Cadburys Crunchie commercial from the 90s

Cadbury Crunchie is a milk chocolate bar with a “honeycombed” sugar centre. It is made by Cadbury UK and was originally launched by J. S. Fry & Sons in 1929. Fry had merged with Cadbury in 1919 and Crunchie later became a Cadbury brand.

A similar chocolate bar is the Australian Violet Crumble.

Size and variations

Cadbury Crunchie is sold in several sizes, ranging from “snack size” – a small square piece – through to “king size”. The most common portion is a single-serve bar, about 1 inch wide by about 7 inches long, and about 3/4 of an inch deep.

In the early 2000s there were a range of limited edition Crunchies on sale in the UK. These included a lemonade bar, a champagne bar and a Tango Orange bar, in which the chocolate contained the different flavourings. The champagne-flavoured bar was initially launched for New Year’s Eve 1999.

As is common with other chocolate brands, Crunchie brand ice cream bars and cheesecake are also sold in some countries. Such products contain nuggets of the bar within the ice cream or cheesecake.

In 2006 a “Cadbury Crunchie Blast” variety of the product was launched, which featured “popping candy” inside the bar, however it was shortly discontinued.

Manufacturing

In the UK, Cadbury Crunchie bars are manufactured at a dedicated plant on a Rockwell Automation distributed control system (DCS), which replaced the original Ferranti ARGUS DCS system prior to the year 2000.

During manufacturing of the Crunchie bar, the sponge toffee is produced in large slabs, and is cut up using a highly focused jet of oil. The use of a blade would lead to fragmentation, while the use of water would result in the sponge toffee dissolving. Oil prevents both of these scenarios and results in uniform sharp-edged portions. The sponge toffee is then covered with chocolate, cooled, and packaged.