T for Toblerone

The distinctive triangular-shaped Toblerone chocolate would be instantly recognised by all but the most resolute of hermits. A unique blend of ultra-sweet milk chocolate and fine gravel (plus honey and nougat) has made it a firm favourite with the nation’s great supermarkets who mark all seasonal holidays by constructing towering piles of the stuff as if in homage to its Alpine origins. Brand-stretchers have devised a bewildering legion of variants from the original jaw-breaking pentahedron format in combination with many unlikely additives and a range of sizes from jumbo to nano. I suspect its popularity rests more on the packaging and typography rather than the pleasure to be obtained from extracting wedges of compacted chocolate slurry from inter-dental cavities. It was launched on the market in 1908 and this selection of fuzzily reproduced posters must come from the early days. The images appear to have been issued on perforated sheets and may have been intended to grace items of mail and bear the good tidings about Tobler products to all points near and far. All production is concentrated in the city of Bern in its Swiss homeland although the ownership of the business is now in the hands of Mondelēz International, formerly known as American food giant, Kraft Foods.