And about time too. During my time on the Cadburys assembly lines at Bournville, all the Easter stuff would have been manufactured the previous June or July - a season when nobody was buying much chocolate, so there was always spare summertime capacity available. I imagine that's still the case today?
The eggs were then stored in a gigantic refrigerator, in a state of total nakedness
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
until the following January. At which point, they would be defrosted and foil-wrapped in readiness for the retailers.
That, at least, was the idea.....
The year I was there, however, the entire national stock of Cadburys Creme Eggs had to be destroyed by a fleet of JCBs, because they were going off like fifteen million hand grenades in the underground refrigerator. The woman who kept the secret recipe book had misread the quantity of yeast that they employed in those days to make the yellow "yolk", and the rest can safely be left to your imagination.
January was not an ideal time to have discovered this unfortunate circumstance, because Cadburys now had barely two months left in which to make another 15 million Creme Eggs and get them out to the supermarkets for Easter. But in the meantime they
also had to dispose of the weapons-grade exploding chocolate in the refrigeration bunker. Which was no small undertaking in its own right. One false move, and these little grenades could have blown your hands off. Well, almost.
It cost the company an absolute fortune to defuse the rogue munitions. But the risk of innocent toddlers being blinded by their Easter choccies was too awful to risk. I rather think Willy Wonka would have empathised with the company's dilemma. The rest of us laughed ourselves sick.
BJ