"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profits in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."

From https://us.tonyschocolonely.com/pages/faqs

  • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nl
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    7 days ago

    Some info, that’s interesting and helps balance this blatant advertisement. Tony’s was started by Dutch television maker Teun van der Keuken. He worked on a program that exposes products for their production methods and false marketing and so on. They stumbled onto the slavery that’s part of the cacao industry. He asked to be arrested for eating chocolate, and in doing so enabling slave labor, but he wasn’t. He started out Tony’s Chocolonely to attempt to change the chocolate industry. He’s not part of the company anymore. He has concluded the mission has failed, and is very critical of his former company, saying they’ve lost sight of the aim: slave-free chocolate.

      • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nl
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        6 days ago

        This article is from 2015. By then it’s been 10 years since the company started, and he already left it. In the article he explains that still only 25% of the cacao used in Tony’s Chocolonely is guaranteed slave-free, let alone that they’ve had any significant impact on the industry at large. He says the situation of slave labor in cacao industry has only worsened. Tony’s has changed the message on their product “100% slave free” (which was false advertising) to something like “working together towards slave-free chocolate”, which he concludes to be meaningless marketing. It’s rather bizarre that such a message is allowed on a product that contains cacao from slave-labor…

  • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 days ago

    First not sure why everyone is so sure this is an ad and not just OP likes this and the message.

    I’ve contemplated posting about this chocolate, I guess we can’t call out companies we like and we just all shit on everything all the time.

    Second, my friend called me out for paying £3.50 for a bar of this whenever we have a chocolate and film night when Cadbury is like £1.50. When I said it’s more ethically sourced he said I don’t care about that. 😞

        • arefx@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          Yeah but there is a very distinct difference. Cadbury tastes like fake chocolate that’s 90% sugar, Tony’s still tastes like real chocolate even if you think it’s shitty. Eat them back to back there’s a noticeable difference in chocolate. I eat European chocolate all the time and Tony’s is about as good just has a different flavor profile to it.

        • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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          6 days ago

          I like Cadburys and I like Tony’s but like a £1.50 Cadbury bar is about the same footprint as a Tony’s bar and about half as thick.

  • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    I’m gonna be real here when I saw one of these bars for the first time I just assumed they were assholes and didn’t look any further into why the bar wasn’t cut in a usable way.

  • The story behind this brand is kind of wild. The company was founded when a Dutch TV program found out the horrors of the chocolate industry, specifically the child slavery at the core of the cacao bean production.

    Even today, there are practically no slavery free brands. Attempts to make them, like Tony’s, end up with chocolate farm owners messing with the system to pocket the higher price intended for them to hire people. There are a few attempts to make chocolate without slavery, but qhwn you buy a bar of chocolate in a store somewhere, you can be reasonably sure the company that made them profited off child slavery, even if they try their best not to.

    • Hagdos@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      It isn’t American, and it doesn’t taste like shit.

      The founder, Teun van der Keuken, is a Dutch guy. He started this journey with sueing himself before a Dutch judge, on account of participating in slave labour (by buying chocolate in a supermarket, knowing that it’s likely produced by slave labour)

      • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Sounds cool. I’ll give it a try. You know where I can get some? I like Aldi chocolate cause it tastes good, cheap, and doesn’t use slave labor

        • Hagdos@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I know you can get it at Albert Heijn

          Edit: I just learned that Aldi chocolate is sourced through Tony’s supply lines, so they should be the same level of slave-free

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    It doesn’t make any sense to do this as a metaphor. Chocolate is typically divided into evenly sized chunks for measurement purposes, regardless of the evil practices of the chocolate industry.

    The metaphor is asinine the explanation is confusing and it’s lost on almost everybody who buys this.

    I have had this brand of chocolate before and it is quite good however.

    • freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I don’t know, man. Sounds like the guy at least TRIED to do something more than most people. Granted, it doesn’t compare to a life spent delivering clever piss-take commentary to Lemmy, but not everyone can be so blessed.

      Also, speaking of asinine, measurement purposes? If they were selling unsweetened cocao bars for baking, you would have had a point.

      I’d say most people get frustrated and think WTF did they make this chocolate bar a pain in my ass? Then maybe they notice the story on the inside of the wrapper and read it?

    • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      I have never been in or adjacent to a situation where I had to measure chocolate packaged and sold to be eaten as-is in a recipe by squares broken off of a bar, at the demarcations pre-scored into the bar. If I needed that much control I’d grate it or use a chocolate that came pre-granulated, like baking kisses.

      For chocolate bars meant to be eaten, the score lines are very much for sharability first. Any use of them for culinary measurement is at best a peripheral feature.

      This probably doesn’t hold true for baking chocolate. But Tony’s isn’t baking chocolate.

      • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I didn’t say it was for cooking. I said measurement. That can be applied to consumption as well as in a cooking capacity.

        • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          If you’re not measuring for cooking, why are you measuring? Being that accurate for casual consumption is strange.