The Wagon Wheel Effect describes a phenomenon witnessed by over 90% of adults in the Western World as they move from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. It usually works like this: one day you enter your local sweet shop and happen to notice they sell Wagon Wheels - those delicious chocolate and marshmallow treats. Overcome by nostalgia for when your mother used to buy them for you, you get some but are horrified to discover they have shrunk. Not just shrunk, in fact, they seem to be tiny. It used to take you the best part of an hour to eat a Wagon Wheel; it was a meal in itself. Now you can pop the whole thing into your mouth in one go. Your mind fills with disgust at the greedy confectionery corporations who have conspired to make smaller and smaller sweets as you have gotten older. As if inflation isn't bad enough, they have to go and do this as well...

Of course the reality is much harder to accept - it is your grubby paws and salivating mouth that have got much larger; Wagon Wheels are the same size they always were, more or less.

This phenomenon has different names in different countries and towns: the Hershey Bar Happening, the Dime Bar Dilemma and the Goats Blood Cake Conundrum, to name but a few. Often victims of these delusions are subconsciously forced into endless nostalgia-tainted conversations about the long lost confectionery of their childhood, 'Remember Spangles...?' being the usual opening line.