Toblerone Chocolate Will Remove Mount Matterhorn Switzerland From The Logo

Illustration of Toblerone chocolate. (Unsplash/Safwan C K)

JAKARTA - The image of the summit of Mount Matterhorn will soon be removed from the Toblerone chocolate bullion packaging, as the owner of the US brand will move some of its production outside Switzerland.

Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung reports that Mondelez International Inc, which produces triangular-shaped snacks, is changing the design of the mountain that is depicted in its packaging cardboard so as not to violate the Swissness Act.

Mondelez revealed last year that they plan to move some of Toblerone's productions to the Slovak capital, Bratislava. The company is changing the packaging design to describe a more common mountain than the famous Matterhorn.

"The redesign of packaging introduces a modernized and simplified mountain logo that is in line with geometric and triangular aesthetics," a spokesman for Mondelez told Aargauer Zeitung, as reported by The National News on March 6.

Toblerone packaging will now read "founded in Switzerland", and not "from Switzerland".

Under the Swissness Act, passed in 2017, the national symbols and Swiss cross were not permitted on product packaging that did not meet the Swissness criteria.

The law stipulates that food ingredients that use the Swiss national symbol or claim to be " Swiss-made", must have at least 80 percent of the raw materials for products originating from Switzerland and 100 percent for milk and dairy products.

Important work to produce Swiss-made products must also be done in Switzerland. Exceptions are made for raw materials that are not found in Switzerland, such as cocoa.

Citing Le News, the original chocolate Toblerone was produced by the Tobler chocolate factory, founded in 1899 by Emil Baumann and Theodor Tobler. In 1908, Baumann created a unique recipe for milk chocolate, almond nougat and honey.

The black chocolate version follows later. Toler creates a triangular brown shape and package. This name is believed to come from a combination of Tobler's name and the word 'torrone' in Italian, a type of nougat.

Toblerone was first sold in 1908 in Bern, the Swiss capital. But it was only in 1970 that the cylloet of Matterhorn made its debut in its packaging, with bears and the Bern eagle previously featured, according to the Toblerone website, as quoted by the BBC.

Mondelez said Bern was "an important part of our history and would continue in the future".