Marianne is a Finnish mint chocolate candy originally developed in 1949 by

Chymos Chymos Oy was a Finnish company founded in 1906,Lukka, JuhaniLaatua, tehokkuutta ja ergonomiaa ''Cimcorp customer magazine''. Accessed on 6 January 2017. producing juice, jam, wine, liqueurs and candy. In 1993 the company's candy production was ...

, now produced by

Fazer Fazer (, ) is one of the largest corporations in the Finland, Finnish food industry. The company was founded by Karl Fazer in 1891, as a "French-Russian café" in central Helsinki. Today, it employs over 6,000 people across Finland, Sweden, Lat ...

.Marianne 60 vuotta – siniraitainen Marianne palasi kuluttajien toiveesta
press release, Fazer. Accessed on 1 April 2014.Kauria, Leena (ed.): ''Meidän tehdas Chymos'', history of Chymos, pp. 24-25 and 130. . Marianne candies have a hard peppermint-flavoured shell and a chocolate filling. Fazer bought Chymos in 1993 and Marianne moved to Fazer's product line.

History

Production of Marianne started in 1949 at the Chymos factory in

Toijala Toijala is a former town and municipality of Finland, located some south of Tampere. On 1 January 2007, it was consolidated with Viiala to form the town of Akaa. Toijala is known as an important railway crossroads. The Helsinki–Tampere and ...

under instruction of master candymaker Aimo Martikainen. After the war, the Finnish people's appetite for candy was immense, and for some reason, Finns took a liking to a combination of chocolate and peppermint. In 1956, Chymos's new CEO Jouko Keränen had noticed the possibilities of the candy, but he thought the simple paper wrapper was too modest and common. He gave Aimo Vuorinen, the graphics artist at Chymos, the difficult task of "adding more glamour". Up to the 1930s, candy products in Finland were named along the lines of "Fazer mint chocolate" or "Chymos filled candies". These descriptions were written on top of the candy packaging. In the 1950s after the war

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. Strictly speaking, a supermarket is larger and has a wider selecti ...

s became common in Finland, where customers picked their items from the shelf themselves and paid for them at the cashier's desk. This made the products need to sell themselves directly from the shelf. A brand image was needed for the products. The packaging had a great effect in this. The diagonal red-white stripes describing the flavour of peppermint was an old European tradition. Even before the candy got its name Marianne, the stripes were present in the packaging and the candies were imprinted with the image of a

sheaf Sheaf may refer to: * Sheaf (agriculture), a bundle of harvested cereal stems * Sheaf (mathematics) In mathematics, a sheaf (: sheaves) is a tool for systematically tracking data (such as sets, abelian groups, rings) attached to the open s ...

. The product was just simply named "Chymos peppermint chocolate". Vuorinen thought that peppermint and chocolate were associated with

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

(similarly to Fazer's "French pastilles"). He sought some kind of French symbol other than the

tricolour A triband is a vexillological style which consists of three stripes arranged to form a flag. These stripes may be two or three colours, and may be charged with an emblem in the middle stripe. Not all tribands are tricolour flags, which requires t ...

. He thought of the French

national personification A national personification is an anthropomorphic personification of a state or the people(s) it inhabits. It may appear in political cartoons and propaganda. In the first personifications in the Western World, warrior deities or figures symboliz ...

Marianne Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. Marianne is displayed i ...

. He made sketches with the name Marianne and the image of the personification as a young maiden. However, this resulted in negative feedback. Chymos returned to the original red-white striped wrapper, imprinted with the name Marianne. It became Finland's best selling candy for years.

Product development

The Marianne product family was joined in the 1970s by the toffee-filled Marimint (now known as Marianne Toffee) and the orange-flavoured AnneMari, which was later renamed Marianne Appelsiini. Nowadays it has become only one flavour variation in the mixed bag Marianne Mix, which is produced for Christmas season and travel retail. Fazer bought Chymos in 1993 and Marianne became part of its product line. Marianne was one of the products Fazer especially wanted, because it had established itself well both in Finland and elsewhere in Europe. According to Fazer, Marianne is a combination of "the Russian candy tradition and the French taste". The annual production of the original Marianne candy in

Lappeenranta Lappeenranta (; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of South Karelia. It is located in the southeastern interior of the country and in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Lappeenranta is approximately , while the Lappeenranta sub-r ...

in 1.4 million kilograms.

Marianne products

In 2000, Marianne Light sweetened with

xylitol Xylitol is a chemical compound with the formula , or HO(CH2)(CHOH)3(CH2)OH; specifically, one particular Stereoisomerism, stereoisomer with that structural formula. It is a colorless or white crystalline solid. It is classified as a polyalcoho ...

instead of sugar and Marianne drops were introduced. Marianne drops came in three different packagings: a small box, a bag of 150 grams and a box of 200 grams for travel retail. A bakery product called Marianne Crush was introduced in 2003. In 2006, the Marianne Snacks chocolate bar and loose candy were introduced, followed by a Marianne liquorice bar in 2009. A Marianne Mix box containing Marianne candies with traditional, toffee-filled and orange-flavoured Marianne candies is available at Christmas time and for travel retail. Fazer has expanded the Marianne product line to new products. Fazer's Kismet chocolate bars are available with Marianne filling. In autumn 2013,

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

-flavoured Marianne Café candies and Marianne biscuits were introduced. The Fazer product line also includes Marianne cake rolls and Marianne muffins.

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. It has been the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 20 ...

also produces Marianne ice cream.Fazer Marianne
, ''Pingviini.fi''. Accessed on 1 April 2014. The Marianne park was opened in Lappeenranta near the Chymos factory in 2013. It is maintained by the city of Lappeenranta and Fazer.

References

External links

Marianne
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140508035355/http://www.fazer.fi/tuotteet-ja-asiakaspalvelu/tuotemerkit/marianne/ , date=2014-05-08 at Fazer's official site Fazer Finnish confectionery