Class and a half. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (1905) experimenting with size and typeface changes throughout the 70s and 80s.
Class and a half. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (1905) experimenting with size and typeface changes throughout the 70s and 80s.
The first solid block of edible chocolate appeared in the UK in 1847, courtesy of the Fry brothers of Bristol. Making one that tasted nice was a tougher matter, mainly to do with milk’s tendency to go off at the drop of a hat. In the end, slow-and-steady George Cadbury won the race. Eight years in development, his Highland Milk bar tasted good enough to beat the Swiss. It was renamed Dairy Maid, and shortly after renamed again to Dairy Milk, on the advice of a Plymouth shopkeeper. Boasting ‘1½ glasses in every ½ lb’, it was launched in 1905 to great success.
A year later, the plain Bournville appeared, followed by Fruit and Nut in 1928, and Whole Nut two years after that. Even Hitler couldn’t stop its advance: one press ad in the bleak days of 1939 advised: ‘The habit of taking a block of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk per day has been medically recommended as a sensible personal precaution for this autumn and winter.’
By 1960, the usual suspects lined up alongside flavours of pineapple, peppermint, coffee, marzipan, strawberry and the intriguingly vague ‘mild dessert’. The late 1960s was full of entreaties for Britons to ‘award yourself the CDM’. A nice idea, but a bit staid for such a forward-looking time, and in the early ’70s it became more wistful still, asking punters if, in this modern, synthetic world, wasn’t it good to know that ‘there’s always Cadbury’s Dairy Milk’?
Then in 1976 Rowntree launched their Yorkie, and such statements suddenly looked very optimistic. Hit even harder, Cadbury returned to the ‘glass and a half’ tagline they’d abandoned in the mid-’60s, and fought the lorry drivers of York with Cilla Black putting a chunk in her cheek on the top deck of a Blackpool tram. Meanwhile Frank Muir twisted his tongue round tales of bucolic Fruit and Nut mania to the strains of Tchaikovsky, and a scarily omnipotent calypso band informed unwitting citizens of the world that, regarding nuts (whole hazelnuts), Cadbury take them and they cover them in chocolate.
To seal this fightback, the bars themselves also became thicker (and pricier) once more. The ever-changing sizes were in part due to the rocketing price of cocoa, which increased tenfold between 1973 and 1977. Cadbury circled their wagons ever tighter, badging everything under the Dairy Milk label. This made sound business sense, but some of the fun had been let out, children of the future denied the Dickensian pleasure of bursting into a sweet shop and asking for ‘an Oliver Twist, two Tiffins and a Big Wig, please!’
Everyone’s a Fruit & Nut case. A succinct name for Cadbury’s raisin and almond bar (1928).