I like chocolate. I like the colour chocolate. I like the stuff itself. I like chocolate on things too. Biscuits, whatever. I like some of the packaging it comes in. I like the history of the packaging. The memories it can evoke.
I miss silver foil on a Kit Kat. Really miss it. It was a tactile thing and added to the pleasure of the experience. Combined with the red paper wrap it was genius. Before you ate you had to rub the silver so you could see the words ‘Kit Kat’ come through from the chocolate beneath. And then you’d run your finger between the bars to break the foil, which kept the chocolate from melting against your hand. Why would anyone make the decision to get rid of such classic packaging?
ANYWAY.
On the many blogs that what I follow there have been a few mentions of Mast Brothers chocolate. A pair of chocolateers, making ‘american craft chocolate’ as it says on the label. In Brooklyn, which is rather unexpected. How excited I was then to find this colourful and tempting shelf of their product in Dean & DeLuca, Soho, New York last week. So pretty that it had to be bought.
The Mast website has a photo of 2 chaps (one presumes the Brothers Mast themselves) looking rather serious about chocolate. Contemplating the higher meaning of this sweet stuff. How nice they look too (and you know I like men who can dress properly), Shaker-ish and a bit 19th century. In a good way. I am fairly sure that they must make their chocolate dressed just so.
The wrappings and design of their chocolate bars are lovely. Thick patterned paper wrappers, very like the Curwen Press papers of the 1940s. The logo is sweet – a child’s red drawing of 2 figures, meant to be the brothers? Nice simple stuck-on paper label. A ‘date of birth’ of the chocolate on the back. Very cute.
And the chocolate itself? Being the ephemera-hungry person I am, I choose the most attractive packet: the blue with a lattice-work pattern. But the flavour was written on the back in French. It turned out to be dark chocolate with salt. Oh. It was really very nice dark chocolate. But the salt wasn’t to my taste at all. That’ll teach me.
Yes, I've seen the write-ups about this chocolate on various blogs and admit that I was drawn to the photo.
For a few minutes I was 8 again, opening my Kit Kat, EXACTLY as you described – the simple pleasures of childhood! But now I learn they've gone – no more foil?
Couldn’t agree more re Kit Kat packaging.
Yes, it’s a shame they don’t do limited-edition foil wrapped ones. To recapture a bit of their past.