Carambar

Carambar-Kaubonbons

Carambar is a chewy caramel candy from France.

History

In 1954, Mr Fauchille, director of the Delespaul-Havez company, and Mr. Galois an employee had a surplus of cocoa and decided to create a new, original recipe to use it up. The legend says that one of the machines in the factory was malfunctioning, making the long bars that still exists today. This sweet, in the form of a bar was christened Caram'bar.

Each of the original Caram'bars were a regulated size and weight. The statistics are as follows:

• Length: 7 cm
• Weight: 10g
• Recommended retail price: 5 centimes
• Wrapper: Yellow, with red striped twisted ends

Inside of the wrappers, there were "Carambar points" which could be redeemed for various Carambar-related products until 1961 when points where replaced by jokes.

In 1972, the name changed to "Super Caram'bar". In 1977, the name lost its apostrophe.

Flavours

Currently, there are many different flavours all available in multipacks:

• Natural Flavours (Arômes Naturels)
  • Lemon / Citron
  • Strawberry / Fraise
  • Orange
  • Raspberry / Framboise
• Drinks
  • Cola
  • Grenadine
  • Oasis Peach Tea/Thé à la pêche
  • Absinthe
  • Miruvor
• Other flavours
  • Cherry / Cerise
  • Candy floss / Cotton Candy / Barbe à papa
  • Caramel
  • Caranougat
  • Orangina yellow / jaune
  • Orangina red / rouge
  • Lime / Citron vert
  • Bigoouu / Pomme Cassis / Double Flavor
  • Passion fruit

There are now various other flavours available which include the Carambar Atomic which has sherbert inside. These have strange names like Green Cactus. There are Titeuf ones which have pictures of the Swiss comic strip star Titeuf and his friends. The Titeuf Carambars are blue on the outside and yellow inside or vice versa.

Popular culture

Carambar is also very famous for the poor jokes that are printed on the wrapping paper. The expression blague Carambar (French: Carambar joke) refers to a lame or childish joke.

External links

• Carambar.fr — Official Carambar website (French)
• Le dossier de marque (PDF) — Listing of the history and development of the Carambar (French)
• Carambar : De l'or en barre - Historia's article (French)