Caramello Koala is a brand of chocolate treat currently manufactured by Cadbury Australia. It consists of a chocolate cartoon koala (named "George" in certain advertising material) with a

caramel Caramel ( or ) is an orange-brown confectionery product made by heating a range of sugars. It can be used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons, or as a topping for ice cream and custard. The process of caramelizatio ...

centre. The chocolate bar is sold in two sizes: the more common size and the "Giant" size, usually sold as a fundraiser. 50 million Caramello Koalas are sold in Australia each year, making the product the second most popular in the Australian children's confectionery market, after the

Freddo Frog Freddo (originally Freddy the Frog in the 1970s) is a chocolate bar brand shaped like an anthropomorphic cartoon frog. It was originally manufactured by the now defunct company MacRobertson's, an Australian confectionery company, but is now prod ...

.'Caramello Koala gets new look', ''Packaging'', 30 November 1999. Cross-over products are occasionally made available featuring the Caramello character, including Cadbury Caramello Koala Choc Caramel flavoured milk in 2003 and Caramello Koala Sundae ice-cream in 1997. They were also sold in South Africa under the name "Caramello Bear", where they were marketed with the Caramello Bear admitting: "Caramel? That's a weakness!", but they were discontinued in 2012. The Afrikaans slogan for the Caramello Bear in South Africa was "Met 'n magie propvol caramel", which translates to "with a tummy full of caramel". A 20g Caramello Koala contains of energy and of fat. Caramello Koala was introduced in Australia as the Caramello Bear in 1966. It was reputedly the first mass-marketed confection to be modeled on Australian fauna. Television advertisements for the chocolate in Australia featured Caramello and his cartoon friends sailing down a river or riding on a steam train to a modified version of

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter, and record producer. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and world mus ...

's "

Mellow Yellow "Mellow Yellow" is a song written and recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. In the US, it reached No. 2 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Outside the US, "Mellow Yellow" peaked at No. 8 in the UK in early 1967. Content The song was rumo ...

". Caramello's packaging and imagery was updated in 2000, after market research revealed the character was seen as daggy, one-dimensional and not sufficiently 'animated'. In 2003, then Australian Labor Party MP, Mark Latham, was labelled a "Caramello Koala" by Liberal MP

Christopher Pyne Christopher Maurice Pyne (born 13 August 1967) is a retired Australian politician. As a member of the Liberal Party, he held several ministerial positions in the Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, and served as a member of p ...

, for allegedly being "soft in the centre". To deal with rising input costs, in April 2015 Cadbury announced a reduction in size of the chocolate to . Despite the 25% size reduction, the price is unchanged. The giant Caramello Koala has also been reduced from to .

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* {{Mondelez Chocolate bars Cadbury brands Mondelez International brands Fictional koalas Australian confectionery Australian brands Products introduced in 1966

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