No movie makes kids (and adults) around the world crave sweets quite like 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” or the 2005 remake. Watching the eccentric, mysterious Wonka present his otherworldly candies and famous chocolate to the guests at his factory can make any viewer desperate to get a taste themselves, but while the story seems tailor-made for a confectionary tie-in, it’s almost impossible to find one in real life these days.
That wasn’t always the case — in fact, when the original 1971 movie was released, producers orchestrated a partnership with the Quaker Oats Company to release official Willy Wonka-branded candies. These old school candy bars featured fun, Wonka-esque flavors like “Super Skrunch,” which was made with peanut butter and crispy rice. Unfortunately, not only did the partnership cause major creative issues for the film — it’s part of the reason why the film was renamed from the book title and subsequently disowned by Roald Dahl — it was also far less lucrative than Quaker had hoped it would be.
The company struggled to solidify their chocolate recipe (literally, as the bars kept melting), and didn’t actually release the flagship Wonka Bar until 1975. For years, Wonka Bars were reintroduced and pulled from markets intermittently. In 1988, the Willy Wonka candy brand was sold to Nestlé, the company credited with inventing chocolate chips ( who still sells some of the best grocery store chocolate chips). They went on to have greater success under the Willy Wonka name, but even they could not withstand the strain of declining sales.
The revival and discontinuation of Wonka Chocolate Bars under Nestlé
Part of the problem with Quaker’s Wonka Bar strategy was that the 1971 film simply wasn’t very popular in its initial release. But by the time Nestlé bought the brand, the film had exploded in popularity thanks to the video rental market, and Wonka Bars were poised to be much more successful. This iteration of the real-life Willy Wonka brand had its heyday during the release of 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” when Nestlé actually mirrored the film’s plot by hiding Golden Tickets inside a select few Wonka candy bars, and rewarded their finders with fabulous prizes.
Predictably, the high of that promotion couldn’t last. Sales dwindled in the following years, but in 2013, Nestlé once again made a big push to market Wonka Bars to the masses. Unfortunately, within a year, sales had declined so dramatically that Nestlé made the decision to end production of the chocolate bars, and discontinued them in 2014. In a statement to The Grocer, Nestlé UK called Wonka “a brand that comes and goes,” seemingly leaving the door open for future resurrections — possibly under new owners Ferrero, who bought the Wonka brand in 2018.
However, that likelihood seems severely diminished after the release of 2023’s “Wonka” failed to materialize any new Wonka Bars. Official merchandise for the film included top hat-shaped gummies and special Kinder Surprise eggs, plus toys, blankets, and apparel in the shape of Wonka Bars, but no chocolate bars themselves. For now, candy lovers looking for the world’s best dark chocolate will have to look outside Wonka’s chocolate factory for their fix.
