| Type | Confectionery |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Introduced | 1963 |
| Related brands | Cadbury products |
| Markets | World |
A Cadbury Creme Egg is a brand of chocolate manufactured in the shape of an egg. The product consists of a thick milk chocolate shell, housing a white and yellow fondant filling which mimics the white and yolk of a real egg. Creme Eggs are the best-selling confectionery item between New Year's Day and Easter in the UK, with annual sales in excess of 200 million and a brand value of approximately £50 million.[1]
Creme Eggs are produced by Cadbury UK in the United Kingdom and by Cadbury Adams in Canada. They are sold by Kraft Foods in all markets except the USA, where The Hershey Company has the local marketing rights. At the Bournville factory in Birmingham, UK they are manufactured at a rate of 1.5 million per day. The Creme Egg was also previously manufactured in New Zealand but is now imported into New Zealand from the UK.
While filled eggs were first manufactured by the Cadbury Brothers in 1923, the Creme Egg in its current form was not introduced until 1963.[2] Initially sold as "Fry's Creme Eggs", they were rebranded as "Cadbury Creme Eggs" in 1971.[3]
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Creme eggs are usually sold individually but are also available in boxes of various sizes. The foil wrapping of the eggs was traditionally green, red, yellow and blue in colour in the United Kingdom and Ireland, though green was removed and purple replaced blue early in the 21st century. In the United States, some green is incorporated into the design, which previously featured the product's mascot—the Creme Egg Chick.
Creme eggs are available annually between January 1 and Easter Day.[4] In the 1980s Cadbury made Creme Eggs available year-round but sales dropped and they returned to seasonal availability.[5]
During an interview on the April 4th, 2007 episode of Late Night with Conan O' Brien, actor B. J. Novak drew attention to the fact that American market Cadbury Creme Eggs had decreased in size. American Creme Eggs now weigh 34g and contain 150 calories.[6] Before 2006, the eggs marketed by Hershey were identical to the UK version, weighing 39g and containing 170 calories.[7][8]
In 2010, the Canadian market version of the Cadbury Creme Egg was reduced in size to match the 34g United States version.
Creme Eggs were manufactured in New Zealand at the Cadbury factory in Dunedin from 1983 to 2009. Recently Cadbury in New Zealand and Australia has gone through a restructuring process which has seen production of most Cadbury products previously produced in New Zealand now produced at Cadbury factories in Australia. The Dunedin plant has had a $69 Million upgrade to become a specialist factory, specialising in boxed products such as Cadbury Roses. The result of the changes means that Creme Eggs are no longer manufactured in New Zealand or Australia but instead imported from the United Kingdom. The change has also seen the range of Creme Eggs available for sale decreased.[2] The size also dropped from 40g to 39g in this time. The response from New Zealanders has not been positive. Complaints have included the filling not being as runny as the New Zealand version.[9] The result has also seen various Facebook groups started in protest to the changes.[10]
Cadbury Creme Eggs are manufactured as two half-egg chocolate shells, each of which is filled with a white fondant, then topped with a smaller amount of yellow fondant. Both halves are then quickly joined together and cooled, the chocolate bonding together in the process. The solid eggs are removed from the moulds and wrapped in foil.[11]
Over the years, Cadbury has introduced a number of products related to the original Creme Egg, including:
In recent times, the Creme Egg has been marketed in the UK and Ireland with the question "How do you eat yours?" and in New Zealand with the slogan "Don't get caught with egg on your face". Australia and New Zealand have also used a variation of the UK question, using the slogan "How do you do it?" Over the years, there have been several major Cadbury's Creme Egg campaigns.
In North America, Creme Eggs are advertised on television with a small white rabbit called the Cadbury Bunny (alluding to the Easter Bunny) who clucks like a chicken. Ads for caramel eggs use a larger gold-coloured rabbit which also clucks, and chocolate eggs use a large brown rabbit which clucks in a deep voice. The advertisements use the slogan "Nobunny knows Easter better than him", spoken by TV personality Mason Adams. The majority of rabbits used in the Cadbury commercials are Flemish Giants.
In the UK, around the year 2000, selected stores were provided stand alone paperboard cutouts of something resembling a "love tester." The shopper would press a button in the centre and a "spinner" (a series of LED lights) would select at random a way of eating the Creme Egg, e.g. "with chips". These were withdrawn within a year. There are also the "Creme Egg Cars" which are, as the name suggest, ovular vehicles painted to look like Creme Eggs. They are driven to various places to advertise the eggs but are based mainly at the Cadbury factory in Bournville. Five "Creme Egg Cars" were built from Bedford Rascal chassis. The mirrors are taken from a Citroën 2CV.[13]
For the 2009 season, advertising in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada consists of stopmotion adverts in the "Release the Goo" campaign which consists of a Creme Egg stripping itself of its wrapper and then breaking its own shell, usually with household appliances and equipment, while making various 'goo' sounds, and a 'relieved' noise when finally able to break its shell. The Cadbury's Creme Egg website featured games where the player had to prevent the egg from finding a way to release its goo.
A similar advertising campaign in 2010 featured animated Creme Eggs destroying themselves in large numbers, such as gathering together at a cinema before bombarding into each other to release all of the eggs' goo, and another which featured eggs being destroyed by mouse traps.
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