E is for Easter Bunnies - The Half-Sensible Bit!

Well, it was a bit of fun, and not as expensive as I thought it might be, some of them were only a quid or two, but I have got about 20-quids worth of chocolate rabbits to eat, just as I was sliming-down down that middle-age spread, having gone back to work, at something semi-physical!

 

But I didn't purchase every bunny I found, just a cross-section of the more normal ones, I regret the grinning Kinder Bunny, as it's really in the class I avoided, but I console myself with the fact that at least I know what it will taste like!

 

Aldi's had a plethora of Bunnies, including a colour variant of the one I obtained (left), which was the 'specially selected' hazelnut one, and a more colourful range of both upright and squatting milk-chocolate ones . . . maybe next year! The Aldi Rabbit also won several of the online taste-tests, so I'm saving it till last!

 

I seem to recall touching on the Rabbit Wars, a few years ago, when Lindt finally had to admit the basic shape predated their Rabbit by decades, allowing Aldi, Lidl and others to turn-on the taps which have led to today's choice. Since when there has been the Caterpillar Cake War, and regular flare-ups!

 

The Lindt, though, remains a nicely smooth 'European' chocolate, and comes in about six sizes, of which the larger ones tend to have more limited availability, and I only got the smallest three, having half a mind how the posts would develop!

 

I didn't see Lidl's Lindt clone, but they got too confident after the previous round of Rabbit Wars, and made one so similar (in packaging) they had to destroy tons of them a couple of years ago! But their upright did run to two colours, of which I took the blue, naturally, but pink was there!

 

Rejected uprights included the three licensed or 'product placed' Rabbits from Smarties, Milkybar and M&M's, all stupid looking, and while OK for kids, a further example of how a few corporations have literally turned us into consumer-sheep in a few decades, nasty!

 

And don't get me wrong, many years ago I asked for a Smarties egg, and still have the mug, it's one of my favourite mugs, but firstly, that was when A) an egg in a mug was as good as it got, and B) Smarties still tasted nice, and of chocolate, the last few times I've bought smarties I've regretted it, they're flowery-chalky pap now!

 

The three uprights I did end-up with included the Cadbury's Peter, because it was Peter, not because I like their chocolate, I don't! The Lidl Favorina and the Kinder, if I'd been thinking straighter, I'd have got the Thornton's and shot the Kinder, but given the amount of Kinder on the blog, and the fact there may be a toy worth a post in its belly, means it happened the way it happened!

 

Bare chocolate Rabbits were around, and while the Thornton's was expensive for what is now no more than another shelf-brand, I think most of their shops have gone now, just a few dozen franchise 'boutiques' mostly shared with other brands, like Ferrero (Kinder), while the Favorina (Lidl) was too daft-looking, another one for the kids!

 

While this one wasn't as big as its message gives the impression it was, to the casual observer, rejected for being daft-looking! I think I shot it in Aldi?

 

These three all seem to have used the same contractor, or the same commercially available 'off the shelf' mould-tool? From the left we have Tesco's, Morrisons' and Asda's, with only the wrapping being different, I will eat these in sequence, to see if the taste differs? Follow-up in twelve-months? Possibly!

 

The Tesco came in four different pastel wraps, I chose the green, while the Asda also came as a white-chocolate Bunny with a suitably pale artwork and polka-dots! Interestingly though, the online artwork for 'my' Asda Bunny shows a much darker-brown colourway, which may be last year's version, still being used for publicity shots?

 

Another upright and more animated, smaller, filled Rabbits from Nomo, these were in Morrison's, but I think I did see them elsewhere, and I was tempted by the upright, he would have improved the group-shot above, but my several experiences of gluten-free pies have not been good (the pastry is like cardboard), so I stopped myself, and will never know how good or bad they might have been!

 

I can't remember if I shot these in Morrison's or Sainsbury's, the latter, I think, but again too cartoony for me, and more eggy than Rabbity, so pretty much off the parameter list, before I saw them, but Belgian chocolate is never bad?

 

Speaking of Sainsbury's, theirs was by far the prettiest of the wrappings, with a rich greenish-gold that gave Lindt a run for their money, without aping the Swiss one so close as to risk a court-case, design was the closest too, but it wouldn't stand-up, having a bowed base, and needs to be propped!

A comparison with the Aldi and one of the similar trio, to compare with the previous shot.

 

If you go ordering Chocolate Bunnies online, you find lots of smaller, regional or bespoke brands offering similar fayre, of which I was rather taken by the semi-realistic wrap on this one from the Candy Store, but I wouldn't trust chocolate hollow-Rabbits or eggs ordered online to arrive in one piece! And with those ears it might be a Hare!

