Cadbury's creme eggs did a Humpty Dumpty

News is that last year sales of these fell by £6 million against the year before.  Six million pounds!  That's one heck of a lot of creme eggs!

And it wasn't because people were suddenly concerned about the amount of sugar they were ingesting.  no, it was simply because the chocolate recipe had been changed - and the new recipe was not to people's liking.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries there were three principal chocolate manufacturing companies in England - Cadbury's in Birmingham, Fry's in Bristol and Rowntree's in York.  Coincidentally, all three companies had Quaker origins.  Fry's was merged into Cadbury's in 1919.  Rowntree's is now part of Nestlé while Cadbury's was bought by Kraft Foods and subsequently became part of Mondelēz International, so now all British chocolate manufacturers are owned by foreign companies.

There was concern that, after the takeover by Kraft, Cadbury's chocolate would be made to different recipes, be they the American of continental European types, both of which differ from the English.  Many people put the change in the creme eggs down to the influence of the American parent company, although Cadbury's have said that they have merely reverted to the original creme egg chocolate rather than the Dairy Milk that was used latterly.

Perhaps if they wish to build up sales again they will switch back, although it is obviously too late for this year!