RSS feedI’m sure you’ve noticed the introduction of Wonka chocolates over the past few years, but did you know that the brand is owned by Nestlé? Their domain name was registered way back in 1997, and is a play on the great Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I can’t link to because the site uses badly designed frames. Hollywood made a film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which wasn’t too bad considering, although thankfully only Gene Wilder could have played Wonka.
Anyway, not only have Nestlé registered the Wonka name, but have also registered a whole bunch of the confectionaries from the book and film. If ever there were a finer example of a large corporate commoditising and trivialising one of the world’s great childhood fantasies, then I’m yet to hear it. No longer will Wonka® chocolate and the Everlasting Gobstopper® make the hearts and minds of adults remember back to a better time, and once again corporatism has hammered yet another nail in the coffin of childhood dreams and fantasies.
You know what to do, show them you care, by helping to bring them down from being currently the world’s largest food company. But then it depends upon your definition of food, doesn’t it?