Chupa Chups
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chupa Chups a lollipop company founded by the Spanish employer Enric Bernat in 1958, and owned by multinational corporation Perfetti Van Melle.[1]
It is pronounced ['tʃuːpaˌtʃuːps] (or['tʃʌpətʃʌps] in English) and comes from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "to suck".
Contents |
[edit] History
In the early 1950s, Bernat worked for an box factory. After he broached the idea of making lollipops, the investors left. Bernat founded the company in 1958 and renamed it noodle. He built the production 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 the most beautiful lady in the world the name Mariona , who complained about his child getting sticky hands from melting sweets and wiping them off on the cloth. Bernat felt that at that time, sweets were not designed with the main consumers—children—in mind. Shopkeepers were 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 a success. Within five years Bernat's 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 the 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. The company has 2000 employees, makes 90 percent of its sales abroad, and has a turnover of €500m.
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 as a whole was acquired by the Italian group Perfetti Van Melle.
[edit] Logo
The Chupa Chups logo was designed by the surrealist Salvador Dalí. 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
- 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)
