You may remember that a while back I reported on the imminent chocolate crisis facing the world as we approach Peak Cocoa. We may be nearer Doomsday than we realized. Cadbury’s has announced that it is changing the recipe of its Creme Eggs. The chocolate shell will no longer be made of Dairy Milk; instead it will use “a standard cocoa mix chocolate.” Chocoholics in Britain were the first to notice that something was up, and The Sun followed up on the story with the investigative zeal of Woodward and Bernstein. As the Guardian reports, Cadbury’s parent company, Kraft. was forced to release “a rather smug statement,” in which it said “The Creme Egg has never been called the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Creme Egg. We have never played on the fact Dairy Milk chocolate was used.”
In case you are a Creme Egg virgin, you should know that the chocolate treats are traditionally produced in a limited batch and available only in the run up to Easter; for this reason, plus because they are delicious (or they were, anyway), they are ridiculously popular. Is the recipe change (coupled with a decrease in the number of eggs per pack from six to five) prompted by the world’s shortage of cocoa? Is the last crate of cocoa beans hidden away in the dark undergrowth of the Aztec Jungle at Cadbury World? The Guardian‘s David Whelan is calling for a chocolate revolution. He gives the examples of successful customer protests against Hershey’s and Mars when those companies changed the recipes of beloved treats, even though “Hershey’s products taste horrible anyway.” The revolution has already started on Twitter, but Whelan says the best results will come from contacting Cadbury’s directly. “If you’re sufficiently roused to fight for chocolate justice, pick up your smartphone and get tweeting, emailing or calling. At this very second, the great Cadbury chicken may be about to lay another mediocre batch. There’s really no time to lose.”
