A big long time ago… the canteen at Central Southland College sold Whittaker’s and Cadbury and we almost always chose Whittaker’s – santé bars and K bars (milk flavoured for the health-conscious among us) and peanut slabs and Toffee Milks which were 5 cents each and always always always came in a white paper bag that was the perfect size to fit in the school trousers pocket. (Actually, they sold pies too and pies come first of course, but, you know, after a pie…)
There was Cadbury too in its regal purple livery. It was made in Dunedin. I remember this with such clarity that I should take this opportunity to tell you about Brown and Kulik (1977) and flash-bulb memories. But I won’t. Continental chocolates. We were on a school trip and the Cadbury woman who met us said… “Help yourself to any of the chocolates you see on the conveyor belts…” What? What did she say? Did she really say what I think she said? I fell in love with that woman right there, right then.
And then, one day, an evil multi-national bought Cadbury. They wanted its profit and they thought they were clever enough to make Cadbury even more profitable – more revenue and less costs. Like in Tonga, they changed King-size to small-sized and thought we’d not notice. They put the prices up. They subbed cocoa butter for palm oil. Not only did orangutans lose their habitat when their Indonesian rainforests were cleared to grow palm oil, but eN-Zedders were exposed to chocolate-looking but yucky-tasting muck. We hated the shrinkflation, we hated the price increases, we felt sorry for the homeless orangutans, but what we hated most was the taste of brown slabs of over-sweet, solidified palm oil masquerading as chocolate. And so, just like that, our love for boxes of Continental and dairy milk and caramello died. It was mass murder. No, it was suicide because Mondalez did it to itself.
But mourn not because Zorro or The Lone Ranger or Batman arrived in the shape of a Whittaker’s King size dairy milk chocolate bar and King-size meant big like the King of Tonga – the old one not the trimmed-down new one…and coconut rough and fruit & nut and all was good in the world again. Whittaker’s even had their old Sante bars and K bars and Peanut Slabs and toffee milks. It’s not all about the old days though. Whittaker’s also has posh chocolate like West Coast Buttermilk and Nelson Pear and Manuka Honey, but let’s be honest, that’s for the Wellington and Auckland folksters and dilettantes.
I’m not at Central Southland College anymore, thank God, but there’s still a little of the school canteen feel to buying Peanut Slabs when in Dubai airport, which is where I last stocked up on life’s wee essentials.
So that’s eN-Zed’s chocolate war story and why we used to be in love with Cadbury but now we have eyes only for Whittaker’s.
eN-Zed 