 

With the many types out there, the alternate wraps, and the regular changes in artwork, one hopes somebody, somewhere, is annotating them all, as I'm too busy with toy figures to disappear down a Chocolate Rabbit hole!

E is for Easter Bunnies - Breaking! Murder in Rabbit Town!

 

"They've killed Kenny!"

 

E is for Easter Bunnies - Smallies

 

 

The kid's school has broken-up for three weeks!

They're breeding . . . like . . . err . . . rabbits!

E is for Easter Bunnies

 

 

 The gathering of the Clan!

E is for Edibles, Seasonal Edibles!

One of the few tropes not copied from Small Scale World by the two P's is our occasional look at edible figurals (it's only a matter of time, I'm sure!), and spellchecker hates the word, so, from Merriam-Webster: "of, relating to, or consisting of human or animal figures.".

 

So, a quick trip in time, back to Easter (Yes, I AM behind, but that's only because there's so much stuff in the queue!), and I picked these up from TKMaxx, a pound-thirty, it would have been rude not to! Chocolate bunnies, when we were kids Granny would always give is the little sets of five Lindt animals, and it triggers a certain nostalgia button, whenever I see such things, even if they are taller, thinner and not so Lindt'y!

Also from Easter, KitKat bunnies! Years ago (2007?) we had a taste-test on the difference between UK and US KitKat; one of my American colleagues wouldn't believe ours were better than theirs, so we had a blindfold tasting, in the office, after her mother sent her a US bar from New York, the UK bar won hand's down! I now think whichever corporate giant owns KitKat (Nestle I think) has adopted the cheaper US recipe, and there's no difference, the same blandness of that vegetable fat filler leaving one slightly disappointed?

And so to the season at hand and first purchase (we buy these nice treats so you don't have to!) was a Penguin 'cracker', actually following-on from the recent card-bus post, I wanted to see what was available these day, specifically from Double Decker, the answer was zilch, but I did find this!

 

A standard Penguin bar and a little pack of chocolate biscuits shaped like penguins on the other side, as the whole trope of Penguins is that they are covered in chocolate, these are hardley they? Still out there.

Maltesers are following the KitKat route with small figural versions of themselves, to be honest this was more like the KitKat in texture than a Malteser, but the mint version was yummy . . . Chocolate venison! Still out there.

There will now be an intermission while we ignore figurals and get pissed in the foyer! A seasonal treat in our house was a shot-glass of 'egg-nog', which started when I was too young to remember, probably helped us sleep until Santa had been? Drugging kids - top-parenting for generations!

 

Later, as younger teenagers, when Dad would take us down to Bavaria to do navigational or survival exercises with the Special Forces, one of the treats was going to the 'Huhnchenhause' in Neuhausen-ob-Eck, where we would get drunk on Phauenbrau, have a Chicken-and-chips bar-meal while ignoring the smell of the livestock overwintered downstairs (you became immune to the stench of manure after about 20-minutes, or the end of your first beer), and finish-off with an egg-nog, or a cherry-brandy, before the walk-home through piled snow and the hard frosts they have down there, under clear, starry-skies!

 

If the divorce judge had known what was going-on, I'm sure he would have put a stop to it, but I'm glad he didn't, as I had a late-childhood like nobody reading this, and I wouldn't change it for the world, not even crying with the pain of digging a snow-hole without gloves, we'd been told we'd be sleeping in that night! We didn't, we retreated to the Knorrhütte for more egg-nog, albeit with the smell of sweaty-socks and B/O replacing Neuhausen's cattle!

 

Anyway, so when I saw this Polish Wawel confection, going cheap in Morrison's cheapie/end-of-line/experimental foreign-lines display, I had to try it! It wasn't particularly egg-noggy, nor terribly alcoholic, but I finished it in one sitting, which I think can be taken as a vote of confidence and seal of approval, from here, anyway!

We've seen these before, but not with perforations and gift tags, I think? Lindt bears, in Christmas jumpers! They are not the same as Granny's sets of five, which were relief-flat solids, these are rotary-moulded 'hollow-casts'!

These appeared in my Faceplant feed the other day, an independent chocolate company; Chococo, who make all sorts of figurals, in milk, plain, white and caramel chocolate, so I collaged a bunch of them for the blog!

 

We've got fish, owls, dinosaurs, robots, frogs, gorillas, mice and sea life, and that was a few minutes searching! You can - of course - get lots of these moulds nowadays, in Hobbycraft or similar ( or Amazon/evilBay), and quickly set yourself up as a bespoke chocolatier!

