We all love Cadbury's, but that won't stop this rant...

For as long as I can remember, Cadbury's chocolate has always been one of my favourite treats.
I have never actually tested this, but I am pretty certain that I could go through a few slabs in one sitting... :)

So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered some rather sneaky changes that Cadbury's made to their slab sizes at the end of May.

Check this out:

Large slab (May 2014):

Large slab (June 2014):

Ok, so they reduced the slab size by 30 grams - that's approximately 16%.

Now the reduced slab size alone is a big enough issue - less chocolate is never a good thing!

The part that adds insult to injury here is the fact that the smaller slab pricing has remained unchanged, somewhere around the R19 - R21 mark, and I'm sure that this is even set to rise soon, given the current rate of inflation.

Hell Cadbury's, what a way to slap your customers in the face.

Of course it's pretty difficult for me to say I won't buy Cadbury's anymore, since I love their chocolate so much, but at the very least your company image has taken a serious knock in my book.

So in closing - @Cadbury's, don't forget that we now have things called "social networks", where everybody knows everybody, and where one small post or tweet can be propagated millions of times over.

I, for one, will be spreading this all over my social network pages.

As the late, great Douglas Adams once wrote:

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

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Have you ever tasted Hershey's chocolate...?

I love chocolate. Let me get that out of the way right off the bat.

Cadbury's, Ferrero, Lindt, Toblerone, Nestle... I am now busy drooling on my keyboard, and these are just the readily available retail brands... don't even get me started on the crazy "gourmet" chocolate brands out there.

That is why, when I was lucky enough to visit the USA recently, I was super keen to try some of America's finest - why Hershey's of course!

Hershey's does, after all, boast the largest chocolate factory in the world, in the quaint and aptly named town of Hershey, with a floor space of 200,000 square metres!

In addition, Hershey is one of the oldest chocolate companies in the USA, and an American icon for its chocolate bar.
So as soon as I set foot on American soil, off I headed to the nearest place I could spot the Hershey's logo, to sample a piece of the American Chocolate Dream.

Little did I know what awaited my unsuspecting tastebuds...
I should have done some homework on the matter - after all, look what Google's predictive search feature has to say about Hershey...:

Man oh man, I really don't want to bring down such an iconic brand, but seriously, either we are massively spoiled here in South Africa, or I just have some dodgy tastebuds in my mouth.
Then again, if it were just my tastebuds, then Google would probably not be associating Hershey's with vomit...

The thing is, it all starts off pretty well, just like one would expect from chocolate.
Then about halfway through, some pretty odd flavour emerges and begins to overpower all in its path, until all you are left with is a decidedly unpleasant aftertaste, and a puzzled expression on your face.

So puzzled was I in fact, that I had to do a double take, and then a triple take - I thought that I had just happened upon a bad batch of Hershey's...
Ah but alas, this was not the case.
Hershey's just tastes odd, and that is putting it mildly.

Happily though, the same does not hold true for some of their other brands - for example Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are just fantastic, but then again I am a peanut butter fan of note.

Have you ever tasted Hershey's chocolate? Was it nasty or nice?

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