Terry's Chocolate Orange
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| Product type | Confection |
|---|---|
| Owner | Kraft Foods |
| Country | The Chocolate Works, York, England |
| Introduced | 1931 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Previous owners | Terry's |
Terry's Chocolate Orange is a chocolate product, made by Kraft Foods.
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Development [edit]
In 1923, Frank and Noel Terry joined the family business, Terry's of York. They revamped the company, and after opening the Art Deco-style factory The Chocolate Works in 1926, began launching new products. The first was the Chocolate Apple (1926),[1] then the Chocolate Orange (1931), and finally Terry's All Gold (1936).[2]
At the onset of World War II, confectionary production was immediately halted. The factory was taken over by F Hill's and Son's of Manchester as a shadow factory, to manufacture and repair aircraft propeller blades.[2]
With the factory handed back to the company post-war, production was difficult due to continued rationing in the United Kingdom, and limited imports of raw cocoa. As a result, in 1954 production of the chocolate apple was phased out in favour of increased production of the chocolate orange.[2]
In the North American market, where it has had a variety of importers over the years, it was briefly sold as a Tobler (maker of the Toblerone) product.
Since 2005, Chocolate Orange products have been manufactured near Jankowice, Poland.[3] Ironically, Terry's Chocolate Orange is not available in Polish shops.
In 1970, Terry's launched the Chocolate Lemon, but this version appears to have been somewhat short-lived.[4]
Structure [edit]
The Terry's Chocolate Orange comprises an orange-shaped ball of chocolate mixed with orange oil, divided into 20 "segments", similar to a real orange, and wrapped in orange-skin patterned foil. As the segments, when packaged, are stuck together firmly in the centre, the traditional method of getting ready to eat them is: prior to unwrapping the ball, to tap it severely on a hard surface to cause the segments to separate from each other (dubbed "Tap and Unwrap").
Spin-offs [edit]
The Chocolate Orange brand has seen spin-off products, currently including:
- Chocolate Orange bar bar of six segments
- Segsations: individual segments of chocolate in different flavours, including: milk chocolate, puffed rice, honeycomb, cornflake, and a "double seg" of layered milk and dark chocolate, all flavoured with orange oil.
Advertising [edit]
The Chocolate Orange product is known for its unusual marketing, which is usually at its heaviest around Christmas.[1] Actress Dawn French has fronted numerous campaigns for the brand, often in a posed scene of defending and hiding "her" Chocolate Orange from others. Famous marketing phrases include:
- Tap it and unwrap it, since replaced with "whack and unwrap"
- It's not Terry's, it's mine
- Don't tap it... Whack it!
More recent advertisements (after the rebranding) do not feature French and contain the new slogan "Round but not round for long" (some include the Countdown theme tune). The newest advertising campaign in the United Kingdom features various situations in which people are trying to break the segments of their Terry's Chocolate Orange apart with the slogan "Smash it to pieces, love it to bits".
Product range [edit]
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Dark
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Lemon (short-lived 1980s variant)
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Snowball (white chocolate)
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Mint
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Toffee
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Bars (chocolate bars)
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Mini segments/Segsations (individually wrapped segments)
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Easter Eggs
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Flavour Carte D'Or ice cream (no longer in production)
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Tangy
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Cookies
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Volcanic Popping Candy
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Siesta
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Hazelnut
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Raspberry
- Terry's Chocolate Orange White Chocolate Smasher
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Toffee Crunch
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Birthday Cake
- Terry's Chocolate Orange Orange
References [edit]
- ^ a b "Chocolate history". VisitYork.org. Retrieved 2012-06-27.
- ^ a b c "The Chocolate Works". NeolithicSea.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-06-27.
- ^ "How long before Cadbury's chocolate is made in this Polish factory?". Mail Online. Retrieved 2012-10-13.
- ^ Sweet Talk, Whittaker, Nicholas, Orion Books, 1998, London.
External links [edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Terry's Chocolate Orange |
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