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Hare necessities. Cadbury’s Caramel (1976).

CADBURY’S CARAMEL

Cadbury had a big year in 1976. On the downside, there was the Rowntree’s Yorkie. More positively, there was the Montreal Winter Olympics, all over which the Goodies appeared in TV ads urging hungry kids to swap ten Cadbury wrappers (oh, and £3.60) for a transistor radio in exciting blue denim!

Then there was the launch of the Cadbury’s Caramel.

You could tell this was a classy bar. For a start, it was frighteningly expensive, even in those times of vertiginous price rises. It was also very neat, each section being a little sculpted pillow of chocolate, delicately engraved with the Cadbury livery. Let there be no idle talk of ‘chunks’ here. All terribly sophisticated, very grown-up... and a tad dull, to be honest. This product needed sexing up.

Enter five-foot jobbing actress Miriam Margolyes, who took one of the least promising briefs ever (‘Right, so you’re this lazy, but saucy, West Country rabbit with a chocolate obsession...’) and turned in thirty seconds of sub-Bristol vocal smouldering that was destined for immortality. The cartoon blurred the line over who the product was aimed at slightly. Was it responsible to tell children ‘arses are there to be sat on, have some chocolate’, via a buck-toothed erotic trade unionist? Nevertheless, a surprisingly timeless campaign was created.

Cadbury took their own advice and took it easy, letting the anthropomorphic amour carry the weight. The bar’s sales never troubled the top ten, but the ‘exclusive’ price kept it afloat. In 1993, enter the Galaxy Caramel. Panic on the streets of Bournville! Well, okay, a bit of a rebadge and a new recipe. It saw off the competition, but it’s hard not to view this most successful of also-ran bars as a bit too much in temperament like its skiving mascot, and too little like her industrious, if slightly thick, woodland pals.

‘Hey Mr Bee, why are you buzzing around?’ A Baloo-influenced work ethic for the dole age via the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny, circa 1979.