food & Wine


“Absurd”: Why Cadbury’s newest chocolate bar is causing worldwide outrage

Cadbury’s newest chocolate bar has attracted worldwide attention for all the wrong reasons.

People have taken to the internet to mock the sweet treat mercilessly after it claimed to “celebrate unity in diversity”.

But instead of receiving praise like they expected, people brushed it off as a weak attempt at “solving racism”.

The chocolate was released in India to celebrate the country’s unity day and is made up of four different section of chocolate: Dark, blended, milk and white.

What was supposed to be a symbolic moment outlining the nation’s diversity soon became a mockery.

“This is as absurd as Kendall Jenner fighting police brutality with a Pepsi,” tweeted legal analyst Imani Gandy.

“Congratulations to Cadbury for solving racism,” wrote restaurant critic Tejal Rao.

While there were a few to applaud the company for their decision, most of the feedback received was overwhelmingly negative.

And this isn't the first time Cadbury has upset consumers. 

Crème Egg controversy

It’s a beloved treat around Easter time, but Cadbury caused quite a stir after a fan asked how to pronounce the word “crème”.

“Are you meant to pronounce crème egg as cream or crem?”

In a now deleted tweet, Cadbury responded with “crem”, but it didn’t seem to go down well with the legion of chocolate lovers, as they questioned people’s pronunciation of the sweet treat.

But after a storm erupted on Twitter, the company quickly retracted their statement saying, “Looks like we missed out the ‘a’ there! Most definitely pronounced as 'Cream egg!'"

Downsizing of the family block

In February of this year, Cadbury decided to upset fans once again by announcing they’re reducing the size of the family block.

The packet went from 220g to 200g, taking out one entire row. According to the company, Australian manufacturing costs forced them to choose between increasing the price to retailers of changing the size, and since they’re aware of family budgets, they went with the latter.

Cadbury Vegemite chocolate bar

Many thought it was a social media hoax, but Cadbury was 100 per cent serious when they announced that they’ll be teaming up with Vegemite to create a limited edition chocolate filled with the iconic Aussie spread.

And the reaction was mixed, with people either loving it or absolutely hating it – there was no middle ground.

Speaking to AdNews, Mondelez International ANZ director of marketing for chocolate Kjetil Undhjem set the record straight.

“Everybody assumed it would be a failure but actually nobody understood the purpose of it,” he said.

“The purpose of it wasn’t to launch a chocolate with Vegemite that would go into our repertoire, the whole point of the campaign and activity was to generate talk about rediscovering your favourite chocolate flavours.

“We have 18 flavours in our blocks range and we wanted to create a conversation about flavours and rediscovering some of your favourites whether it’s top deck or crunchy or snack.

“We thought about the most disruptive flavour you can put in chocolate to get that conversation started.”

Scroll through the gallery above to see Cadbury’s previous food fails.