:o
"There has been no Machiavellian plan, I can assure you."
I believed it until he said that. Only an evil genius would use such language.
Cadbury bows to 'bring back Wispa' net campaign
Cadbury has agreed to resurrect the Wispa bar it consigned to history in 2003 after a concerted net campaign in which choc fans mobilised on Facebook and YouTube to demand satisfaction: Admittedly, the above's not the most energetic call-to-arms ever to grace cyberspace, but it does form part of a critical activist mass - …
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 09:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hooray !!!
Not only am I a big fan of the Wispa bar, but I also built the prototype of the Process Line Control Panel that operated the whole Wispa bar production line; and went on to build several of the production panels while working for Metal Box Automation & Controls
Due to problems with delivery of the actual casing, the prototype the Cadbury bigwigs viewed was actually cardboard sprayed with metallic silver paint and the vdu and keyboard propped up on some old pinhole simulator boxes.
If they had looked at the back they would have discovered that I had named it the ZX8 1/2 in honour of the then super-high-tech ZX81.
( If you think this is the meanderings of a madman, be careful; some of my kit is fitted to Trafalgar Class Nukes).
Metal Box, a great company run by idiots; now owned by the French (spit).
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 09:50 GMT Edward Hull
Re: But...
That is indeed what cadburys claimed at the time.
However, it is a completely diferent shape and the texture of the bubbles is also completely different, the DM version is more dense with thicker walls between bubbles.
all these bars that are the same shape get rather boring, and wispa also has the advantage of looking bigger to children. Take a child and offer them two bars with the same mass, but one looking bigger than the other, which would they choose?
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 09:51 GMT Gavin
What about the King Size Snicker
The King Size Snicker they ruined, they released a Snicker Duo bar during the big obeisity upraor when mcdonalds started doing salads and reducing salt.
all the other snickers bars lack the vital caramel to nougat and nuts ratios, the must re-introduce kingsize snickers, nestle get on this now PLEASE.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 10:43 GMT Rich Bryant
@Gavin
Uh, while i admire your mastery of internet incoherence and illegibility, and in the vain hope that this was not just a troll, the following should be considered.
Snickers (which is really Marathon, damn you all) is not a Cadbury product. Neither is it a Nestlé product, so "nestle get on this now PLEASE" is probably not going to be useful.
It's a Mars product, made by Masterfoods.
With any luck, Nestlé will never get their hands on Candbury's or Masterfoods. Not merely for the politically correct milk substitute in Africa reasons but because they always bloody ruin everything they take over. Rowntrees are gone, damn them. Probably the first thing they did after sticking their stupid logo on things was to make After Eights cloyingly sweet and inedible.
And everything else is going the same way. Nestlé just make horrible chocolate. I'll continue to support Cadbury's.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 10:43 GMT frank denton
Bring Back Opal Fruits
(It may not be Cadbury but....)
I refuse to buy Starburst until they rename them as Opal Fruit. I wouldn't eat them for the flavour (which is lovely) but for the nostalgia, of which the name and packaging is an important component.
Please join me in this so as to bring commercial pressure to bear on the manufacturer. Together, we can bring back Opal Fruit (made to make your mouth water, fresh with the tang of citrus, four refreshing fruit flavours, .........[sing along].....)
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 10:56 GMT Steven
I should get out more
Checked 16p against the RPI and it should come out as about 39p at todays money (figures include tax). Obviously I didn't factor in any movements in the cocoa bean/milk markets.
I'd like to throw my (not inconsiderable and getting less inconsiderable by the snack) weight behind the Coconut Boost campaign. I'd also like Vic and Bob back to advertise them.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 11:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
While they're at it
Bring back Spira bars. They are lovely.
And I always wished they would experiment with putting some kind of filling in the holes in a spira bar.
But most importantly of all, McDonald's should bring back pizzas!!
Who else can remember the McDonald's personal pizza (where the z's were written like the number 3, being a sideways McDonald's "M" golden arches logo).
I don't think I've seen them since the early 90's.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 12:58 GMT andy gibson
42p?
No doubt Cadburys are making a nice tidy profit on guillible rose tinted spectacle wearing chocofiends. No way will it be worth 42p, particularly as it will no doubt be smaller than the original.
