SubscribeKeep Slim: Eat Maltesers
From 1959 comes this classic ad: "Choose the chocolates that can help keep you slim."
Maltesers (balls of honeycomb surrounded by chocolate) were popular in the UK (in the US, Hershey's Whoppers are similar).
As seen in the print advertisement below - some marketers are masters of twisting words.
The small print includes this:
...those delicious centres have a surprising secret, they are so low in calories that they are seven times less fattening than the centres of ordinary chocolates.
Here's what you're getting in a Malteser:
Milk Chocolate 75% (made of sugar, milk solids, cocoa butter, cocoa, emulsifier (soy lecithin), and flavourings); wheat glucose syrup; barley malt extract; milk solids; partially hydrogenated vegetable fat; sugar; wheat gluten; pectin; and salt.
Picture source: British advertising standards authority
More like this in Fast Food · Oct 1, 2007
Foosh, I can believe they marketed them as slimming, I could only ever eat 2-3 Whoppers before they made my tongue and mouth hurt (That's because I would scrape off part of the chocolate and suck on them until I had dissolved the inner stuff and made the ball collapse).
ReplyThis reminds me of the weight-loss chocolate that used to be advertised in women's magazines all the time in the 60s - does anyone else remember it? They used to have full-page ads with compelling testimony about women who were severely overweight and this was the only thing that could help them control their appetite. I'm sure it was bogus, but nobody could have fortold how unfortunate the product name would become: "Ayds."
ReplyMy mother LIVED on Ayds in the 70's when I was little because she thought she was fat. She was 5' 9"-ish and weighed 180 pounds or something like that. Chubby maybe-fat, no way! She swore by them; a cup of coffee and an Ayds was her breakfast but I don't remember her ever losing any big amount of weight.
I ate one thinking it was just chocolate. BLECH! The were horrible and gave me a stomach ache!
Replywhat's scary is that maltesers are still advertised as being a low calorie option on tv today, making much of them being 180 calories a packet (I think) I don't think they'd get away with saying they were less fattening though.
ReplyI see the same thing with 3 Musketeers bars. They may have less fat than other kinds of candy bars, but they are STILL a candy bar and they aren't exactly health food. I guess eating lower calorie candy is better than eating something higher in calories, but candy is still candy. Oh, don't forget the ads for licorice, gummis, lifesavers, etc. being "fat free"...that one misled me for a long time when I first started dieting in high school (WooHoo! Licorice is fat free? I can eat as much of it as I want!)
ReplyMy mother did the same thing and she didn't lose any weight either. She used to hide them from my dad but I knew where they were and I ate one of them one day too. It was horrible! I thought it was chocolate because it did look like it but the taste was terrible. It only took one to convince me. The ads for diet products are just the same now as they were then, claiming you can lose oodles of weight practically overnight and testimonies claiming this is the only thing that works. They haven't learned much in 50 years it seems to me but people still believe the same thing as they did back then. The only difference is the actors are different people.
ReplyLinds, that's the ONLY way to eat Maltesers/Whoppers/Robins Eggs. Mmmm...nice treat, wouldn't use 'em as a diet aid.
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