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‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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I don't understand how they cant see that once we leave we leave. If you bite into that and hate it; its a cycle broken and we we unlikely to trust the product ever again.
It's what happened with Bassets Winegums. Used to be my absolute favourite candy. Wife came back from the UK with a box,I opened it and the taste was... Different. Googled - turns out they changed the recipe after being purchased by some large conglomerate. I haven't had one of their candies since 13 years ago. Fucking idiots.
I think we’re talking about very old brands that sell in big numbers because they’ve locked in grocery store shelf space and Halloween combo bag deals. It’s not like every sale is made after a careful taste test. Boomers with practically no tastes buds left buy these to hand out to trick or treaters because they remember them being good 40 years ago. Meanwhile the manufacturer can make millions just by shaving costs here and there. They aren’t going to keep growing sales. Their brand is mature and their market is saturated. All they can do to juice profits is cut costs.
I’m not justifying their way of thinking, just saying this is why they don’t behave as if every single candy must taste amazing. Their sales keep chugging without that. And if you aren’t growing profits, you’re already dead. So blame capitalism for the underlying reasons for why they can’t just leave well enough alone.
The New Coke fiasco begs to differ.
The cynic in me imagines that they switch away from real chocolate, everyone will hate it, they'll release a new product line that proclaims it uses real chocolate, but charge a premium for it, and people will buy it.
What premium am I paying for any Coke vs. other name brand soda?
I don't understand the question.
Ah, okay, you're putting two points together.
I think people came back to original Coke because they were looking for a specific flavor. When they had no reason to buy Coke, their options were limited - buy what they can get, or stop drinking colas. I kept on with Coke, but was happy when they changed back. As an older person now, I'd make a different choice.
As for quality vs. taste people will buy what they find acceptable for the price, with a minimum standard that is generally very individual. This has been the case for a very long time, and cocoa is pretty expensive. It isn't surprising that some people will pay more and higher quantities of expensive ingredients lead to a more expensive product. Toss in inflation, and here we are.
Well if they all do it, who are ya gonna run to?
i will have to give it up. it will be easier if its crap anyway. Learning to pay for what you actually want vrs you think you want are two different things.
The thing is, they won't ALL do it. The big names will. Real chocolate will become more of a luxury thing you have less often (which, to be fair is probably a good thing) and the established brands might survive on some blind brand loyalty, or die out.
You’re using the future tense but this is pretty much the way it already is. No one considers hersheys good chocolate. It’s getting slightly worse and people are acting like some goddess has been kicked off her pedestal. Its more like a dead dog has just had one more fly land on it.
Not eating candy is always an option for adults with an ounce of self control.
Well swish swish. Even those with an ounce of self control sometimes also allow themselves an ounce of enjoyment. You should try it.
I thought we were talking about a product that had become un-enjoyable a second ago. What enjoyment can an adult get out of chocolate flavored wax that they couldn't get better somewhere else with a product they like, rather than one they used to like before it was made bad?
If all my chocolate options are actually brown wax, I don't actually have any chocolate options.
The comment I replied to was generalized to all candy.
So is eating a moderate amount of higher quality and more expensive chocolate. Its okay to enjoy a treat every once in a while
NO. We must all SUFFER. It's what The Lord intended.
I should become a baptist pastor this is fun.
There are plenty of companies still selling actual chocolate, and since it's chocolate and not chocolate-flavoured sweets I think it'll just become smaller and/or more expensive. Which is fine.
I eat candy because it tastes good. If it all tastes like shit they why should I eat it?
If something turns to shit, you stop eating it and get something else I guess?
I mean, you can make your own peanut butter cups...
Trader Joe's has giant Belgian chocolate bars, and far far better peanut butter cups with normal PB.
Ozempic!
That doesn't sound like this quarter's problem, or even next quarter's problem. In fact, that doesn't even sound like the quarter after that's problem.
Stupidity and short term money.
I'm sure they tested the new recipe on a sample audience long before they put it into mass production which informed them that the recipe change would positively impact their bottom line. Big companies don't make enormous blunders which put them out of business. The social media tech companies we all hate are still around and have billions of users after all the crap they did. Why? Because all of the negative changes they made to their platforms were first tested on a sample of users and the sample kept using it. After all of the recipe downgrades and shrinkflation, you still see the products on the shelves. The only time you ever see an established brand suddenly vanish is when they're bought out by private equity or they're made obsolete by new technology.
Big companies do make big blunders, but there are forces at work in those upper echelons of the business world beyond market economics. I'm no sure the exact amount, but it seems that once someone or some group has accumulated over a certain amount of money, it takes consistent, sustained catastrophic mistakes to ever drop below that amount, like a sort of critical mass.
Companies that big don't obey the same economic laws you and I do, and often don't obey many laws at all for that matter, and they don't often fail mainly because the system was set up by them in a way where they can't fail, regardless of how monumentally they screw up.
When they do, their customers flee to one of their 3 competitors who are all run by guys that play golf together and collude, then later one of those companies does a big screw-up, the customers flee back to the first one.
All good points bit missing mine: brands vanish all the time. Companies too.
It's just that short term money is valued, thats how we run today. It's never about long term services and products.
That's what happened to me and Oreo's during the switch from soy oil to trans-fat-free oils. They were NASTY during that transition.