Have you ever had a habit that you never mentioned to anyone because you thought it was just weird, but then you unexpectedly received validation for it?
That’s the way I felt when I learned that Cadbury, the UK-based confectionery unit of Mondelēz International, was coming out with a wrapper that you can close back over a half-eaten candy bar.
The so-called Twist Wrap is intended to be used with Cadbury’s line of Duos, which is a format it uses for several brands, including Dairy Milk, Double Decker and Wispa. It simply consists of dividing two halves of a long bar. The Twist Wrap allows you to seal up the second half of the bar with just a twist; according to one account, it uses “a technology memory solution” to stay shut.
In other words, Cadbury is enabling everyone to do, with one twist, what I’ve been doing for years with Scotch tape, clamps and binder clips: deal with oversized packages of candy.
As candy bars got bigger and outstripped my appetite, on the rare occasions I bought one, I’ve often had to tape or otherwise fasten the wrapper around what was left. It’s a tribute to either my self-control or my miserliness. Whichever, it’s good to know I’m apparently not the only candy consumer in the world who does this.
Of course, it might be easier all the way around for Cadbury to just put the halves of the Duo bars in separate, single-serve packaging. But that would remove a marketing opportunity described by Wispa’s brand manager: the ability to easily split in half makes Duos “the perfect product to be shared amongst loved ones.”
It would also remove another opportunity that Cadbury doesn’t talk about publicly: A consumer who means to save the second half of the bar for later, but is overcome by greed and ends up gobbling it down on the spot instead.
Hey, what are you looking at me for? I hardly ever did that. And anyway, that tape wouldn’t stay stuck and we wouldn’t want the chocolate to get stale, would we?
