I’ve always seen myself as being a bit of a chocolate connoisseur, I blame my dad as he enjoyed taking me to the local Italian cafe and it had a great stock of chocolate of the more luxurious type, such as Lindt and Suchard and I remember a Dutch variety similar to Aero which was much harder than Aero but still had the bubbles.

Anyway, for everyday chocolate I was happy to eat Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, so I (along with loads of other people I’m sure) was not at all happy when Kraft took over Cadbury. Although they assured everyone that they would be using the same recipe, I had my doubts. Sure enough it seems that although the actual recipe might be the same, Dairy Milk does not taste lovely and creamy as it did before. Apparently this is because they are now using American milk which is much sweeter but less creamy than UK milk. So I gave up eating Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and moved on to what had been my second favourite chocolate – Galaxy. Another favourite of mine is Terry’s Chocolate Orange and I dread the recipe for that changing. Terry’s was taken over by Kraft even earlier than Cadbury’s.

But recently I bought a big packet of fun size Fudge fingers, (do you think they are Fudge thumbs?) really I bought them just in case we had some fun size visitors at Halloween but no ‘guisers’/trick or treaters came to our door. Of course I opened the packet to eat one, well I couldn’t let them go to waste could I? I know they will go straight to my waist but such is life! Anyway, I realised immediately that the fudge fingers don’t taste anything like they did, in fact I’m not getting any creamy fudge flavour at all, just an overwhelming sweet taste they don’t even look similar inside. Too late I remembered that the fudge is made by Cadbury, so it isn’t only their chocolate which has been affected by the changes of ingredients.

Earlier today I noticed this article in the Guardian which is about Cadbury or I suppose I should say Kraft adding sultanas to the iconic Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bar. It’s thought that they are replacing the classic ingredients with cheaper ones.

In some ways this is quite good for me as I used to really look forward to ‘Creme Egg’ season, but after they changed the ingredients in that I tried one and didn’t bother to have any more, you can read about it here. That article says that a company called Mondelez now owns what was Cadbury, I’m not sure if that is a Kraft offshoot or what.

But everyone needs a pick me up or treat every now and again and my treats of choice are disappearing. I also tried a bar of Green and Black a while ago, a type of chocolate which is supposed to be superior to others, but I only ate a small bit as it didn’t taste an awful lot different from that disgusting baking ‘chocolate’.

Cadbury was such a big part of British culture, that purple/blue wrapping copied by cheaper supermarket own brands because they knew that it would be more attractive to buyers. But the penny pinching and greed of the new owners has ruined it all for anyone who can remember the originals.

Of course over the years a lot of chocolate goodies have disappeared from the shelves. I loved Fry’s chocolate cream bars, occasionally you see the plain fondant ones, but the bar which had a variety of flavours was my favourite, the pineapple cream bit was luscious. (Jack says the bar was called a Five Centre and he thinks it was originally made by Fry’s which merged with Cadbury’s in 1919 but they still kept the Fry’s brand name for various chocolate bars.)

If you want a trip down memory lane you might like to have a look at the old Cadbury adverts from the good old days below. I must admit I don’t remember them all, although the Flake adverts are unforgettable.