Toblerone to drop iconic Matterhorn mountain image from packaging
By Abimbola Mohammed
The world-famous chocolate Toblerone will no longer use the iconic Matterhorn Mountain on the packaging of the Toblerone chocolate. This is because some of the chocolate’s production is moving from Switzerland to Slovakia. The Toblerone has achieved cult status due to its pyramid-shaped bar, resembling the Alpine peak.
The decision came as Mondelez International, the chocolate’s US-based parent company, moved part of the chocolate bar’s production from its home country of Switzerland to Slovakia.
Since 2017, Switzerland has adhered to a set of rather rigorous regulations regarding the use of national symbols on items. The law prohibits the use of national emblems to advertise milk-based products created outside of Switzerland. The bar is lowered to 80% for raw foods.
US firm Mondelez, one of the largest snack companies in the world, said the 4,478-metre mountain will be replaced with a more generic summit on the box. The company told BBC that Mondelez was moving some production outside the country to ‘respond to increased demand worldwide and to grow our Toblerone brand for the future’.
According to the Aargauer Zeitung newspaper, Toblerone packaging will now read “established in Switzerland” rather than “of Switzerland”.
The act decrees that products claiming to be “Swiss made” must contain at least 80 per cent raw materials that have come from Switzerland.
The shape of Toblerone, which is studded with crunchy almond and honey nougat, resembles the pyramid shape of the Swiss summit that currently graces the bar’s packaging.
Hidden within the icon is an image of a bear, representing the mascot for Bern, the Swiss capital. The chocolate bar has been produced there since 1908.
The name Toblerone is said to be a mix of the surname of Theodor Tobler, the bar’s inventor, with torrone, a chewy almond nougat sweet popular in Spain and Italy.
Last year, Mondelez announced plans to move some Toblerone production to Bratislava, the Slovakian capital, and a plant that produces Milka products, a brand of chocolate originally made in Switzerland.
In 2016, Mondelez faced uproar after it increased the gap between the peaks of its UK bars as part of cost-saving measures to reduce the weight of the bar from 170g to 150g.
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