March is a bad month for my waistline, inasmuch as it is the month that contains Cadbury creme eggs.
I do love creme eggs. Mmm. So gooey and wonderful. Few are the people who do not have a definite opinion about creme eggs; either you revel in their goopy goodness or you abhor their squishy weirdness. Only those who have never experienced them are ambivalent.
It's become tougher to obtain them in recent years. Oh, not drive fifty miles, wrestle an alligator in the nude, or go hunting with Dick Cheney difficult. But grocery stores, in this area at least, don't seem to carry them any more. They carry the caramel eggs, which are a lesser imitation confection not worthy of the spittle it takes to dissolve them, but not the creme eggs. I have to make a special trip to the drug store to find them; and not even all drug stores carry them. This is not how it used to be.
The reason, of course, is corporate power. You see, Cadbury in general is a weak foreign brand in the United States. They got a toehold back in the eighties with creme eggs, because they were a seasonal treat. Grocery stores, and more importantly grocery distributors, had a place for seasonal treats in their contracts, and on their shelves.
However, Hershey and Mars between them have the actual name-brand candy aisle locked up, controlling 75% of the US candy market. And they weren't about to let Cadbury expand its niche into actually selling Cadbury bars next to the Hershey's Special Extra Wax and the Mars & Murries (M&Ms). Food giant Nestle has fought for years for its tiny scrap of American candy market share. So the twin behemoths weren't about to let those chocolatey limeys at Cadbury flog their wares over here.
For those who don't know, a company pays to sell its products at a grocery store. What, you thought the store bought the product and sold it on? Or perhaps they stocked whatever sold the best and took a commission? Ha! Ha! How nineteenth century of you.
No, Hershey and Mars (and everyone else) rent those grocery and convenience store shelves. Oh, it's not called rent, but that's what it is. And there are a finite amount of shelves, so if Hershey and Mars can rent them all, why, you the customer will never even know there are other candies out there!
This practice, by the way, is why we get things like Coke Zero, Coca-Cola C2, Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Vanilla Coke, Diet Coke with Lime, New Coke, Old Coke, Coca-Cola with Basil and Olive Oil, Sardine Coke... they don't want you to buy the damned stuff. They want to keep Jones Cola or Royal Crown Cola or anyone else from actually getting their products onto the shelf. A grocery store will only stock so much Coca-Cola, because although they get paid shelf rent they also get paid by actually selling groceries, and they can keep duplicate product in the back and restock the shelves. But if a company has lots of different products, they can threaten or bribe the grocery stores into carrying each of those products; and thus competitors get no space.
You remember Bud Dry? How about Bud Dark? Bud Ice?
Exactly. All that crap came and went and was purchased in only small quantities not because consumers wanted it or even because Anheiser-Busch thought consumers wanted it, but because Budweiser was losing market share to microbrews that actually didn't taste the same coming in as going out, and one way to fight them was for A-B to use up all the shelf space with additional "new" versions of their swill.
So: creme eggs. As I say, Cadbury could sell them as a seasonal item, but they failed to use that as a wedge into the candy aisle. They sold a few items there - they bought Peter Paul and its Almond Joy and Mounds bars back in 1978 - but basically weren't going anywhere.
So in the late eighties they knuckled under and licensed the rights to Hershey. Hershey would sell all the creme eggs in the United States. (Plus they sold them Peter Paul and the rest of their US brands.)
Except Hershey wouldn't actuall make the creme eggs. Cadbury over in the UK would still make the creme eggs. They knew that Hershey would just dilute their brand if they licensed the manufacturing, adding more wax and weakening the taste.
So what Hershey did instead is to introduce new creme eggs. Caramel creme eggs, chocolate creme eggs, etc. Mini creme eggs. All of which they can make here, domestically. And use to control the actual creme egg shelf space.
Now, or course, it's getting harder to find the genuine article. Because Hershey isn't pushing them as much. They tell the grocery stores to stock their own creme eggs, and pay the licensing fees, and don't pay for the actual eggs. They have no incentive to fight for the channel.
Alas. But, at least for the time being, I can get my creme eggs at other stores with larger seasonal presences, namely drug stores. And I have some faith in Cadbury; their actual candy bars have started to appear in grocery stores, not in the candy aisle but in the 'fancy food' aisle, a.k.a. 'imports with much higher markup'. More money for the grocery store, you see. There's more than one way to skin a cat, or to put that catskin on the shelf.
Long live the creme egg!
- Sun Ra