Major change coming to iconic Toblerone chocolate bar packaging

Toblerone will make a change to its iconic triangular packaging after the brand announced changes to the chocolate bar’s production.

Toblerone will remove the Matterhorn mountain peak from its iconic triangular packaging after some of the chocolate’s production was moved outside of Switzerland.

The iconic image of the peak of the 4478m-high mountain – mirrored in the shape of the pyramid-shaped chocolate bar – will be replaced with a more generic Alpine summit to avoid violating “Swissness” legislation, which demands that products using national images are made inside the country.

“The packaging redesign introduces a modernised and streamlined mountain logo that aligns with the geometric and triangular aesthetic,” a spokesperson for the confectionery brand’s US owner, Mondelez, told the Aargauer Zeitung newspaper.

Toblerone will remove the Matterhorn mountain peak from its packaging after some of the chocolate’s production is set to move outside of Switzerland.

The wrapper will also now read, “Established in Switzerland” rather than “Of Switzerland”.

The changes come after Mondelez announced that, from the end of this year, it will move some of Toblerone’s production to its plant in Slovakia.

In a statement to the BBC, the company said the move outside Switzerland was in response “to increased demand worldwide and to grow our Toblerone brand for the future”.

Under the “Swissness Act”, introduced in 2017, national symbols and Swiss crosses can’t be used to promote milk-based products that are not made exclusively in Switzerland.

For other non-dairy foodstuffs that claim to be “Swiss made” or use a national symbol on packaging, at least 80 per cent of the raw materials must be from Switzerland.

The wrapper will also now read, ‘Established in Switzerland’ rather than ‘Of Switzerland’. Picture: Mike Pont/Getty Images for NYCWFF

Toblerone first went on sale in the Swiss capital, Bern, in 1908. But it wasn’t until 1970 that the Matterhorn, which straddles the border of Switzerland and Italy, debuted on the honey and almond nougat-flavoured chocolate’s wrapper.

It’s not the first time the chocolate has undergone a transformation – in 2016, Mondelez’s decision to space out the distinctive triangular chunks on bars sold in the UK left fans outraged.

The design change, intended to reduce the weight of what were 400g and 170g bars, was labelled “stupid” and “underhanded” by consumers, who wrote on Toblerone’s Facebook page at the time that it “looks like you’re getting half the chocolate”.

Mondelez ultimately reverted back to the bar’s original shape two years later.