This Chocolate Isle

"They chew through plays and they chew through films and they chew in trains," complained the London Daily Mail. "They suck lollies through Macbeth and Hamlet, and they while away Tennessee Williams with the chocolates with the scrumptious centers." The Mail's complaint was not another anti-American outburst, but a cultural critique of the world's most ravenous candy eaters: the British. Unfazed by calorie counts, the English last year ate an average 8 oz. of candy weekly, nearly double the sweet tooth of any other European country and well above the 5.6 oz. a week the U.S. puts away. All this amounts to a big rock candy mountain of 1.4 billion Ibs. of sweets annually. For Britain's 800 candy companies and 250,000 candy-peddling retailers, the sweet smell of success adds up to $800 million a year.

Astride their chocolate isle lapped by nougat seas, British candymakers should be the world's most contented manu facturers. They are not. Since wartime rationing finally ended in 1954, sweets-eating has reached a very high point of satiety--and stayed there. British candy buyers are a fickle lot, constantly switching brands and assortments. To get a good bite of the market, candymakers have to spend a lot on advertising, constantly spring forward with new product names.

Led by giant Cadbury, Rowntree, and Cadbury's Fry subsidiary, Britain's chocolate makers have become the biggest spenders and the most aggressive marketers. Last year they won 51% of the market, to outsell the makers of traditional British toffee for the first time. Ads for chocolates look like U.S. cigarette commercials; the bosomy blonde, blossoming bower and babbling brook that spell menthol smokes for conditioned U.S. audiences are in England frequently a backdrop for a chocolate bar. "I like plain, simple things," coos one unidentified model in the ads. "Plain chinchillas. Simple sables. And plain chocolate." This kind of talk seems to suit plain old Cadbury's and Rowntree's, both of which were founded by devout Quakers. Cadbury Boss Paul Cadbury, 67, is so scrupulous that he insists on paying for candies that he carries home from the factory in the evening.

Britain's candy taste shift is continuing. The latest trend is away from "the bottle trade," or bulk candies in jars, to boxed assortments in glossy packages; candymakers expect the growth of British supermarkets to accelerate this trend. To hold its top place, Cadbury's plans to spend $60 million over the next four years enlarging and modernizing its main plant in Birmingham. For its part, the British government looks on the candy crave as a mixed blessing. A 15% "lolly tax" imposed last year on candy purchases should bring in $140 million annually. At the same time, dentists blame sweets for the fact that Britain also leads the world in bad teeth. The cost of yearly dental care to Britain's nationalized health service: $140 million.

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