"thorntons" news and stories

Apparently the pressures and rivalry that come with being one of Britain's leading chocolatiers sometimes cause men to do strange things. Witness the case of Barry Colenso, the erstwhile master chocolatier of the prestigious Thorntons who was forced to resign after a "truffle-squishing" incident at a rival store.

That's right folks. We said, gasp, "truffle squishing." Actually it's no laughing matter. The man who has been likened to Willy Wonka and who you see standing before a chocolate billboard he created last Easter went on a truffle vandalism spree at rival store Hotel Chocolat where he mangled some $130 of confections. Store staff knew something was up when they noticed him pawing at the various truffles. Hotel Chocolat issued a statement saying, "This was an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing. We can only guess at what provoked it."

I know said something about this not being a laughing matter, after all it was highly unprofessional behavior, but I can't help thinking of the scene in Tampopo where the elderly female shopper roams through a store squeezing and destroying a wide array of items. It also begs the question, did they sell the damaged goods at a lower price or remake them or what? Personally, I'm not above eating a squished truffle or two.

[via Boing Boing]

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If you are a chocoholic, then London would have been the place for you to be earlier this week. Thorntons, a British chocolate company, spent three months planning the world's first chocolate billboard. Ten massive chocolate bunnies, 72 giant chocolate eggs, and 128 panels made of pure chocolate were used to construct the 14.5 x 9.5 ft billboard, which the company had planned as being the first-ever interactive Easter creation on this kind of scale. Interactive, indeed - people passing by were invited to literally dig in and help themselves to the pieces of chocolate.

The structure took a team of 10 people 300 hours to construct, yet the public devoured it within just three hours.

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