No more jaffas

Admit it, at least once you rolled a Jaffa down the aisle (or under the seats) at the movies.
At one point it was almost a rite of passage if you went to the movies with your mates.
And of course the famous Jaffa race down Dunedin’s Baldwin St.
It’s not going to be so easy anymore with Jaffas - those chocolate orangey balls, the favourite of many - no longer being made and are to disappear from shelves.
Sweetmaker RJs confirmed that they had pulled the treat saying they were unable to make Jaffas due to declining sales.
It’s not known when the relationship between movie theatres and Jaffas came about, but the first New Zealand motion picture exhibitor was Alfred Henry Whitehead using Edison kinetoscopes. The pictures were often things like public events - like the opening of the Auckland Industrial and Mining exhibit.
Whitehead was born on September 15, 1856, in Birmingham, England, to Abel and his wife Matilda.
He came to New Zealand with his family when he was about eight.
Around 1894 he began touring the country showing off his Edison phonograph. Then late the next year he began showing motion pictures - although the pictures could only be seen by one person at a time.
He opened a kinetoscope at Bartlett’s Studio in Auckland where he used four machines at once.
For one shilling he was showing four scenes - the barber’s shop, the fire rescue scene, the chinese laundry and Annabelle’s graceful butterfly dance.
He later took the whole show on the road ending in Wellington where he sold the machines in 1897.
He could likely see the end coming - the year before the first mass presentation of a motion picture was held in the Auckland Opera House where moving pictures were projected onto a screen.
After a trip overseas to Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in London, he married Ada Baker back in New Zealand.
He brought back with him a camera to allow him to make his own motion pictures and he used prominent Auckland photographer W H Bartlett for it.
It was Christmas Eve that year he screened the opening of the Auckland Industrial and Mining Exhibition.
Alfred continued to tour, showing pictures to the public.
He retired in 1908 and died on April 7, 1929 and is buried in Waikaraka Cemetery.
Meanwhile, there are alternatives to Jaffas, including generic orange chocolate balls still available.
Picture by Noom Peerapong.​