When it comes to chocolate, value for money does it for me so I'll stick with my 35p Snickers and 52p big block of Aldi chocolate.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 12:58 GMT Iain Cartledge
Re: While they're at it
Anyone remember the chocolate + marshmallow pizza they brought out when they were promoting the original Turtles films?
There seems to have been a resurgence in nostalgic food recently. I hadn't seen Gold bars for years until recently, and I'm amazed that you can still find Double Dips and Sherbert Fountains in supermarkets. We should get kids eating those instead, and Flying Saucers!
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 12:58 GMT Frank Bough
@ Rich Bryant
"And everything else is going the same way. Nestlé just make horrible chocolate. I'll continue to support Cadbury's."
I'm speechless. Cadbury don't even make chocolate - their veghelate has been getting our country a bad name for decades. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the world of chocolate knows that Cadbury's Dairy Milk is little better than the re-work that goes inside Milky Way Magic Stars.
And don't even get me started on Creme Eggs!
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 13:00 GMT Tim J
What a totally crap video
I've just viewed the YouTube video embedded in the story that was "produced" by the Wispa fan... and man, it is genuinely appalling - it's just this guy spluttering to camera for far too long followed by a completely underwhelming TV advert for Wispa from the early 80's.
I'm amazed that Cadbury might have been so impressed by such rubbish... if the relaunched Wispa's sales are as underwhelming as that video then Wispa will be going back to the chocolate grave.
That said, perhaps there's enough oddballs such as him - those who're prepared to make a tit of themselves by appearing on camera on a rubbish YouTube video extolling some unremarkable confectionery product - who'll all rush out to their nearest corner shop and buy a Wispa, perhaps with a slightly pathetic sense that they too were part of the grassroots net revolutions that brought Wispa back from the dead (and without any sense that they have played right into the hands of Cadbury by helping this big chocolate company make more money).
Go and eat a banana.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 13:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
My tuppence'orth
'Secret' - I think that is what it was called. Hideously expensive at the time it was released (early nineties) and disappeared within a year.
It was nice though, soft rich chocolatey flavoured foundant filling surrounded by flaky strands of milk chocolate (for those out there who say milk chocolate is not real chocolate, I would ask what the minumum amount of cocoa solids and cocoa butter is for chocolate and ask you if everybody wants 80% bitter chocolate).
I too miss the delectable velvety smoothness of a Wispa Gold.
Coconut Boost? Don't remember that one at all - I think it would have been alright though.
The Dairy Milk varieties are a nonsense, they are not as good as the ones they replaced - and actually Galaxy bars taste much better in my opinion.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 13:00 GMT Rob Beard
Yorkie
While these chocolate companies are bringing back old lines, Nestle should change the recipe on their chocolate bars back to what they were in the 80's. When Roundtrees used to make Yorkies and Kit-Kats they tastes great, not they're just too sweet. Don't get me wrong, I have a really sweet tooth, but it just isn't the same.
Oh, can ITV start putting the Charley Says adverts back on telly please.
Ta very much.
Rob
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 13:40 GMT Chris Hedley
If it works for Wispa...
... I demand the following:
* That Snickers are known as Marathons once again. I don't eat chocolate that sounds as if it's named after a venereal rash.
* That Opal Fruits stop calling themselves Starburst. It's not big and it's not clever.
* The return of paper wrappers for chocolate bars so that I can get into the bloody things. I'm sure a vague comment about the joy of green biodegradable wind-farmed lentils and global warming should do the trick.
Until my demands are met, I'm holding my diet hostage.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 14:12 GMT Alec McCormack
This campaign was planned
The planning for this campaign was published in Advertising Age andor/marketing weekly about 1 month ago. It was planned by an agency. Sorry but thats how the world works.
There may have been no "Machiavellian plan" but I can assure you that this was the work of an agency, Machiavellian or not.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 15:11 GMT POPE Mad Mitch
Its all in the ratio
One thing they always seem to forget when "improving" chocolates is the ratio of chocolate to filling. The wispa was far nicer than dairy milk bubbly because of the size of air bubbles. Spira is nicer than say a freddo, same chocolate, different thicknesses and air ratio. dairy milk caramel is not a patch on the old 'cadburys caramel' bars because the choclate to caramel ratio is all wrong. The same goes for many of the different size variants they now do for products like creme eggs, same ingredients, different ratios, so they taste wrong, but i shall stop there.
Why cant cadburys try hiring some taste testers than actually have a sense of taste, heck, i would even pay them to join a tasters club to try out the new stuff before they rolled it out.
