Philadelphia With Cadbury: Death Of A Brand?

Posted by in Chocolate News on January 28 2012 | Leave A Comment

It’s my sad duty to report the death of the once great British chocolate making icon Cadbury. It will be buried on Monday following a short ceremony at “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” in Piccadilly Circus.

This is the coffin it will be laid to rest in.

Yes, that’s Philadelphia cheese with Cadbury chocolate. In the same tub.

But it’s not the product itself that symbolises the final, inevitable death of Cadbury, it’s what it stands for. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cadbury wasn’t just the nation’s best loved chocolate maker, it was a model for the manufacturing industry, providing the community with jobs, housing and recreation.

Today, it’s reduced to becoming little more than a logo to be plastered on other products made by Kraft, the multinational food conglomerate that bought the company just two years ago. This is the product we all joked would happen when Kraft first bid for Cadbury. And now it’s real.

“But wait!”, you may cry. “Chocolate flavoured cheese!? Cheese flavoured chocolate!? That’s innovative and exciting!”

Alas, this exciting new product launched which is officially launched on Monday seems to be little more than a repackaged and tweaked version of Philadelphia With Milka – something that’s been sold on the continent for a while. That product – little more than normal Philadelphia cheese with cocoa powder is almost exactly the same stuff as this with a slightly different label.

Now of course I can’t claim to be the biggest Cadbury fan in the world. In six years of writing about chocolate, my tastes have changed significantly and the UK fine chocolate industry has exploded. Couple that with Cadbury’s insistence on you using environmentally destructive palm oil in place of cocoa butter in their chocolate, and I’d rather get my chocolate fix elsewhere.

I’m told from those that have tried it that this product doesn’t actually taste that bad. But that’s not really the point. It just saddens me to see a great British institution reduced to being a sticker on someone else’s cheese spread – I wonder if anything in this product has been anywhere near a Cadbury factory.

It’s only a matter of time before we see Green & Black’s chocolate with Dairylea. Mark my words.

Information

You might also like...

Comments On This Post

  1. Mmm, chocolate cheese spread, my mouth is drooling, I can almost taste milk chocolate combined with cheese spread…..

  2. Anna

    Well said. A sad day indeed.

  3. manuela

    Wow!
    I wonder what the clowns who pass as marketing guru’s will think of next?

  4. Michael (Chocablog Staff)

    From now on, I’m only eating Brie with a big chunk of Valhrona in it…

  5. This makes me so sad, are there any of the remaining Quaker founded companies left in Britain or have they all been bought out by multinationals now?

  6. It is sad, indeed. But Cadbury’s downhill did not start with the Kraft takeover, it started a decade ago. And Milka has walked the same path, in 10-15 years. (yeah, I am originally from the continent) As far as I see te quality is significantly going down for both companies. The palm oil manouver is unforgivable it is against the chocolate making itself. Even the company (here in NZ) turned back to cocoa butter (thanks to the scandal and the widespread boycott) the “we’re sorry” is not enough.

    And now – cheese. What else? Cadbury pork sausage? Thanks, but no thanks.

  7. Wow, sad day indeed! And aside from the sad decline of the cadbury name, who on earth thought this product sounded good?!

  8. I think the product sounds good..it makes me think of chocolate cheesecake. I wish they would return to higher quality standards, but cream cheese and chocolate sounds pretty tasty.

  9. A very well put obituary 🙁

  10. Em

    I like your comment at the end that Green and Blacks will join with Dairylea. It just shows you who owns all the brands as Green and Blacks was brought by Cadbury that is now owned by Kraft.

  11. Yeah, that’s quite wrong.

  12. It is a shame that the Cadbury brand seems to be reduced to a gimmick. It was a sad day when Kraft bought Cadbury and I think this is probably just the tip of the iceburg. Perhaps this is the inevitable conclusion of a brand life cycle.

  13. Nicola

    Tried it today and it’s lovely!! Sorry! Philly doesn’t exactly taste like proper cheese…this is quite like the chocolate that is in the “Choc Dip” pots. Good thing about it is I can have it on my SW diet, while only being a little bit naughty. And being on a diet and a chocolate lover is a real killer!!!!

    • Dom (Chocablog Staff)

      You don’t have to apologise for liking it. 🙂

      My issue is simply that Cadbury has been reduced to nothing more than a logo. There isn’t a product just called “Cadbury”, and I doubt any part of it has ever been near a Cadbury factory (I’m still waiting to hear from Kraft on that though).

      But nothing wrong with the concept of cream cheese & chocolate per se.

  14. Natalie Dimmock

    Woah! Don’t want to be too defensive but, written as a former G&Bs employee, you can rest assured the guys there are so proud and protective of the G&B chocolate and brand. They may be Kraft owned but they operate entirely on their own terms. I am proud to have worked there and can safely say, over the team’s dead bodies, will anything similar occur with G&Bs. Ahem. And breathe…!

  15. In Arizona we have this law called SB1070 (some of you have heard of it no doubt). Well the day the law was to go into effect, the Tempe Town Lake dam broke and all of the fish died. It was a little symbolic in my opinion of all of the fine people who were forced to uproot and go to California, New Mexico, Mexico or elsewhere. ¡Viva Cadbury!

  16. Robert K

    You know what? If you ask me they can easily stop producing Nutella. This is so awesome delicious I never imagined. Tastes like a match made in heaven. Although I like it spread a bit thicker. Why? Just because I can!

    Too bad you can’t buy it in a bigger package so we could save a bit on plastic. Nutella on the other hand is regularly sold in glass jars. This should be too.

  17. Next will be Quality Street Candy spread, available in 1,2 or 4 kg tin boxes. Oh the horror.

Leave a comment




Chocablog: Chocolate Blog