With the recently announced demise of Fantales after 93 years of caramelly glory, it felt like a fitting time to assess which of our remaining true-blue lollies and junk foods deserves a protected-icon status.

The biggest challenge about rating Australia’s finest junk food is working out what’s actually classed as “junk food” these days. Is it fatty snacks, artery-clogging fast food or that bakery treat? For help with this big question, I turned to the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet and a handy related app in which you rate your guilty pleasure in a number of areas. While this tool is a force for good (in terms of championing our healthier eating habits), I’ve utilised its junk-food categories as the framework for my argumentative guide to Australia’s Ultimate Junk Food. Here we go…

LOLLIES

There’s really only one player now the Fantale is gone… For me, the ultimate Aussie lolly isn’t the Freddo frog, jelly snake or red frog (what is with this Aussie lolly obsession with frogs?) – it’s the Caramello Koala (closely followed by the lot-less-loved Cherry Ripe). The cute animal on the wrapper and the debate about whether to bite the ears, feet or belly first are all part of why it wins the crown.

Related story: Here’s some not-so-fun trivia for you, Allen’s is discontinuing Fantales 

ICE CREAM

While most ice creams these days are global concepts, a number of dessert chefs have referenced the Golden Gaytime and made it the de facto Aussie ice cream of choice. But I say NO. In my view, the one true icon is the Paddle Pop. Not only is it more budget and waistline friendly (71 calories compared to the GG’s 236), but this cool classic turns 70 this year.

BAKED GOODS: SWEET

There’s no contest here – the classic Tim Tam wins hands down. The only variation on the classic that should be regarded as anything more than a marketing aberration is the “double coat” variety. Other baked contenders, like the neenish tart, are tedious; the vanilla slice, with its bouncy, custard filling that has all the give of 20-year-old silicon, too often lives up to its colloquial nickname as a “snot block”; an Iced Vovo sounds like something you’d ask your beautician to do; and, let’s be honest, no-one really likes a lamington when it’s all dry sponge and scratchy desiccated coconut with just the merest suggestion of chocolate as a reward.

BAKED GOODS: SAVOURY

Australian lunches have been fuelled by baked goods for more than a 100 years, but the modern sausage roll originated in the UK, and the meat pie is even more European-ancient – though the way it’s inextricably entwined with a cold afternoon at the footy gives it bonus bonzer cred. So, as if by default, we turn to the cheese-and-Vegemite scroll as the truly unique savoury baked good of Australia. This has been an after-school or post-swimming tradition for generations of Aussie kids.

THINGS IN OR ON BREAD

For me, some of the greatest expressions of Aussie junk food are bread-related – from the humble snag-in-bread or the trusty jaffle to the schnitzel sanger or the childhood pinnacle that is fairy bread. All are iconic.

FRIED OR FAST FOOD

OK, let’s be honest here. Like cigarettes and The Real Housewives franchise, most fast food is fundamentally US-inspired, whether it’s southern fried chicken, hash browns or chicken nuggets. And while the collision of fish and chips is a 19th-century UK idea, if you make it a bucket of chips and a bucket of prawns, it’s unapologetically Australian. If that doesn’t work for you, we’re left with the only two true Aussie ideas this nation has added to the fast-food lexicon: the Chiko Roll and William Chen Wing Young’s dim sims, available in Melbourne’s Chinese restaurants since at least 1928. For me, the dimmie should have a statue all of its own erected outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground, even if it doesn’t take out the title in this category.

SNACKS

For many Aussies, few things were better after school than collapsing on the equally collapsed family sofa to languidly recharge with vacuous TV and something equally trashy in a bowl. Here, I need your help because I’m undecided between which bowl staple is more iconic: salt-and-vinegar chips, barbecue Shapes, Cheezels, cheese Twisties or chicken Twisties (a particular favourite of Stellar editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand). Perhaps it’s something from the air fryer (sweet potato chips, crumbed cheese sticks), or a bowl of instant ramen aka two-minute noodles; the kids in my house vote for instant ramen or Rice Wheels.

Let me know your choice via my Instagram (@mattscravat). Don’t be surprised to see an avalanche of votes for chicken Twisties coming in from accounts like @SarrahStellar, @ChickenTwistiesLover or @YourBossTheEditor… It’s deleterious to my career not to prioritise them.

On the record, I’m delighted to anoint chicken Twisties as the Aussie Junk Food Snack of the Year, however, off the record that title would go to Cheezels, which have maintained an aggressive cheesy flavour that Twisties now lack. They taste almost more “yeast extracty” these days. I can’t find proof of a recipe change, but I’m sure the Twisties of my youth were cheesier.

Related story: Matt Preston’s top 6 sexiest, guilty pleasures