Red Tulip Bunny vs Heritage Eggs
Red Tulip chocolates were founded in 1949 but have since been acquired by Cadbury Schweppes. Despite this, they are still regarded fondly by most Aussies and still considered to be a separate identity because we all have memories of just how delicious our Red Tulip Easter Bunnies tasted every year.
I was interested to find out if the long-held belief that “Red Tulip makes the best Easter chocolate compared to cheaper brands” was holding up. As such, I found the classic ‘Elegant Rabbit’ which has been in the same, slightly daggy, foil wrapping for my entire life. It literally rules the chocolate shelves in the months leading up to Easter and is obviously the biggest seller. As you can see from the photo, I also tend to subscribe to the foolish notion that chocolate, immediately followed by fruit (grapes in this case) implies that the goodness of the fruit has cancelled out any of the evils of the chocolate, thus meaning that nothing has been eaten. My scales do not yet support this theory.
Cheapie Easter choccies come and go, but Heritage has been a brand associated with ‘bargain buys’ for the past few years and seems to be a stayer in the market. I had one friend who disliked her super-sized Heritage egg so much that she left it in her room, only to be discovered by her not-so-fussy Alsatian a few hours later. Wired to the eyeballs and frothing at the mouth, he left dozens of slimy brown vomits throughout the house before they could catch him and take him to the vet. Unsurprisingly, Helen’s been a tad reluctant to try them again.
Time to compare the ingredients.
Red Tulip: 30% cocoa solids, normal-sounding ingredients, 24.6% fat.
Heritage: 24% cocoa solids and not-so-tasty ingredients that include vegetable fat and whey powder. 28.8% fat.
Here’s the taste test surprise though: Heritage tasted significantly better. Red Tulip was too sweet and sickly – and that’s something coming from a reviewer who has been known to eat six Cadbury Creme Eggs in an afternoon – and trust me, I ate two rabbits to make sure! Heritage tasted creamier, smoother and finer. The sad thing is that it doesn’t have the cachet of Red Tulip. Perhaps people could buy the loose eggs and remove them from their labeled bag and thus enjoy them without stigma or unfair pre-judgments.
Posted by Kath on 05 Mar 2008 at 11:03 AM
| 9 Comments
Filed in Reviews under australia, bunny, easter, eggs, heritage, red tulip
March 6, 2008 : 8:18am
“..the evils of the chocolate….”?? NO NO NO Chocolate IS NOT EVIL. It’s NOT I tell you, NOT, NOT EVIL………
March 7, 2008 : 2:24am
I do agree with you, however my thighs don’t.
March 7, 2008 : 9:39am
The blame for your thighs can be given to cheese and/or milk. Have you read the hip & thigh diet book? It recommends removing dairy foods to see your hips and thighs shrink. Chocolate is all good, there’s no bad there.
March 25, 2008 : 2:36am
I myself love Red Tulip Elegant Rabbbits and have been having those for easter every year since I was little and I still don’t buy any other chocolate. I look forward to easter every year when I can have a Red Tulip Elegant Rabbit because it’s an old favourite and they are so delicious!
March 23, 2009 : 1:34pm
Another year has passed, and it’s Red Tulip time again. It’s nice to finally find some others who also love the very yummy Elegant Rabbits. I have tried the Cadbury Creme easter eggs which are okay, but nothing beats the Elegant Rabbit. It’s not just the taste and texture, it’s the emotional investment, the childhood memories of fun and love at easter, holiday time. I usually like to eat two rabbits in one sitting, mmmmm.
April 10, 2009 : 4:28pm
I am an Aussie living in the UK at the moment and have been searching the internet to see whether it would be possible to get a red tulip egg this year as I miss them. The Brits don’t know what they’re missing!
April 27, 2009 : 11:40am
Does anyone know where you can buy Red Tulip chocolate outside of Easter? Maybe by the block?
January 24, 2010 : 6:19am
We just love Red Tulip chocolates and were most upset as we could
not buy any boxes of After Dinner Mints for Christmas. Every year I
make several lolly Christmas trees, made entirely of your after dinner mints, but even though I searched every where I could not buy one box, let alone the dozen boxes I needed. Can you please let me know if they are off the market, or is this just a temporary problem. Also where can I buy them? I live in Melton, Victoria.
Thanking you in anticipation of a positive response.
Glenda Hynes
February 18, 2010 : 7:15am
Good afternoon Red Tulip Vs Heritage Bunnies, My brother and I have grown up on Red Tulip Bunnies for decades now. Every year we would stock-pile bunnies for months before Easter and then see how long we could make them last for months after Easter. We once had 112 bunnies locked safely away in a cupboard, in other years we had 84, 98…… and they would last for so long. What made the Red Tulip bunnies so special was the flavour which we could find in no other chocolate ever throughout any other time of year. When we would crack the bunnies open we would deeply inhale (like Darth Vader having an asthma attack)the special smell of the Red Tulip bunnies and it would transport us directly to our earliest childhood memories. Much fun was also had trying to come up with new ways our bunnies would “accidentally” be demolished, decapitated, shattered, stabbed, shot, plunge to their deaths. Alas this is no more because RED TULIP HAVE CHANGED THEIR RECIPE!!!!!! What have they done? The bunnies are now made of sickly sweet chocolate with too much sugar. The chocolate in the old days used to be a refined, not-too-sweet, not-too-bitter chocolate that you could eat with out feeling sick. Not any more. Please, Red Tulip (Cadbury), bring back the old chocolate recipe and make your bunnies worth stock-piling again. We have broken with decades of tradition and will not be buying Red Tulip bunnies to hoard this year until we are satisfied the recipe has reverted to the old Red Tulip classic bunny chocolate.