Because I'd clicked on a bunch of Chococo's thumbnails, the Faceplant algorithm decided I was in need of even more tooth-rot, and started sending me links to every Tom-Dick-&-Harry firm doing the online 'your childhood favourites' sweet shop thang, so I grabbed a few more screenshots before marking all the posts 'unwanted'!

All the old favourites are here - pink and white 'sugar' mice, jelly snakes and less traditional deer, mini Lindt-bear knock-offs, caramel gingerbread men, mallow or jelly Santa's and 'milk-dud' penguins!

B is for Bunnies - 3 - Chocolate Bunnies and Bits!

As I was replying to Brain's eMails last night it crossed my mind I hadn't checked Picasa for any 'Easter' tagged folder/s waiting patiently for their day, so I did and found one with two images, to which I added a third later, this is the crumbs of Easter, at the end of a nusy weekend on the Blog!

A Cadbury's mini 'super-bunny' compared with two sizes of the famous Lindt gold bunny, I think this was my edible haul at Easter 2019, when the world was still sane'ish! And - to be honest - I think most of them are supposed to be hares (Osterhase), but we ran with a Bunny trope this year!

Brian sent these last May and while the aim was a Wind in the Willows post, I felt they were eggy enough for an Esater post, I think they are Ceramic gift-shop ware, but they could be chalkware and I don't know who the maker/branding is?

Downloaded these from an eBay lot a while back, couldn't resist them! They are by Goula (who's wooden station with plastic flats (nice book-ending to the days posts!) we saw on the Blog here - fourth image down), and they too are all wood . . . and wire.

That's about it for today, Happy what's left of Easter!

M is for More Capsule toys

I know we only looked at Capsule toys (for the umpteenth time!) the other day, but then some of these were going to be in those posts, however, more Star Wars came in, then I re-ID'd the Tombola and finally (while all that was going on) Brian sent us some more US capsules to look at, so everything has been jigged, at least twice, in the last few weeks - it's sometimes a busy, fluid, editorial situation here at Smallscaleworld Towers!

So to Brian's latest contribution (it's not his latest - he's since sent another motorcycle! Among other things), and this one is very interesting, given my comments last time and the adamant stance of both Wikipedia and the FDA that you can't have a Kinder or Kinder-like toy egg in the New Country!

Imported from Turkey (who have featured in capsule eggs before) by Candy Treasure of Lebanon, New Jersey and branded to Choco Treasure, this egg is - in every measureable way as far has 'elf & Safety' or likelihood of killing yourself - identical to a Kinder egg?

Toy, inside plastic, two-part, capsule, inside egg, inside foil, inside box, the same order as any other 'euro-egg'.

If you; dear, departed, colonist, want Kinder Eggs, now is the time to write to your Congressman! You fought for your Independence; you rebuilt your 'White' house after that little unfortunate'ness in 1812, you had a Civil War and settled-down again; you earned the right to eat whatever you darn-tootin' well please! Now is the time to rise-up and demand the import of Kinder Eie Chocolade, Nicht Wahr?!

And; the contents will be better than this! Emoticon related nonsense! "Find all the treasures" . . . even a little poo! But if you think this is a bit poor, it's because you haven't finished reading the rest of the post yet! Thanks to Brian Berke for entering the spirit of the 'We buy this so you don't have to' department!

Kinder themselves have a new'ish product, which I noticed the other day is getting magazine advertising. I first noticed them last year sometime, and assumed they were a new packaging, then I saw them next to standard foil-wrapped Kinder eggs and wondered if they were back-alley imports from the Middle East or somewhere where a hard case was necessary, only to buy a couple the other day and find they are in fact a completely different product.

As you can see it's a sort of pudding or desert, and like all Kinder stuff, a bit too sweet for me, that sickly-sweetness that gets the back of your throat! Anyway - one was OK, two were too many!

Imagine a piece of Kinder Bueno, rolled in sprinkles and buried in a puddle of semi-set Kinder Egg, and you've got the taste right there, in your head, unless you're unfamiliar with these products - in which case you probably think I'm a raving loon, but if it's taken you this long to work that out; you're not trying and the double-yolks on you!

The toys were however figural, although looking a little too much like a cross between our idiot Olympic mascots (no, I'm never going to let it go - ugly little shits the pair of'em!) and a likely logo for a power-generator!

There are at least two sets and one of them had little emoji type paper scraps to fold and hide in the head-cavity, all seem to be the same moulding, so kids and collect and swap.

So a return to the products of Bon Bon Buddies (bbb) or in this case BIP of Holland with their nuggets of "Fruit Flavour Compressed Candy" (good 'till the 20th June 2019!) and shite toys!

