Toblerone to make major change to packaging due to strict Swiss rules
Strict rules about ‘Swissness’ prevent national symbols being used to promote products that are not made exclusively in the country
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Your support makes all the difference.Toblerone is to remove the Matterhorn mountain peak from its packaging because of strict Swiss marketing rules.
With some of the chocolate’s production due to be moved from Switzerland to Slovakia, the confectionary will soon fall foul of restrictions about “Swissness” which stop national symbols from being used to promote products that are not made exclusively in the country.
US firm Mondelez said it would replace the image of the 4,478-metre-high (14,690ft) mountain, which borders Switzerland and Italy, with a generic summit instead.
In a statement to the BBC, the company said new packaging would include a “distinctive new Toblerone typeface and logo that draw further inspiration from the Toblerone archives and the inclusion of our founder, Tobler’s, signature”.
It added it was moving some production outside of the country to “respond to increased demand worldwide and to grow our Toblerone brand for the future”.
The honey and almond nougat chocolate bar, which was named by combining the surname of its inventor, Theodor Tobler, and torrone, a toasted-almond nougat confection, first went on sale in 1908 in Bern, the capital city of Switzerland.
It used to use packaging showing the Bernese bear and eagle but the mountain debuted on its packaging in 1970, according to the Toblerone website.
Meanwhile, “Swissness” legislation introduced in 2017 states that national symbols cannot be used to promote milk-based products that are not made exclusively in Switzerland. For other raw foodstuffs, the threshold is at least 80 per cent.
Studies have shown that certain products branded as “made in Switzerland” are sold at 20 per cent more than similar goods from other origins, according to The Guardian.
Posting on Twitter, people were disappointed by the packaging changes.
In 2016, Toblerone made headlines by increasing the gaps between the triangular chunks in the bar in a bid to keep down costs.
Following criticism, the company changed it back to its original shape in 2018.
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