80’s advert for Cadburys Creme Eggs.

A Cadbury Creme Egg is a brand of chocolate manufactured inside-and-out to look like an egg. The “egg” has a milk chocolate “shell”, with a white and yellow filling made of egg, cream, sugars and other additives. Creme Eggs are the best selling confectionery item between New Year’s Day and Easter in the UK, with annual sales in excess of 200 million items and a brand value of approximately £45 million.

It is produced by Cadbury UK in the United Kingdom, and under licence by The Hershey Company in the United States. The eggs are manufactured at the Bournville factory in Birmingham at the rate of 1.5 million per day, and also at other Cadbury factories in countries such as New Zealand.

While filled eggs were first manufactured by the Cadbury Brothers in 1923, the Creme Egg in its current form was introduced in 1971.

 

Advertising

In recent times, the creme egg has been marketed in the UK and Ireland with the question “How do you eat yours?” and in Australia with the slogan “Don’t get caught with egg on your face“. Australia has also used a variation of the UK question, using the slogan “How do you do it?” Over the years, there have been several major Cadbury’s Creme Egg campaigns.

“Shopkeeper” campaign of the 1970s in which a boy asks for 6000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.

“Irresistibly” campaign showing characters prepared to do something unusual for a Creme Egg, similar to the “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” campaign in America.

1985: The “How Do You Eat Yours?” campaign begins.

1990-1993: The first television campaign to use the “How Do You Eat Yours?” theme, featuring the zodiac signs.

1994-1996: Spitting Image characters continued “How Do You Eat Yours?”

1997-1999: Matt Lucas, with the catchphrase “I’ve seen the future, and it’s egg shaped!”

2000-2003: The “Pointing Finger” campaign.

2004: The “Roadshow” finger campaign

2004-2007: The “How Do You Eat Yours?” campaign

2008: “Here Today, Goo Tomorrow” campaign

2009: “Release the Goo” campaign (Australia & Canada & UK)

In North America, Creme Eggs are advertised on television with a small white rabbit called the Cadbury Bunny (alluding to the Easter Bunny) who clucks like a chicken. Ads for caramel eggs use a larger gold-coloured rabbit which also clucks, and chocolate eggs use a large brown rabbit which clucks in a deep voice. The advertisements use the slogan “Nobunny knows Easter better than him”, spoken by TV personality Mason Adams. The majority of rabbits used in the Cadbury commercials are Flemish Giants.^{[citation needed]}

In the UK, around the year 2000, selected stores were provided stand alone cardboard cutouts of something resembling a “love tester.” The shopper would press a button in the centre and a “spinner” (a series of LED lights) would select at random a way of eating the Creme Egg, e.g. “with chips”. These were withdrawn within a year. There are also the “Creme Egg Cars” which are, as the name suggest, ovular vehicles painted to look like Creme Eggs. They are driven to various places to advertise the eggs but are based mainly at the Cadbury factory in Bournville.

For the 2009 season, advertising in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada consists of stopmotion adverts in the “Release the Goo” campaign which consists of a Creme Egg stripping itself of its wrapper and then attempting and succeeding to break its own shell; usually with household appliances and equipment. All the meanwhile making various ‘Goo’ sounds, with a ‘relieved’ goo sound when finally able to break its shell; hence, releasing the goo. There are also interactive challenges on Cadbury’s Creme Egg website where the object of each challenge is to prevent the egg from finding a way to release its goo.

Info gleaned from wikipedia