In all other respects they are the same as bbb, the same container with the same holes and the same sweets and the same shite toys; a Ninja Turtle spinning top (which with a different card disc could be N. E. Other's spinning top!) and stickers, we've seen them before as Disney, DC and Marvel I think? They were together with the aforementioned ones already degenerated here and several others.

Finally a couple of edibles which seem to have avoided the last 'edibles' post? Christmas just gone's Lindt mini-bears had two dressed in Christmas jumpers to keep the usual all-gold one company.

B is for Battle of the (Corporate) Bears, Bunnies and Boardroom-Bastards!

At this time of year I tend to put something figural yet edible up on the blog, and with my Lidl's Advent Calendar only a week from being opened, this seems a good time to start! However this is not so much about figures edible or otherwise, but rather about the corporate stupidity of the people who would (actually do) rule over us and mould our lives, as such it is a bit of a PPE-rant!

The story starts in the deep mists of time (see comments at end), and really hots up about 15/20 years ago when Lindt, the chocolate people, start defending their products against all-comers, specifically their Bunny. I don't have the various bunnies to shoot, but a mini one is above right...as if you didn't know!

That case;

Lindt V Riegelein

ended as a 5-0 defeat against Lindt at the fifth hearing - the other four (lower court) hearings also finding in favour of Confiserie Riegelei, this being in the German (and now European higher...) courts. Now you might think that loosing five hearings over 12 years or so would have taught Lindt they were on a hiding to nothing...but no, you can't keep an idiot down, and in 2011, sometime around the forth hearing in the other case, Lindt (a Swiss company) decided to go to another court in Austria, in order to sue Aldi, or the makers of Aldi's chocolate bunnies - Franz Hauswirth;

Lindt V Hauswirth

Lindt wins against Hauswirth in 2011....

Hauswirth  V Lindt

....then loses on appeal!

However, before loosing the appeal, Lindt were already involved in another dispute, this time with Haribo, who it should be noted- supply Aldi!! Round one didn't go Lindt's way;

Haribo V Lindt

Haribo win the opening salvo hands-down. However both parties have decided to keep fighting to the European Supreme Court;

Battle of the Bears continues

How long before they are all suing each other over the designs of their beetles, lambs, chicks, worms, tools, mice and other assorted 'TRADITIONAL' confectionary shapes?

Now....you're thinking, so far so good, why the threat to have a rant...after all, the Lindt bears are very much in evidence still, this Christmas, as are everyone else's?

Well, you see this is all costing you and me, these cases cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Pounds (or in this case - Euros), millions even (?), which has to be clawed back from the general public, the customers, you and me.

Evidence, if any was needed; Lindt, who keep losing these cases are known for more expensive chocolate, Aldi (who's chocolate is as smooth and creamy as Lindt's - it says so on Mum's Net so it must be true!) were selling their bunny cheaper than ever this Easter...one hopes to rub Lindt's nose in it!

Not only that but the courts should be throwing these cases out at the filing stage, we all know that a bear on its back with stumpy legs up, or a semi-flat rabbit/hare in profile have been made in foodstuffs for...what?...more than a century.

How many jelly moulds going back to the 18-something's are there? I remember chocolate rabbits in Italy (which has so far stayed out of these confectionery wars) in the 1970's looking just like all these rivals products, with or without wrappings in gold, silver and patterned paper. I remember them in the shop-windows of local shops (for Locals!) in Bavaria at the same time.

Equally the Lindt bear came late to the party and everyone's bears, bunnies, hares and deer have a gold wrap and or a red ribbon or both, suggesting that the Judges should have thrown that one out as 'Obvious'.

We should probably be thankful that Intersnack's Pom-Bear with his red collar as so far stayed out of the fight!!!!

The point I'm probably not making well is that this stuff needs to stop, this week in a totally unrelated case it was announced that CAT, the - global - engineering firm are being investigated for possible dumping of perfectly good (railway locomotive?) engine parts at sea, to hide a potential fraud involving replacing components that didn't need replacing.

I don't know how true all that is going to prove, but let's assume that Blags & Crimes Bros. have been doing exactly that...

First they will have been ripping-off the railway operator and through him  the travellers who will pay increased ticket prices. Because most major rail companies get some sort of local or regional government or state or federal, or EU grant, the taxpayers will also suffer. Meanwhile the planet has suffered two-fold, first by giving up more resources than it needed to, and second through the double pollution of an unnecessary ship-movement and the dumping of oily crap at sea. The ship-movement also adding to the cost of  B& G's operation and cutting dividends to shareholders.

That's capitalism folks...and everyone's the loser..every day, including you.

Should you want to read more;

Haribo V Lindt

German Court

Telegraph

Gummi Bear