Roses chocolates ditch classic twisted wrapper

Roses chocolates are known for their colourful, twisted foil wrappers. Photo / Jason Dorday.

It's a ritual familiar to us all: foraging in a box of chocolates in search of a hidden piece of treasure sparkling with promise. We all love an assortment box, where the fudges, hazelnut whirls and strawberry dreams are wrapped in a twist of brightly coloured, shiny paper. How we thrill to the task of peeling off the paper to get to our reward.

But not for much longer. Roses, the brand owned by Cadbury, is getting rid of twist-wraps in the UK in favour of something altogether more modern: flow wraps.

@nzhlifestyle Our old style of wrappers were driving some of our customers round the twist, so we needed to make some improvements!

— Cadbury UK (@CadburyUK) May 25, 2015

This is the packaging jargon for wrappers with a jagged end. Instead of untwisting a caramel, you will now have to tear it open. The wrapper can no longer be scrunched and tossed into a parabolic arc. Try screwing a "flow wrap" into a ball and it flips back into shape and drifts sadly to the ground.

It is the latest in a long line of changes that the company has introduced since it was bought by Kraft in 2010. The US owner of Cadbury is now called Mondelez - the confectionery business of Kraft was made a separate company in 2012 - and has already sparked scandal among chocolate traditionalists by replacing Dairy Milk for a cheaper chocolate on its Creme Eggs, rounding the corners on Dairy Milk bars, and axing its chocolate coins.

And now this. To explain the logic, the firm has invited me to its historic Bournville factory. Tony Bilsborough, of Cadbury, says: "We've changed the wrapping simply because the quality of twist wrap was just not up to scratch. Time and again, we were getting complaints that the twist wraps were coming undone, or the entire wrapper itself was appearing empty in the box. It was our number one complaint."

It is certainly true that if you open a box of Roses, there are always a handful of sweets that look as if they have been assembled by an unskilled three-year-old. The odd rogue empty wrapper was not unheard of, but that just added to the experience.

Yes, I was able to open the new ones with ease and there was no sign of flow wrappers' notorious impenetrability. But rummaging your hand in the tub was definitely less satisfying than before. And watching the country fudges come off the factory line at the rate of 1,000 a minute, they looked like silvery pillows, rather than traditional sweets. Yes, the new packaging lines are quicker - twist-wrapping machines can wrap as slowly as 450 a minute - but this new chapter ignores a fundamental part of the history of chocolates and confectionery in Britain.

The original twist-wrapping machines were invented in the 20s, replacing the previous system: employing thousands of women to wrap by hand. As a result, the great companies of the time - Mackintosh, Terry's and Cadbury's - were able to significantly reduce the cost of chocolates, but still huge care was taken to make sure they were excitingly packaged. The original Quality Street even included two strings of bunting made out of crepe paper that ran around the inside of the tin to add to the explosion of colour when you opened it.

Robert Opie, Britain's foremost consumer goods historian, who runs the Museum of Brands, is quietly horrified at the new changes: "The razzmatazz of unwrapping sweets is so important. It's a key part of our enjoyment of our favourite brands."

Equally, Dorothy Briggs, the teacher from Cumbria and lifelong Cadbury fan who was the first to blow the whistle on the demise of the coins, when told about the flow wrappers said: "This is a step too far. The Cadbury name used to be synonymous with superb quality and tradition. I have completely lost faith in the products."

Mr Bilsborough and the Cadbury team at Bournville are braced for a backlash.

"We are well aware that by moving from twist wrap to flow wrap, there will be some traditionalists who will say, 'We love the old twist wrap'. That's true. But I think what people want more than tradition is quality. It's no good to have twist wrap if some are undone, some are tainting the other flavours."

But there is one further move that many will find hard to stomach. Yet again, Cadbury has shrunk the size of its boxes in the UK, without a corresponding reduction in price, which has held steady at NZ$10 for the past few years. In 2011 Roses went from 975g to 850g. Then last year it moved down to 777g. As of this week, the new tins are 748g.

Mr Bilsborough says: "Like many food manufacturers, we have found our costs increasing. We want to keep Roses an affordable treat."

Whether this new change will make them feel less than a treat than they used to be remains to be seen.

Cadbury New Zealand says the changes won't apply to New Zealand.

"The change relates to the UK product only, not New Zealand. We are proud of the fact that we have been making Cadbury Roses, New Zealand's most popular assorted chocolates, in Dunedin for decades," said Jack Evison, General Manager Mondelez New Zealand.