Have you got a favourite mug?

It's not a mug but I will include this...

When I was at primary school in the 1990s the milk for morning break time came in small glass (yes, glass) bottles with straws. They looked so cool, so almost from the first day at school I decided that was the only way I wanted drink milk. I took a few empty bottles home and would rarely drink milk out of any other container even as a teenager. This didn't apply to any other drink, only milk. My mother thought that I was obsessed with the milk bottles although I pointed out that other kids at school loved them as well. I wasn't the only kid to have them at home but I probably had the biggest collection of them and was using them throughout my secondary school years.

The milk bottles were still in use when I finished Y6 in 2001 but were later changed to cartons with garish pictures on them that aren't half as fun.

Does anybody's kids have, or recently had, glass milk bottles at primary school or is it all cartons now?

This is fascinating! I am much older than you so we had free school milk in little glass bottles back in the 1960s and 1970s. I never drank milk as a child and had a particular problem with warm milk (strange smell). My main aim was to persuade one of the boys to drink my milk as well as his own. In the winter the cream on the top would freeze - that was almost palatable - bit like ice cream! 

I get a lot of enjoyment out of things like miniature glasses and coffee cups. I can see the appeal of the little glass bottles (I agree the cartoon ones aren't as good). However, I'll never forget the trauma of being given a lukewarm bottle of milk to drink! The photo below which I found online brings back lots of memories! 

I've no idea what happens these days. It will be interesting to find out from other people if glass milk bottles are still used in schools. 

I have never encountered anybody who had glass milk bottles at primary school in the 1990s except in my locality so it's possible that they were not used anywhere else at the time. I was verbally informed that they were changed to cartons in the early 2000s at the behest of the politically correct NuLab government backed up by overprotective middle class parents worried about the health and safety implications of 4 year old kids in reception class handling glass bottles.

The milk was always cold and fresh because it was delivered less than an hour before morning break. It wasn't free but only cost £2 a term so almost every kid had it.

This photo is not from my primary school but was taken in 1992 judging from the date stamp.

I remember them as well, sugar butties,, yum,,,never did me any harm, never been heavier than ten stone, 

still have ALL my own teeth as well.

At school I had thin blue plastic straws just like in the photo above. At home I had bendy straws or long perspex straws in complex shapes.

Blue Planet II last year has resulted in large scale public opposition to plastic straws and other single use plastic products, like coffee stirrers.

Primary schools must throw away hundreds of thousands of plastic straws every day along with milk cartons and they can't be recycled. I think milk should be supplied to primary schools in glass bottles rather than cartons and kids have their own re-usable straw.

I remember white paper straws that went soggy. 

We had an amazing pasta dish at school dinners which I called tomato drainpipes. It had spam and onions in. I've tried to recreate it at home many times but failed to get it exactly right.

Semolina at school dinners was dreadful - couldn't swallow it. Luckily we could choose an apple instead. I used to like War on Want lunches where we just got bread and cheese.

At home my dad made sugar butties: white bread, spread with butter and sprinkled with caster sugar. Surely one of the most unhealthy tea-time snacks ever! 

I never actually measured the bottles.  They were smaller than the full pint ones.  And I was 5 or 6 years old.  

ah sensors lol it was spotted d*i*c*k

im a 60's kid i remember beef dripping butties and school dinners my favs were choc sponge cake and mint (green) custard and spotted *** and custard hated semolina and blancmange ewww

I'm vaguely aware that the glass milk bottles were commonplace in primary schools during the 1960s and 70s but I was at primary school in the 1990s and early 2000s after Margaret Thatcher was no longer an MP so contrary to popular opinion she hadn't 'snatched' all of them.

The bottles were 1/3 pint, or 189ml in the system of measurement favoured by teachers, rather than half pint. Shrinkflation?

i live in lancashire and we had milk in little glass bottles i remember everyone sat round slurping milk through a straw just a fact maggie thatcher ended the free school milk in the 80's if memory serves

Born in 1962 I had the little quart pint bottles as well, we had jammie dodger biscuits as well handed out two per child, I didn’t get biscuits and assume the others paid for them, the milk was free, it was as I understand a legacy of the war, to promote health in youngsters, calcium rich and as many kids didn’t get a breakfast it was good,

A song taught to me by my socialist father was “ Maggie thatcher milk snatcher, although I was in big school then so no free milk, my younger sister was though, she apparently said it was no longer needed?

so get on your bike she said, buy your own house, get a job, 

I also had to do “ work experience” to get my benefits, basically slave work for a pittance, 

 I was also the only kid who had the task of picking up the crates with a sack truck and taking them to each class, As a result when everyone had finished the caretaker would give me extra if any where left, I spent a great deal of time not in lessons but helping the caretaker, cleaning out small rodent cages and just about anything else that was practical, one bizarre task was to use cotton wool and what I think was milk to wipe the leaves of a big potted plant outside the teachers staff room, they were shiny and looked great once wiped. Marking out the lines on the school playing fields with creosote,,,sweeping leaves, all at infant school, 

I have no idea why I wasn’t in class with the rest, if I was then I would be sat under a table, or away from the rest drawing or just playing on my own, 

The pint bottles of milk delivered to our door used to freeze, that was great as we as kids got to eat the cream like a lolly, it would stick out of the neck with the aluminium top still above it. 

Mostly blue t I t s would peck through the lids and steal the cream,

This thread has been and continues to be my favourite, brings back so many memories, some bad but on the most part pretty good,

school dinners were intermittent, dependent on wether mum could find the money,,if not back home for whatever was left, marmite and dripping sandwiches made from the fat from any meat cooked the weekend, 

even a weetabix spread only with butter, jam if we were lucky, 

we got by, we struggled but it taught us the value of everything, taught us not to waste anything, we were poor urchins but the happiest kids on the planet, 

x

This brings back memories from the 1960s.  The half pint glass milk bottles.  Mine was always chilled.

I am so glad the milk was chilled by the 1990s - it actually makes me shudder thinking about the warm smelly milk we got! Did you have school dinners or did you take packed lunches? 

I am so glad the milk was chilled by the 1990s - it actually makes me shudder thinking about the warm smelly milk we got! Did you have school dinners or did you take packed lunches?