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Toblerone, the triangle-shaped chocolate bars that fill duty-free airport shops, is losing some of its Swiss look as more of the treats are made outside of Switzerland.
The Matterhorn, the famous mountain in the Swiss Alps that has been on Toblerone packaging since 1970, will soon be gone. In its place will be a “streamlined mountain logo,” said a spokeswoman for
International Inc., the snack company behind the chocolates.
Mondelez said it is making the changes to comply with Swiss law, which says that production of certain foods must be done in Switzerland in order to use the country’s symbols on packaging.
The company said it will be making some Toblerone bars in Bratislava, Slovakia, to keep up with rising demand for the chocolate treat. It will continue to make Toblerone in Bern, Switzerland, where the chocolate brand was founded 115 years ago. Mondelez said it has updated the Bern factory to produce 90 million more 3.5-ounce bars a year.
The chocolate’s recipe will remain the same, the Mondelez spokeswoman said. An outline of a bear hidden in the Matterhorn logo will also stick around, the spokeswoman said, and will appear in the new mountain logo.
Toblerone has been around since 1908, the invention of Swiss chocolatier
Theodor Tobler
and his cousin
Emil Baumann.
Its name is a fusion of Mr. Tobler’s last name and torrone, the Italian word for the honey-and-nut nougat used in the bars. The chocolate has a distinct triangular shape, with peaks that look like a mountain range.
In 2016, another Toblerone change upset fans. The amount of chocolate was reduced in some bars sold in the U.K. because of the rising costs of ingredients and production, Mondelez said at the time, causing the gap between the triangular peaks of chocolate to be wider apart.
Toblerone is sold around the world, but the golden triangle packages are hard to miss in airport stores, where giant sizes of the chocolates are available, sometimes weighing more than 4 pounds.
In an episode of “Friends,” Toblerone fan Joey Tribbiani stopped Ross Geller, played by
David Schwimmer,
as he rushed to the airport. “Ross! Ross!”
Matt LeBlanc
as Joey shouted. “If you’re going to the airport, can you pick me up another one of those Toblerone bars?”
In addition to the mountain logo swap, Toblerone’s new packaging will also remove references to being made in Switzerland and make an addition: the signature of Mr. Tobler, one of the chocolate’s founders.
Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com
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Appeared in the March 7, 2023, print edition as ‘Toblerone to Remove the Matterhorn From Its Packaging.’
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