50 Fun Facts About Cadbury

Cadbury's 2007 advert of a gorilla drumming alone in a studio was cut to which Phil Collins song?

In the Air Tonight plays over one 90-second tracking shot, and Cadbury reported Dairy Milk sales up 9% after the ad aired; it even sent the song back to number one in New Zealand in 2008.

Which instant mashed potato, famous for its laughing Martian adverts, was launched in the 1960s by Cadbury?

Smash was a chocolate firm's sideline until 1974, when the Smash Martians, cackling at humans who still peeled potatoes, turned it into a convenience-food hit; Premier Foods owns it now.

Which son of founder John Cadbury produced the first heart-shaped Valentine's box of chocolates in 1868?

Richard Cadbury was the first chocolate-maker to sell romance, and a decade later he and his brother bought the open land south of Birmingham that became Bournville.

Which Cadbury chocolate, priced at 10p from its 1990s relaunch until 2005, is Britain's informal inflation gauge?

Freddo cost 2p when it first reached Britain in 1973 and 30p by 2017, double what inflation alone would justify; Tesco briefly sold it at 10p again in 2019.

Cadbury's unpopular 2015 Creme Egg changes, alongside a new shell recipe, cut a multipack from six eggs to how many?

Five eggs for almost the old price, plus a shell no longer made of Dairy Milk, cost Cadbury more than $12 million in British Creme Egg sales as fans revolted.

Cadbury Australia's 2015 Dairy Milk bar, mixing milk chocolate and caramel, was flavoured with which yeast spread?

Vegemite made up 5% of the bar, a patriotic stunt from a firm that first reached Australia as an export market before opening a factory there.

Cadbury became the first-ever sponsor of which ITV soap in July 1996, a deal that ran a decade?

Coronation Street paused the Cadbury idents for months in 2006 after a recall of more than a million bars, and the chocolate firm then declined to renew.

Which actress, later Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films, voiced the languid rabbit in Cadbury's Caramel adverts?

Miriam Margolyes gave the Caramel bunny its 'take it easy' drawl, and also voiced Fly the sheepdog in the 1995 film Babe.

Cadbury Australia's Caramello, sold 50 million times a year, is shaped like which animal?

A koala full of caramel is Australia's second-favourite children's chocolate, behind only a certain chocolate frog, and the giant 35g version is a school fundraising staple.

Frank Muir sang 'Everyone's a fruit and nutcase' for Cadbury in the 1970s to a tune from which ballet?

The Nutcracker supplied the 'Danse des mirlitons', and the ad ranked 36th in a poll of Britain's favourite commercials.

Cadbury's owner since 2012 pairs 'delez', a play on delicious, with a Latin word meaning what?

World, from the Latin mundus, gave Kraft's spun-off snacks business the name Mondelez in 2012; Cadbury went with it while the grocery half later merged with Heinz.

Founder John Cadbury promoted drinking chocolate as a wholesome alternative to what?

Alcohol was the enemy: John Cadbury was among the first to sign the pledge of Birmingham's temperance society, and by his death he had been teetotal for half a century.

The Cadburys named Bournville after a local stream plus 'ville', a word for town borrowed from which language?

French was chosen to set the estate apart from its surroundings, and the stream was The Bourn, not the nearby Bourn Brook that names Bournbrook.

Which American company bought Cadbury's US arm for $300 million in 1988, taking the rights to make its chocolate there?

Hershey makes a different recipe, and in 2015 it blocked imports of British-made Cadbury bars, to the fury of expats who find the American version waxy.

Cadbury's 1969 merger partner, whose US drinks arm was split off in 2008 as Dr Pepper Snapple, was which company?

Schweppes gave the combined group a drinks cabinet that grew to include Canada Dry, Snapple and Royal Crown before the 2008 demerger left Cadbury a pure sweets maker.

Cadbury World, built on the Bournville site for £6 million in 1990, was formally opened in 1991 by which prime minister?

John Major cut the ribbon eight months after paying visitors first arrived, and the attraction has since grown far beyond the factory tour it was never meant to be.

Cadbury launched Miniature Heroes in 1999 as a response to which rival assortment, launched by Mars two years earlier?

