Yorkie is a

chocolate bar A chocolate bar (Commonwealth English) or candy bar (some dialects of American English) is a confection containing chocolate, which may also contain layerings or mixtures that include nuts, fruit, caramel, nougat, and wafers. A flat, easily brea ...

made by

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...

. It was originally made by

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

-based company

Rowntree's Rowntree's is a British confectionery brand and former business based in York, England. Rowntree developed the Kit Kat (introduced in 1935), Aero (introduced in 1935), Fruit Pastilles (introduced in 1881), Smarties (introduced in 1937) brands ...

, hence the name.

History

In 1976, Eric Nicoli of

spotted a gap in the confectionery market for a "manly" chocolate bar, and so the company launched Yorkie as a chunkier competitor to Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Production was at York and

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

until 1994. The Yorkie bar has historically been marketed towards men. From the bar's launch until 1992, the "Yorkie bar trucker" was the famous "rough, tough star" of the brand's television adverts. Another prominent ad from this period was a billboard at

York railway station York railway station is on the East Coast Main Line serving the city of York, North Yorkshire, England. It is north of and on the main line it is situated between to the south and to the north. , the station is operated by London North Ea ...

with the words "Welcome to" and a picture of a half unwrapped Yorkie bar. Thus the advert read "Welcome to York". Further text beneath said "Where the men are hunky and the chocolate's chunky". In 2002, the bar's relaunch campaign made this positioning more explicit, with the addition of a wrapper tagline reading "It's not for girls!", as well as associated £3m television and print advertisements that featured a variety of sexist slogans''.'' One of these campaigns provoked 97 complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency on grounds of sexism in its first year, but the ASA eventually ruled that these complaints were not justified. However, an associated promotional campaign in which free sample bars were handed out exclusively to men was banned by Liverpool's and Birmingham's councils. In 2006, a pink-wrapped special edition was released as an ironic play on the "not for girls" branding, with this edition marketed towards women. In 2011, the 'It's Not for Girls!' slogan was dropped, and standard Yorkie bars became available in 3 packs. Aside from the original milk chocolate bar, several variants are available, including a "raisin and biscuit" flavour, "honeycomb" flavour, and Yorkie Ice Cream. A special version for use in Ministry of Defence ration packs was also produced, with its tagline reading ''It's not for civvies''.

Size changes

Yorkie bars were originally composed of six chunks of chocolate each marked ''Rowntree''; they were wrapped in both foil and an outer paper wrapper and weighed . The wrapping was later switched to a single plastic foil wrapper. More recently, in an effort to reduce costs, the number of chunks has been reduced to five with "Yorkie" moulded into each chunk. The weight of the bar has decreased over the years. In 2002, Yorkie bars were . This had been reduced to by 2010, and was reduced further to in 2011 and then later that year. It was shrunk again in November 2014 to . In January 2015, UK, Raisin & Biscuit Yorkies were . Limited edition Yorkie Peanut was . Yorkie King size bars have also reduced in size.

Flavours

*Original (milk chocolate) *Raisin & Biscuit *Honeycomb *Orange ('Limited Edition' launched on 10 May 2021) *Peanut (discontinued, relaunched as a 'Limited Edition' on 13 October 2014, now discontinued again.) *Almond (discontinued) *"The Nutter" (mixed nuts – discontinued) *Yorkie Blue Ice (crunchy mint flavoured chips – discontinued) *Yorkie Hot Stuff Hot Rum (rum flavour Christmas limited edition) *Biscuit ( biscuit made with Yorkie original chocolate) *Yorkie Pro (Protein chocolate with crispy pieces – protein: 24.7 g per 100 g / 10.5 g per serving)

Other information

Yorkie sponsored the Stealth roller coaster at

Thorpe Park Thorpe Park Resort, commonly known as Thorpe Park, is an amusement park located in the village of Thorpe between the towns of Chertsey and Staines-upon-Thames in Surrey, England, southwest of Central London. It is operated by Merlin Entertai ...

References

External links

* {{Rowntree's Rowntree's brands Products introduced in 1976 Chocolate bars Nestlé brands British confectionery Brand name confectionery