Let’s start with a statement that can’t be denied: The Cadbury Creme Egg, one of the world’s most beloved confections, is pure magic. And it’s not alone. All Cadbury’s products are so wonderful, that McDonald’s recently launched a Cadbury Creme McFlurry, Cadbury opened a pop-up restaurant in which they served their eggs in all manner of appetizing preparations (personally, I like to push them down my throat whole, but if you want a toasted egg sandwich, that’s cool), and a ban on the products in America due to a chocolate war (no, not this one) led panicked consumers to riot in the supermarket aisles, fighting over crushed eggs until none were left. But that’s not even close to the most interesting thing about the company or the products that it makes. Neither is the fact that a man was sentenced to jail for throwing mini eggs at his estranged wife.
Cadbury has enjoyed an almost 200-year-history. Beginning in 1824 when John Cadbury started making his own chocolate with a mortar and pestle, the company quickly grew, becoming a factory in 1831. From there, the company expanded into selling “drinking chocolate” and “cocoa” and then into bars and other products. In 1875, the company made its first Easter egg (who knew they were so old?), which was nothing like the one we enjoy today (plain dark chocolate, chocolate drops inside). As the factory expanded, the owners created a village in which workers could live, so it really was a little bit like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, albeit probably with less murder and torture of children. And while the original creme egg you know and enjoy every spring was launched in 1923, its most famous iteration wasn’t brought on the market until 1971. The biggest change happened in 2010, when Cadbury was sold to Kraft (which relegated it to its global business Mondelez), and that’s where most of the trouble began.
What possible trouble could chocolate cause, you might ask? Well, for anyone who’s a true chocolate connoisseur, a few things became readily apparent, like the fact that Kraft wasn’t going to keep Cadbury products at the same quality level. In an article from January 2016, The Telegraph outlined all the ways that the chocolate maker had failed fans, including shuttering their bank of chocolate coins, rounding the edges on Dairy Milk chocolate bars, and ending their yearly shipment of chocolates to retirees who had worked at Cadbury for decades.
The good news? Since Cadbury was bought out by Kraft, it launched a Cadbury flavored cream cheese, which was largely hailed as a mistake, but looks like it should be eaten by the tub. (Sadly, there is no option to buy the stuff by the pound.) But if that was a mistake some were willing to overlook, the demise of the Cadbury Creme Egg, once the high watermark of the Easter holiday had been debased, adulterated and humiliated.
No longer shall the egg shell be made from delicious Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. It will instead be made from disgusting, foul, vomit-inducing “standard cocoa mix chocolate”.
“It’s no longer Dairy Milk. It is similar, but not exactly Dairy Milk,” said a spokesman for Cadbury, which was bought by the US giant Kraft in 2010 and is now owned by Mondelez, with a flippancy almost as hard to stomach as this new, Frankenstein’s monster of an egg is bound to be.
The spokesman said the new chocolate had been tested on “consumers” – industry shorthand for “idiots”, clearly – and had been “found to be the best one for Creme Egg”.
Strong words about chocolate, but for some the Creme Egg was a religious experience, and we should be grateful that no one rose up in the same way we did when the Kinder Surprise was banned from reaching American shores.
If you thought that the recipe change was the strangest (or most questionable thing) that Cadbury had done, though, you haven’t seen their collaboration on a bath and body line with Anatomicals (no word on whether cannibalism rates went up when this product went to market in 2011), or the company’s decision to celebrate Vegemite by incorporating it into their chocolate. Or their schizophrenic creation which featured seven flavors in one bar. Terrifying. Delicious.
But not all of the strangeness that comes from Cadbury is produced in house. Chocolate lovers everywhere have been putting together their own recipes forever, even going so far as to make Cadbury ice cream (make it at home today!) and Cadbury Egg Pop-Tarts (maybe don’t make too many of these).
Of course, nothing is more inexplicable than the people who try to eat Creme Eggs as fast as possible to set world records, like Furious Pete who wanted to see just how many he could swallow in one minute (wrapper off, unfortunately; he could have probably gotten further if he’d just chosen not to shell them).
Just watching it might give you a toothache.
Have you seen the Creme Egg Pizza?
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Or the Creme Egg Nut Butter, which Mashable reports claims it’s better than Nutella. (Those are fighting words!)
Of course, now that you’ve read this, you may never want to eat a piece of chocolate again. But on the off-chance that you do, and because Easter is coming, here’s one more thing that you could make at home. It’s a giant Cadbury Creme Egg, and it holds all your dreams and wishes.
Happy cavities!
