46 Fun Facts About Chocolate Bars

Which future James Bond actor played 'the Big Fry' in 1960s adverts for Fry's Chocolate Cream?

George Lazenby, then a model, helped win the Bond role by accidentally punching a stunt coordinator during his audition.

Cadbury Dairy Milk was first made in 1905 in which city?

Birmingham's Cadbury was chasing Swiss makers, who led milk chocolate, so George Cadbury Jr gave Dairy Milk more milk than any rival bar.

Nestlé's 2013 appeal stopped Cadbury from trademarking which colour for its Dairy Milk wrappers?

Purple had become Cadbury's trademark after a 2012 High Court win, but the Court of Appeal found the registration lacked the required clarity.

Which 1923 Frank Mars bar was designed to taste like the malted shakes sold at soda fountains?

Milky Way grew from a soda-fountain moment: Forrest Mars said he suggested putting the malted shake he was drinking with his father into a bar.

The Mars bar was first made in 1932 by Forrest Mars Sr. in which English town?

Slough is where Forrest Mars landed after falling out with his father, who bought him out with $50,000 and the rights to sell abroad.

Which film star was digitally recreated for a 2013 Galaxy chocolate advert, 20 years after her death?

Audrey Hepburn was rebuilt by the effects firm Framestore, which laid her digital face over the performances of body doubles.

Until 1990, Snickers was sold in Britain and Ireland under what name?

Marathon became Snickers in 1990, when Mars brought Britain and Ireland into line with the name it used everywhere else.

Twix's 2012 'Pick a Side' adverts asked fans to back which pair of supposedly rival fingers?

Left or Right: Mars's 2012 'Pick a Side' campaign invented a factory rivalry between the bar's two fingers and rolled it out worldwide.

3 Musketeers originally contained three pieces in which flavours?

Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla bars shared one wrapper, hence the name, until rising costs and wartime sugar limits left only chocolate.

Rowntree's of York launched KitKat in 1935 under what name?

Chocolate Crisp answered a York worker's suggestion-box request for a bar 'a man could take to work in his pack up'.

In 2016, how did Toblerone cut the weight of some UK bars, upsetting fans?

Wider gaps between the peaks let Mondelez shrink two UK bars, a change it blamed on rising ingredient costs rather than raising prices.

During the Second World War, how did Rowntree's change KitKat?

KitKat had to switch to dark chocolate because milk was scarce, and the original milk recipe only came back after the war.

Toblerone's name combines the founder's surname Tobler with 'torrone', the Italian word for what?

Nougat is what torrone means, and the bar lent its name to Sweden's 1995 'Toblerone affair', a credit-card scandal that ended Mona Sahlin's bid to become prime minister.

Toblerone has been made since 1908 in which Swiss city?

Bern is Toblerone's home, but once some production moved to Slovakia, Swissness rules forced the Matterhorn off its packs.

What did Milton Hershey sell in 1900 so he could concentrate on making chocolate?

His caramel company fetched $1 million; the milk chocolate bar he launched that year was an instant hit, and Hershey went on to build a whole town around its factory.

Before Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, H. B. Reese worked for Milton Hershey as what?

A dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Hershey, Reese went on to found his own candy firm, which his six sons sold to Hershey in 1963.

Curtiss Candy insisted Baby Ruth was named after the daughter of which president, not the ballplayer?

Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth was long dead when the bar was named, so many saw the story as a way to avoid paying Babe Ruth royalties.

How did Curtiss famously promote Baby Ruth in the 1920s?

Dropping bars over cities from aeroplanes, on little parachutes, was Curtiss's stunt, and when Babe Ruth licensed his name to a rival bar, Curtiss went to court and blocked it.

Which cartoon character advertised Butterfinger from 1988 to 2001?

Bart Simpson's line 'Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger' outlived the campaign, and the bar has since brought Bart back for new ads.

Almond Joy shares packaging and a logo with its nut-free sibling but uses which colour scheme?

Blue marks Almond Joy, which Peter Paul created by setting a whole almond on the centre of its older nut-free bar.

Charleston Chew, created in 1922, is named after what?

Founder Donley Cross was a stage actor; the bar is famously eaten frozen.

Which honeycomb bar did J. S. Fry & Sons launch in 1929?

Crunchie's British adverts pitched it from the mid-1980s as the bar for 'that Friday feeling', Cadbury's long-running slogan for it.

Cadbury's Wispa, discontinued in 2003, returned in 2007 after what?

An internet campaign by fans won a limited 2007 comeback, and sales were strong enough for Wispa to return for good in 2008.

Rowntree's launched Yorkie in 1976 to fill a gap in the market for what kind of bar?

