Tony's Chocolonely bars are shaped unevenly to represent farmer inequality and the coastline of Africa
"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.
And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."
I do like these bars but breaking it into pieces without a mess is difficult. I've had to resort to putting the entire thing in my mouth and waiting for it to melt down my throat.
In 2003, after discovering that the majority of chocolate produced at the time had links to human exploitation, Dutch television producer and journalist Teun van de Keuken began producing programs about the horrors of the commercial cocoa industry on his show Keuringsdienst van Waarde. Furthermore, he submitted a request to be prosecuted for knowingly purchasing an illegally manufactured product, which prosecutors declined to do.
After three years of unsuccessful attempts to change the industry through investigative efforts, Van de Keuken decided to start producing chocolate bars himself. The brand was called "Tony's Chocolonely" with "Tony" (= Teun) and "Chocolonely" in reference to Teun van de Keuken feeling as if he was the only person in the industry who was interested in eradicating slavery. Van de Keuken sold 20,000 bars in two days.
Some info, that's interesting and helps balance this blatant advertisement.
Tony's was started by Dutch television maker Teun van der Keuken. He worked on a program that exposes products for their production methods and false marketing and so on. They stumbled onto the slavery that's part of the cacao industry. He asked to be arrested for eating chocolate, and in doing so enabling slave labor, but he wasn't. He started out Tony's Chocolonely to attempt to change the chocolate industry. He's not part of the company anymore. He has concluded the mission has failed, and is very critical of his former company, saying they've lost sight of the aim: slave-free chocolate.
First not sure why everyone is so sure this is an ad and not just OP likes this and the message.
I’ve contemplated posting about this chocolate, I guess we can’t call out companies we like and we just all shit on everything all the time.
Second, my friend called me out for paying £3.50 for a bar of this whenever we have a chocolate and film night when Cadbury is like £1.50. When I said it’s more ethically sourced he said I don’t care about that. 😞
I'm gonna be real here when I saw one of these bars for the first time I just assumed they were assholes and didn't look any further into why the bar wasn't cut in a usable way.
Absolutely disgusting chocolate in my opinion. Chalky and bland. It’s nice that they claim to be about equality, but the product itself just isn’t to my taste. And yes, the dumb way they make these bars also really puts me off.
I just want a normal, boring bar that tastes nice. And this is not the brand for me.
It doesn't make any sense to do this as a metaphor. Chocolate is typically divided into evenly sized chunks for measurement purposes, regardless of the evil practices of the chocolate industry.
The metaphor is asinine the explanation is confusing and it's lost on almost everybody who buys this.
I have had this brand of chocolate before and it is quite good however.
No, I did not notice part of my chocolate bar looks vaguely like part of the coast of part of a continent I’ve never been too. I’m sorry. I’m clearly the asshole here