Shades of Grey

Every January 2nd, Cadburys Creme Eggs appear in the shops, staying there until just after Easter.

This year, Easter was particularly early, shortening the season somewhat, so I wasn’t overly surprised to see something in the shops, called Twisted. It is basically a long, thin, twisted Cadburys Creme Egg and it tastes just as gooey!

It apparently launches on Monday, but we picked some up in ASDA last Tuesday and saw more on the counter of our “Premier Shop” so it must be on soft launch in Yorkshire.

I found the Press Release online, reproduced below. It is always interesting to read these sorts of things to see a different slant on the world.

Cadbury Trebor Bassett (CTB), the UK’s No.1 confectionery manufacturer, will be providing the Creme Egg experience all year round with the launch of Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted.

For POS or more information about Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted, please call the Cadbury Trebor Bassett hotline on 0870 191 7343.

The new product has Creme Egg “goo” twisted in a chocolate tube and has an RRP of £0.46.

Launching on 19th May, Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted is CTB’s biggest chocolate innovation this year. There will also be a brand new TV advertising campaign airing on 21st May to promote the bar.

A £2 million marketing spend will support the launch, including TV advertising, digital, PR and dedicated point of sale (POS). Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted, which replaces the Cadbury Dairy Milk variant, reflects the personality of the Creme Egg brand in a fun and novel way, delivering the same great taste in an innovative bar.

Twisted is the perfect solution for on–the-go consumption and the success and popularity of the Creme Egg brand offers a unique opportunity for retailers to capitalise on the all year round sales.

The TV advertising campaign will carry the strapline, “It’s no Creme Egg… it’s Twisted!” and picks up where the recent ‘Here today, Goo tomorrow’ ads for Cadbury Creme Egg left off.

Out of the wreckage of an exploded Creme Egg the new Twisted bar – the evil cousin of the Creme Egg - comes to life in a sinister, horror-style transformation and begins causing mayhem.

As with the Cadbury Creme Egg adverts in which the eggs embark on a series of amusing missions to ‘release their goo’, the Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted adverts will have a similarly light-hearted tone, showcasing the mischievous personality of the new bar.

The first screening of the ad is scheduled to take place on 21st May during the high profile Champions League final. There will be two adverts, both 30 seconds in length beginning with a top and tail format for first few days only, showing 10 seconds at the start of the break and the last 20 seconds at the end.

Research from CTB revealed that 90% of consumers would like the Creme Egg experience throughout the year and as the “goo”, not the egg shape, is the key driver for consumption, the new format will appeal to both existing consumers and promote new trial.
Kate Harding, Trade Communications Manager at Cadbury Trebor Bassett comments: “Cadbury Creme Egg is the number one selling chocolate single in Spring and we are very excited about the launch of Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted which we hope will prove extremely popular with consumers.

“Twisted reflects the Cadbury Creme Egg personality in a convenient to eat and exciting format that will become part of shoppers repertoire all year round. Retailers should take advantage of the dedicated POS and use it in-store to drive trial at launch.”

(Source: Cadbury Trebor Bassett, via Talkingretail.com)

David saw this on Kid’s TV yesterday. It is very silly.

You’ve got your foot stuck in my ring!

(Karen to Gizmo during his Physiotherapy)

I felt a bit briefly maudlin today. I’ve been following the story about the typhoon in Burma since it happened and the first thing I had to do was work out where Burma was. (Between Bangladesh and Thailand is the simple answer, I’ve never been further East than Muscat). Burma is a socialist military dictatorship apparently and the lengths they have gone to in order to mismanage the aftermath is very depressing. (Mind you, so was New Orleans). The thing that actually got to me was seeing the news about the China earthquake, nearly 15,000 dead so far, and children being rescued from the collapsed remnants of a school. It occurred to me that the children were of course the lucky ones, as they were still alive. (There is no fate worse than death really, except perhaps when death brings release from terminal suffering). Lucky is a relative word, of course, as some children may have terrible injuries or have lost family members.

How would Britain cope if we were ravaged by similar natural catastrophes on a massive scale? Pretty badly I suspect. Our earthquakes and storms cause damage but they don’t generally flatten cities, for that we should be grateful for a quirk of geography.

After all, mankind is just a tiny speck of dust in the timeline of mother earth and we cling precariously to the thin crust of a raging inferno underneath. Earthquakes may be tumultuous to us but to the planet they are minor inconsequential shudders.

David explained to me the other day how the Sun was eventually going to expand, engulfing all the planets and burning us to a cinder, something even the Cockroaches can’t survive. He wasn’t overly bothered by it though, as it is five Billion years away. By that time, Man will hopefully have reached for the stars, or possibly perished along the way.

I usually have a mini-surf whilst munching my lunch. (Still the healthy option).

Yesterday, however, I was distracted by a comment on a website that mentioned a short story from 1909 called “The Machine Stops”

I started reading the text to get a feel for it, then spent the rest of my break reading it (and dropping celery on the keyboard!)

It manages to be both dated and ahead of its time at the same time. If you have fifteen minutes or so to spare, have a read.