Celebrations had a two-year head start, so Cadbury spent £4.8 million on a launch campaign calling its tin 'The people magnet'; the 'Miniature' was dropped in 2002.

Cadbury introduced tins of Roses in 1938 to compete with which Mackintosh's assortment launched two years before?

Quality Street had been on sale since 1936, and one story says Cadbury's reply was named after Rose Brothers of Gainsborough, the firm whose machines wrapped each sweet.

Which Cadbury bar of two chocolate-coated Flake-style fingers was invented in Dublin and launched in Ireland in 1985?

Twirl began as a single finger from Cadbury Ireland and crossed to Britain in 1987, by which time it had grown into the two-finger bar sold today.

Which lumpy Cadbury bar of peanuts, caramel, nougat and puffed rice was advertised as 'deliciously ugly'?

Picnic owned its looks so completely that Cadbury later signed the bar up to Tinder to court singles; in Russia it even comes in a walnut version.

In its 2024 bicentenary year Cadbury lost what, first granted by Queen Victoria in 1854 and renewed by Elizabeth II?

Its royal warrant had survived 170 years and two world wars, but King Charles III's first list in 2024 left the chocolate maker off; the Elizabeth II warrant had lapsed with her death in 2022.

Which rival's objections tied up Cadbury's 1995 and 2004 trademarks on its shade of purple in court for years?

Nestlé won the decisive round in 2013, when the Court of Appeal ruled Cadbury's description of the colour too vague to register, though the fight over Pantone 2685C rumbled on.

Kraft's agreed offer of £8.40 a share in January 2010 valued Cadbury at roughly how much?

£11.5bn was well above the £10.2 billion approach Cadbury had dismissed as 'derisory' four months earlier, and Kraft's own quarterly profit then fell 24% under the cost of digesting it.

Kraft earned a Takeover Panel rebuke for shutting which Cadbury factory near Bristol it had said it would keep open?

Somerdale at Keynsham had made Fry's chocolate since the 1920s; Kraft confirmed its closure within weeks of the 2010 deal and shifted the work to Skarbimierz in Poland.

Cadbury's 2006 salmonella recall, which cost it some £30 million, was traced to what at its Marlbrook plant?

A leaking pipe dripped waste water onto a chocolate-crumb line, and Cadbury's months-long silence toward the Food Standards Agency earned a further £1 million fine.

Which organic chocolate company, founded in 1991, did Cadbury buy in 2005?

Green & Black's kept its ethical branding under Cadbury and passed with it to Kraft and then Mondelez, where it sits beside ice cream, biscuits and hot chocolate lines.

Which attractions giant, owner of Alton Towers and Legoland, was announced in 2022 as the new operator of Cadbury World?

Merlin Entertainments took on Cadbury World subject to competition-authority approval, with Mondelez keeping ownership of the Bournville attraction itself.

Cadbury closed its factory in which New Zealand city in 2018, ending a carnival that raced Jaffas down Baldwin Street?

Dunedin lost the plant when Mondelez moved production to Australia despite $3 million pledged locally to save it; the site is now earmarked for a hospital.

Cadbury's first factory outside Britain, opened in 1921 with its own model estate, is in which Australian state?

Tasmania got the Claremont works on the Derwent because Australia was already one of Cadbury's biggest export markets, and the estate came complete with purple benches.

Which 1924 bar of cherries and coconut in dark chocolate came to Cadbury with MacRobertson's in 1967?

Cherry Ripe is one of Australia's oldest chocolate bars and still among the country's top sellers a century after launch.

Which Cadbury malted drink, marketed as a health food from the late 1920s, is a household name in India and Nigeria?

Bournvita's original recipe mixed full-cream milk, fresh eggs, malt and chocolate, and today it sells from Nepal to Benin and Togo.

Cadbury Fingers, a biscuit line with roots in an 1897 assortment, are baked under licence by which biscuit maker?

Burton's bakes the chocolate-coated fingers that Cadbury then sells across the Americas, Europe and Asia, alongside its own Jammie Dodgers and Wagon Wheels.

Which Cadbury bar sold forty million in its first week after a Tuesday launch in September 1996 named in its honour?

Fuse was rolled out on 'FuseDay', 24 September 1996, yet it was gone from British shelves by 2006 and later reappeared only in India.

