A NEW TASTE IN A NEW FORM
Fry's and Cadbury's were two huge chocolate makers each with a long history before they merged in 1919. The Canadian based Fry-Cadbury of Montreal first sold the Caramilk bar in 1968 and remains to this day as a Canadian-only item. Currently the bars are produced at one location, the company's Gladstone Chocolate Factory in Toronto.
Last year I posted a visual evolution of the Aero chocolate bar wrapper with the main body comprised from the wrappers in my collection and with finding a few of the earliest designs on the internet. For my Caramilk evolution I have done the same, in filling out a few design gaps between this wrapper shown above and below, of what I believe to be the first wrapper, to where my run of wrappers start at 0108 00 04.
In 1969 Cadbury merged with Schweppes up until its demerger in 2008.
There is a pretty big visual jump or perhaps lump in the designs with these two above and below wrappers, so it's possible that I am missing one or two, but I would not be surprised if this is it. From the time period of 1976 of the wrapper above (as shown by the Olympic symbol from the Canada Olympic games which were held in Montreal in 1976) and the obvious 1970's design motif of the wrapper below, there was not a lot of time in between these to have had multiple designs. I think its great how the pyramid shaped took on a hill-like appearance and the horizon lines took suit in that 70's vibra-tone. Kinda even looks like a geographic slice of the ground as if there is gooey lava inside. It also mirrors the profile shape of a section of the bar. Also notice the major shift back to Cadbury's older original logo design which they were using in their other chocolate bars. We will start to see this logo evolve as well!
Keep your eye on the swirl and look how many other changes you will find...
o108 00 04
Between the above and below designs there were 7 other wrapper changes as shown by printing serial number at the top of the wrapper. But you can see that all those changes must have been promotion/contest offers like the one below with no real change to the actual lettering style or logo design. Even when there is an ingredient change or a change in the order of the ingredients, you will see a change in the serial number.
o108 00 12
o108 00 13
o108 00 14
o108 00 15
o108 00 16
o108 00 19
6-1470-178-002
6-1470-178-002
The above design is current to date though there was a 003 design with a large key for a 250,000 dollar contest held last year, but a recently acquired bar had this 002 design.
In February 2010 Kraft won a takeover bid to gain control of Cadbury for 18.9 billion dollars of which they had to borrow 11.5 billion.
