Thorntons Christmas Event

Three week’s after Hotel Chocolat’s Christmas launch, Thorntons held their own Christmas event yesterday, showing what they’ve got lined up for the festive season.

Held in central London, just around the corner from the swanky Hotel Chocolat apartment, this was a very different affair. Thorntons clearly wanted to have a bit of fun with their Christmas launch and decided to hold it in a pub – complete with santa, a couple of elves, carol singers and a snow machine. Obviously, they weren’t taking this entirely seriously, which was fine by me.

The timing of the event was a little unfortunate – being held on a Thursday afternoon meant it wasn’t really suitable for the average blogger who has a day job. As it turns out, I think I may have been the only blogger who managed to sneak an invite, which is a shame as the Thorntons people are always friendly, sociable and willing to talk openly about what they’re doing.

So what of the actual chocolate? Of course, the Christmas range itself is exactly what you’d expect form Thorntons. There are such delights as milk chocolate santas on sticks, advent calendars and chocolate Christmas decorations, but as with the Hotel Chocolat launch, it wasn’t the Christmas themed products that caught our attention.

Perhaps the most interesting news for me is that the hugely popular solid chocolate blocks are going to be available in “teeny tiny” and “huge humungous” sizes (those probably aren’t the official names, but they should be). The small 69p blocks are particularly interesting to me, as they’re not much more than people pay for cheap chocolate in the newsagent. There’ll only be a limited range on sale to start with, but if they’ll be a hit and the range will expand quickly.

I also got to try a new range of rather tasty cookies, and I’m hoping to get hold of some for my lunch review soon. All I can say for now is that they go rather well with white wine…