Which Cadbury bar, launched in 1948 with 'Milk' in its original name, got a 1970s jingle by Manfred Mann's Mike d'Abo?

Fudge dropped the 'Milk' from its name but kept the 'finger of' jingle for decades, making the cheap bar a lunchbox fixture.

The 2008 sequel to Cadbury's gorilla advert had customised airport trucks racing at night to which Queen song?

Don't Stop Me Now was later swapped for Bon Jovi's 'Livin' on a Prayer', and a 2009 follow-up replaced the trucks with two children's dancing eyebrows.

Cadbury's 1866 'Cocoa Essence', a purer cocoa, used a butter-removing press developed in which country?

The Netherlands supplied the press that squeezed out unpalatable cocoa butter, and the profit it brought rescued a firm that had been losing money when John Cadbury's sons took over in 1861.

During the Second World War, parts of Cadbury's Bournville works switched to making milling machines and seats for what?

Fighter aircraft seats came off lines built for chocolate, as rationing cut sweets production and the Quaker firm's pacifist roots bent to the war effort.

In 1900 George Cadbury gave up personal ownership of Bournville's 313 houses by handing the estate to what?

A charitable trust, the Bournville Village Trust, held 1,000 acres and 3,500 homes by 1960 and still offers affordable housing; his widow Elizabeth chaired it from 1922.

George Cadbury wanted what fraction of the Bournville estate kept as parks, recreation grounds and open space?

One-tenth as greenery earned Bournville its nickname as a factory set in parkland, and the 1879 move from Bridge Street put the works four miles south of Birmingham.

Since 2007 Cadbury's head office has sat in a business park near which west London town rather than in Birmingham?

Uxbridge Business Park, actually just over the Buckinghamshire line in Denham, houses Cadbury House, while the chocolate itself is still made at Bournville.

Which Cadbury bar of two hollow twisted fingers went nationwide in 1989 and vanished from shelves in June 2005?

Spira had been sold only in the south-west and north-west of England through the mid-1980s, and its hollow twists made it a cult favourite for sipping tea through.

Cadbury's 1967 nougat-and-caramel rival to the Mars Bar, dropped in 1978, was named after which ancient people?

Aztec came in a deep purple wrapper and lasted eleven years, a nod to the Mesoamericans who first turned cacao into a drink.

Cadbury's aerated Wispa, its answer to Rowntree's Aero, was trialled in which English region in 1981?

The North East tested the bubbles for two years before the 1983 rollout, and in 2003 Cadbury briefly killed the brand by renaming it Dairy Milk Bubbly.

Cadbury's 5 Star, launched in India in 1969, sells in Brazil under which sister brand's name?

Lacta is Cadbury's Brazilian sister brand under Mondelez, and the caramel-and-nougat bar reached Brazil, Malaysia and the Philippines only in 2016.

The flowing Cadbury script logo, adopted worldwide in the 1970s, copies the 1921 signature of which family member?

William Cadbury was the founder's grandson, and his handwriting outlived the company's independence: Mondelez still prints it on every bar.

George Cadbury bought which national newspaper in 1901 to campaign against the Boer War and for old-age pensions?

The Daily News, later the News Chronicle, gave the Quaker chocolate-maker a pulpit against sweatshop labour and Joseph Chamberlain's imperial policy.

Which instrument stands by the village green and Quaker meeting house in Cadbury's Bournville?

A carillon rings out over a green laid out by a firm that banned pubs, in a village whose playing fields at Rowheath got their own pavilion in 1924.

George Cadbury had which timber-framed Tudor house moved to Bournville in 1916 to hold a family furniture collection?

Selly Manor dates from 1476 and was dismantled and rebuilt beam by beam, with the 14th-century Minworth Greaves re-erected beside it.

Which Business Secretary warned Kraft in 2009 not to 'make a quick buck' from its hostile bid for Cadbury?

Peter Mandelson's warning came as Kraft formalised a £9.8 billion bid that Cadbury's board rejected as undervaluing the firm, before a higher deal went through in January 2010.

With parkland laid out around the works, Cadbury's Bournville plant became known as 'the factory in a' what?

Garden was the boast of a plant four miles south of Birmingham, and Cadbury's 1908 dark-chocolate bar took the village's name to go with it.