Chupa Chups
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Chupa Chups a lollipop company founded by the Catalan Spanish employer Enric Bernat in 1958, and owned by multinational corporation Perfetti Van Melle.[1]
It is pronounced ['tʃuːpatˌʃuːps] (or['tʃʌpətʃʌps] in English) and comes from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "to suck".
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[edit] History
In the early 1950s, Bernat worked for an apple jam factory. As he introduced later his idea of lollipops to the investors, they left. Bernat took over the company in 1958 and renamed it to Chupa Chups. He constructed the machines and sold a striped bonbon on a wooden stick for one peseta each.
Bernat got the idea of a "bonbon with a stick" from Mark Eaton as his child got sticky hands from melting sweets that it wiped off on the cloth. He came up with his lollipop idea as he thought that, at that time, sweets were not designed with the main consumers, children, in mind. The shopkeepers were also instructed to place the lollipops near the cash register within reach of children's hands — instead of the traditional placement behind the counter.
The Chupa Chups company was quite a success. Within five years his sweets were sold at 300,000 outlets. After the end of the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), the self-funded private company went international. In the 1970s the colorful lollipops appeared in South East Asian nations like Singapore and Malaysia. In the 1980s it expanded to the European and American markets and in the 1990s to most Asian countries and Australian market. In 1995 a Chupa Chups lollipop was brought to the Mir space-station. As of 2003, 4 billion lollipops a year are sold to 150 countries with 2000 employees, 90 percent of abroad sales and a €500m turnover.
In 1991, Bernat passed formal control of "Chupa Chups" to his son Xavier. The Smint subsidiary brand/company was founded in 1994.
The game Zool and its sequel Zool 2, originally produced for the Amiga, featured pervasive product placement by Chupa Chups.
In July 2006 the company has been totally acquired by the italian group Perfetti Van Melle.
[edit] Logo
The Chupa Chups logo was designed by the surrealist Salvadore Dali. The first marketing was the logo with the slogan "És rodó i dura molt, Chupa Chups", which translates from Catalan as "It's round and long-lasting." Later, celebrities like Madonna were hired to advertise. In the 1980s, due to falling birth rates, an anti-smoking slogan "Smoke Chupa Chups" was tried to attract further adult consumers. The football coach Johann Cruyff used to smoke 20 cigarettes a day prior to undergoing double heart bypass surgery in 1991 while he was the coach of FC Barcelona, after which he quit smoking and began chain-sucking Chupa Chups lollipops instead.
[edit] Products
Among the products produced by Chupa Chups are:
- Natural-Sugar Products
- Chupa Chups -- lollipops
- Heli Pop -- spinner with a lollipop attached
- Melody Pops -- lollipop on a whistle
- Photo Pop -- camera with a lollipop attached
- Terrifics -- lollipop served out of a horror-movie character's head
- UFO Pop -- alien-themed toy shooter with a lollipop attached
- Vision Pop -- tinted safety lenses with a lollipop attached
- Sweet Sugar-Free Products
- Bubbly -- gum lollipops
- Cremosa -- sugar-free lollipops
- Cuore di Frutta -- 2-flavored sugar-free lollipops
- Smint -- artificially sweetened breath fresheners
[edit] References
- ^ "Italy's Perfetti Van Melle agrees to buy Spain's Chupa Chups for undisclosed sum", Forbes, July 3, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Chupa Chups site (flash)
- Smint site
