"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

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    5 hours 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.

    • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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      4 hours 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.

  • Ricky Rigatoni@lemm.ee
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    5 hours 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.

  • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nl
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    7 hours 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.

  • tallpaul@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    It’s also why I no longer buy it. It’s a PITA to eat.

    • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 hours ago

      They literally do, and their chocolate is a little more expensive because of it

      But they’re not Hershey or Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn), or even close to them in size, so they can’t just fix the industry all on their own

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        Cadbury (whoever owns them, forget the name rn),

        Kraft, now called Mondelez

        Also Mars is the largest confectionery brand

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          11 hours ago

          Ok, I was actually pretty sure Mondelez was the name but was too lazy to google it

          And I almost said mars instead of Hershey, then mistakenly thought Hershey’s owns Mars when I know Mondelez owns Hershey and so I basically listed them twice

          Don’t Lemmy right after you wake up, kids, you’ll look silly

      • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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        4 hours ago

        The “lonely” part of the name comes from how they’re the only player in the industry trying to do what they do.

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      Fait point, but it’s a statement about the industry as a whole, not their own production. Even if they were to distribute profits evenly over the entire production chain of their products (which I agree they probably don’t), the industry as a whole would still have this problem.

    • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Sure, gram for gram, Tony’s has 34% more lead than California would like, but their chocolate is still sold in the state.

      To add to what @Maalus@lemmy.world pointed out, the Mast bar is 70g for $8, while Tony’s bar is 180g for $6.

      Gram for gram, Mast is more than triple the price.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      There is absolutely no difference in price between the two - i.e. a “fancy” one like this and a regular one. Both will most likely be made by machining a block of graphite and using EDM to make the actual mold. The difference in machining time wouldn’t cost more than $200 or so

        • Do you also find it hilarious to use the word techno whenever somebody mentions EDM?

          One time this dude who is maybe a little autistic, possibly very autistic, made this super detailed post about all the different genres of electronic dance music. If you know anything about it, you know there’s some hyper-specific sub genres out there, and this dude took the time to not only list them all out, but verbally describe what made a piece of music fit into one genre versus all the others.

          Obviously I replied with something like “Man, I love techno.”

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        I’m pointing out that I already thought that was a “dangerous” amount of chocolate to begin with. I don’t understand the concept of doing something unhealthy consistently but not expecting any negative consequences.

  • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I love it, but I feel obligated to say

    "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!

    No, it makes sense. I understand, but it makes a lot more sense

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      1 day ago

      It doesn’t make sense for cars to have 4 equal sized wheels when there is so much inequality in the auto industry.

    • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours ago

      Ok but this is a good way to raise awareness about the issue. Many people will pick these bars in the store without knowing much about the brand. Then when they eat it, they will probably wonder why it’s divided like that and the explanation is right there on the inside of the wrapper.

      • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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        21 hours ago

        And then never buy them again because they are difficult to break evenly. Great idea but poor execution imo.

        • smeg@feddit.uk
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          20 hours ago

          Do you buy chocolate based on convenience over taste?

            • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              My internal chocolate bar cost has gone way up. I find the stuff at the bottom (like the stuff at the checkout) doesn’t even taste like chocolate anymore. I usually get something from the specialty section now.

              • AWildMimicAppears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                12 hours ago

                I agree. The budget snack items like chocolate, chips and so on have, in my opinion, lost a lot of quality; they taste a lot greasier, have worse “mouth-feel”, or are just sugar with less aroma depending on the product. I also buy less, but higher quality stuff now in comparison to 20 years ago. (Central Europe here)

            • smeg@feddit.uk
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              19 hours ago

              Fair, I do remember eating a lot of Tesco Value chocolate back in the day

        • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 hours ago

          lol imagine sharing your chocolate bars with other people, tssk (/hj)

          fr tho if that bothers you, the inequality that comes with other chocolate brands should bother you too

          not saying Tony’s is 100% fair, but at least they put in a lot of effort to make it as fair as possible

  • Blackout@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    I do like these bars but breaking it into pieces without a mess is difficult. I’ve had to resort to putting the entire thing in my mouth and waiting for it to melt down my throat.