A 'manly' chunky bar was the pitch, and in 2002 Nestlé pushed it further with the wrapper slogan 'It's not for girls!'

After taking over Cadbury in 2010, Kraft moved chocolate bar production from Keynsham, near Bristol, to which country?

Poland got the lines even though Kraft had pledged during the takeover to keep Keynsham open, which drew criticism from the Takeover Panel.

Cadbury's Flake was discovered in 1920 when a Bournville worker noticed what?

Excess chocolate folding as it fell from the moulds became Flake, and when Italian ice-cream makers cut bars in half, Cadbury made the 99 Flake.

Rowntree's patented which bubbly bar in 1935, launching it in the North of England as 'the new chocolate'?

Aero's 'Irresistibubble' slogan was coined by an advertising copywriter who went on to fame as the novelist Salman Rushdie.

Forrest Mars designed the Bounty bar in 1951 as an imitation of which American bar?

Milk chocolate Bounty comes in a blue wrapper, dark in red.

The Freddo frog was invented in 1930 after 18-year-old Harry Melbourne talked his boss out of a chocolate what?

A mouse was Sir Macpherson Robertson's idea, until his young moulder piped up that women and children were afraid of mice and it wouldn't sell.

The classic Fry's Turkish Delight bar, launched in 1914, is flavoured with what?

Rose is the classic flavour, and from the late 1950s the bar was sold with television adverts promising it was 'Full of Eastern Promise'.

The name Kinder Bueno mixes German and Spanish words meaning what?

Ferrero launched the hazelnut-cream wafer in 1990.

Ritter Sport is square because Clara Ritter wanted a bar that would fit where without breaking?

A jacket pocket was the target: Clara Ritter wanted a square that fit there unbroken yet weighed the same as a normal long bar.

Which Rowntree's wafer and caramel bar was introduced in 1976?

Lion was nearly axed in 2007, when Nestlé weighed scrapping it after sales fell following a healthier relaunch, but the bar survived.

Cadbury's Boost bar began in 1985 with which tropical flavour in its name?

Coconut Boost was the original, and in the 1990s comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer sold Boost with the surreal line 'It's slightly rippled with a flat underside'.

Which food company funded 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to promote a real Wonka Bar?

Quaker Oats put up the whole $3 million budget and is said to have insisted on the Willy Wonka title, to sell Wonka-branded candy.

Britain's Galaxy chocolate is sold in the US and Canada under which name?

Dove is its North American name, taken from the Chicago ice-cream bar Mars bought in 1986 and then turned into a line of chocolate bars.

Nestlé makes its Coffee Crisp wafer bar in which city?

Toronto is where it's made; Coffee Crisp began in 1938, when Rowntree's gave its Canadian Biscrisp wafer bar a coffee flavour.

Marabou created Sweden's Daim bar after which American company refused to license its recipe?

Marabou tested its own version in Stockholm in 1952; the bar was long sold in the UK as Dime.

Kinder Surprise eggs are barred from the US under a 1938 law prohibiting confectionery containing what?

A non-nutritive object, the toy, keeps Kinder Surprise out, so Ferrero sells Kinder Joy there instead, with the toy sealed in a separate half.

Which fruit-shaped chocolate did Terry's phase out because its Chocolate Orange sold so much better?

Apple gave way to the Orange, and in the Second World War Terry's York factory had been taken over to make and repair aircraft propeller blades.

Whittaker's, maker of the Peanut Slab, is a chocolate company from which country?

New Zealand's Whittaker's made Ed Sheeran an 'Ed Block' with his face on the label in 2023, then teamed up with him to raise money for Auckland flood relief.

Dancers dressed as which Tunnock's product appeared at the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening?

Teacakes starred at Glasgow 2014, but in 2016 Tunnock's labelled them the 'Great British Teacake' in London adverts, angering some Scottish nationalists.

Since 2025, why have McVitie's Penguin bars been labelled 'chocolate flavour' instead of chocolate?

Too little cocoa: soaring cocoa prices led McVitie's to use other ingredients, pushing the coating below the legal minimum for chocolate.

Which bite-sized chocolates did Milton Hershey introduce in 1907?

Kisses were hand-wrapped until 1921, when Hershey's new machines added the paper plume to set them apart from imitators.

The company that makes Snickers and Twix is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and is owned by whom?

The founding family owns all of Mars, and Forrest Mars Sr. guarded its privacy so fiercely that he gave just one interview in his life, in 1966.

Which ingredient is Fry & Sons credited with using to turn drinking chocolate into an eating bar in 1847?

Cocoa butter, extracted from the beans when making cocoa, is said to have been mixed back in with cocoa powder and sugar, giving Fry's a paste it could mould.