes pulled through them. Balls are balls. A jar labelled drops could be lemon, raspberry or eucalyptus, and the word in front of it is the only clue.

The glossary

Acid drop
What it is	A hard boiled sweet made sour with citric acid. The Sovereign Hill jar holds pale amber ones, frosted with sugar, and the list is sugar, glucose derived from wheat, citric acid and flavour. The sourness is one food acid on a plain base, so it hits early and then fades.
Humbug
What it is	A pillow shaped boiled sweet with stripes pulled through it. Botanical Confectionery Co Humbugs are dark brown and white, and the ingredient list reads glucose, sugar, aniseed oil and colours. Aniseed, not mint, which surprises anyone who grew up on the English version. Where the word itself came from is genuinely disputed.
Butterball
What it is	A smooth golden round with a butterscotch flavour and a slight twist at each end. We range two: Botanical Confectionery Co Butterballs and Kangaroo Balls Creamy Butter Balls. Read both lists and they are the same sweet in different livery: glucose, sugar, flavours, colours and food acid. Neither one names butter, so the butter is the flavour, not the recipe.
Barley sugar
What it is	An amber boiled sweet whose name records an older method of boiling the sugar with barley water. There is no barley in the modern one: Sovereign Hill Barley Sugar lists sugar, glucose derived from wheat, citric acid and flavour, the same four things as the acid drop jar.
Eucalyptus drop
What it is	A green boiled sweet flavoured with eucalyptus, usually with menthol alongside it, which is what makes the mouth feel cool. Koala Tucker Eucalyptus Drops are labelled eucalyptus and menthol and are shaped like leaves. Sovereign Hill Eucalyptus Drops are the rounder, plainer take.
Raspberry drop
What it is	A deep red translucent drop, tart rather than jammy. Botanical Confectionery Co Raspberry Drops come in the cockatoo jar. A single clear colour all the way through, which is also why it melts into a flat pane in a hot oven.
Rosy apple
What it is	A two tone rock candy, red on one side and green on the other, tasting of apple. Botanical Confectionery Co Rosy Apple is the jar, and the two colours are pulled separately and pressed together, so the join is a hard line rather than a swirl.
Strawberries and cream
What it is	Red and white in the same sweet: a clear strawberry half against an opaque cream half. Botanical Confectionery Co Strawberries and Cream is the one to put in a bowl rather than in a bake, because the cream half stays cloudy however you treat it.

How to keep them once the jar is open

The Botanical Confectionery Co and Valley Produce Company jars carry the same three lines: keep airtight, do not refrigerate, eat within seven days of opening, and twelve months unopened. Follow whatever the jar in front of you says. The refrigerator line is the one people ignore and then regret: sugar pulls moisture from the air, a cold jar condenses water on every sweet as it warms, and the lot welds into one lump.

They are hand made rather than moulded, a story told properly in how boiled lollies are made by hand.

Common questions

What is an acid drop?

A hard boiled sugar sweet with citric acid worked into it, which is where the name comes from. There is no fizz and it is not sherbet: one food acid on a plain boiled base, arriving fast and giving way. Ours are pale amber, frosted with sugar, and the ingredient list runs to four things.

What are humbugs made of?

Sugar and glucose boiled hard, flavoured, then pulled and striped. Our jar lists glucose, sugar, aniseed oil and colours, so aniseed rather than peppermint. If you remember a British humbug tasting of mint, that is a different recipe under the same name and both are correct.

Why are they called butterballs?

For the taste and the shape rather than the contents. A butterball is round and tastes of butterscotch, and on both jars we stock the list is glucose, sugar, flavours, colours and food acid, with no butter in it. Butterscotch is built from cooked sugar, so a sweet can carry it with no dairy.

What is the difference between barley sugar and a boiled lolly?

Barley sugar is a boiled lolly. The name is the historical one, from a method that boiled the sugar in barley water, and it stuck to the amber, faintly lemony sweet that came out of it. Our barley sugar and our acid drops list the same four ingredients, so what separates them on this shelf is flavour and colour.

Are any of these gluten free or nut free?

We would rather answer carefully than guess. The Sovereign Hill jars state that the glucose is derived from wheat and that peanuts may be present, so they are neither. For the Botanical Confectionery Co and Valley Produce Company jars the allergen statement we hold reads contact us for more details, so there is nothing for us to quote you. Read the jar or call us on 1300 936 406 before buying for someone with an allergy.

Which jar for which person

The jars all run between 170g and 185g at much the same price, so the choice is about the person, not the value. Aniseed humbugs and barley sugar go to the grandparent who has been asking for them for years. Rosy apple and strawberries and cream go to children, because the two colours are half the appeal. Eucalyptus divides a room, which is what makes it a stocking filler for somebody who claims to want nothing. There is a golf themed jar for the person who is impossible to buy for, and the range sits on the Botanical Confectionery Co and Sovereign Hill pages.

To cook with rather than eat from the jar, a clear single colour drop is the one that works, which is the idea behind our stained glass Christmas biscuits. For the other old sweet nobody can quite define, see what Turkish delight is made of.

All of these sit in confectionery, drop into a Christmas hamper unwrapped, and are the right size for Christmas gifts under $10. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.