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 15:11 GMT Guy
RE : Pretzel Flipz!
Pretzel Flipz are still in production over here in the states.
In fact you can get milk chocolate and white chocolate varieties...
As for the dark chocolate lover above, who says british chocolate is less than the best, you my friend are mistaken.
I'm having to make do with the rubbish chocolate the Americans make (Hershey's is terrible) British chocolate rules!
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 15:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Source of the advert used
That's so great Wispa is coming back, it has a creamy texture unlike any other choclate bar, can't wait to sink my teeth into another bar!
Incedentally, the advert used in the campaign video in this article originated from one of my old Betamax tapes, some years ago I got a Betamax player at a car boot and a couple of boxes of tapes, scanning through them I found almost 300 80s adverts which I put out as a CD. Some people have 'ripped it off' and sold it on eBay but I torrented it and so the adverts have spread far and wide across the net, and most of them have been put on YouTube for everyone to enjoy.
Rid.
(can we have a campaign for Cherry 7-Up now please? _with_ the Matt LeBlanc advert for added cheese, I loved that drink)
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Tuesday 21st August 2007 20:59 GMT Andrew Smith
RE:All British chocolate is crap
Lies, sure the cocoa solids % in Cadburys, Mars, and Nestle products are low but Green & Blacks (now sadly part of Cadburys) and a few other brands have the requisite cocoa solid content and the shelf space provided to such brands is expanding.
For my pence worth I like both, the cheaper chocolate with lower % cocoa solids do seem to be more imaginative with their chocolate bar recipes, hence the Wispa and other novelty brands. And remember they're marketed for children no matter how many fat geeks you see wolfing one down, as once they've got you they've got you for life.
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Wednesday 22nd August 2007 09:15 GMT Frank Bough
@ Andrew Smith
It's not the cocoa solids that are the problem with Cadbury vegelate, it's the substituting of vegetable fat for cocoa butter. That's why it isn't chocolate. Just compare Dairy Milk to Galaxy or Milka - both very milky and not high in cocoa solids, but both proper chocolate because they use cocoa butter. Similarily, Green and Blacks white chocolate contains no cocoa solids, but it's still real chocolate because it has the right ingredients.
To steal a Mars marketing strap - why have cotton when you can have silk? Why pay for vegelate when real chocolate costs the same and is available in the same outlets?
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Wednesday 22nd August 2007 10:15 GMT John
hurrah
whatever the method, I'm glad to see the Wispa back. One of my favourite Cadbury bars.
Going by company, a flake with its clothes on is/was the Flake Dipped (Ripple is a Mars brand in the Galaxy family) and if you don't know the difference between a flake and a wispa, you don't deserve chocolate!
now, have to go post a video to you-tube demanding Cadbury bring back the Fuse. Loved the surreal ads with the soldiers in purple uniforms
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Wednesday 22nd August 2007 10:21 GMT Graham Bartlett
Not just chocs
As nice as some of these are, I can do without them.
However, if they were to reintroduce Spangles and Pacers then I might just have to become a fat git. Pacers would even be easy to market as "Mint Starburst" (yes I know they're really Opal Fruits, but let's face it, Opal Fruits is a bit of a crap name really).
The ultimate sweets that might just force me to sugar-rush myself to death are some one-off specials though. On a skiing holiday in Italy when I was 13, I found they had Polos in orange and lemon flavours - not the boiled-sweet type but solid like a minty one - but they've never appeared over here. And there have been two special-edition versions of Fruit Pastilles which were to die for - tropical, and summer fruits (which uniquely had gooseberry-flavoured fruit pastilles).
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Wednesday 22nd August 2007 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wagon Wheels ARE Smaller
If you don't believe me, buy one then go visit the Food Packaging museum in Gloucester and compare it with the original wrappers they have on display.
The current WW is about 40% smaller than the original, the same goes for most of the other sweets; Curly Whirlys WERE 12" long!!!!!
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Sunday 26th August 2007 17:54 GMT Rhys
dairy milk
IIRC the Cadburys here in NZ use coco butter rather than vegefats.
Taste good, But I tend to get the Warehouse own brand of generic chocolate in 1Kg slabs.. I can go through two slabs in a days SCUBA diving, Swimming against the current a long way down dragging a catch bag with a PPO2 over 80% really gets the metabolisim revving up.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
