Was There A Hidden Message In The Old Toblerone Logo?

Toblerone, you know it –- the uniquely triangular, honey and white nougat-filled chocolate bar that's every bit as fun to break as it is to eat. A candy bar so iconic that even if you can't immediately conjure the name, you certainly recognize its shape –- and probably its logo. That is, until July of 2023, when the company had to scrap the iconic Swiss Alps logo it has used since 1970. The famous silhouette of the Matterhorn isn't all the chocolate brand had to ditch; Toblerone has also lost its hidden mascot.

If you didn't know already, the old logo had a stealthy little bear hidden in the outline of the snowy mountain peak. The bear was incorporated into the logo as a shoutout to the Swiss capital city of Bern, the hometown of Theodor Tobler and his beloved candy bar. Bern's coat of arms is a rather fierce-looking bear with a dragon-like tongue who appears to be scaling an invisible mountain. So naturally, Toblerone used it for itself, though it made its bear a little more gentle and a whole lot more inconspicuous. Nevertheless, the bear is there. Or, it was until recently.

Toblerone has undergone a few changes in recent years. The first was a different configuration of triangular peaks and valleys for which the candy is so famous, resulting in a reduced chocolate weight per bar to save money. Needless to say, fans of the chocolate were unhappy. Unlike the decision to skimp on chocolate, the logo change wasn't so much a choice made by the folks at Toblerone but rather by the Swiss government.

In 2017, Switzerland enacted the law of "Swissness" that places strict regulations on what can bear the Swiss white cross with red background and the exhibition of any national symbolism. Mondelez International, who has owned Toblerone since 1990, decided to begin July 2023 it would shift a part of production to Slovakia — once again to cut costs; this proved to complicate things with the Swiss government. Under the Swissness Act (and more specifically, the Foodstuffs Act of 1992), any food that involves milk and dairy from Switzerland cannot be claimed as a Swiss product unless 100% of its raw materials are of Swiss origin. This includes any nationally recognized imagery — so the mountain peak and secret bear logo had to go.

Major corporations are no stranger to hidden images and messages in their logos. Baskin Robbins famously keeps a hidden '31' in its logo in honor of the original 31 flavors that sent the ice cream chain into the stratosphere in 1953. On the other hand, some companies have ascribed hidden meaning to otherwise innocuous images. Proctor and Gamble's logo of a curly-haired moon man cultivated rumors of satanism that won it millions in defamation lawsuits.

But be it unintentional demons or sly little bears, branding is everything. This shift in public image may be a bit of a shake-up for Toblerone. Not only will it have to change its logo of the Matterhorn and the secret bear, but the new design will nix the old "Of Switzerland" descriptor and instead read "established in Switzerland." This is a mega downgrade for anyone paying attention to the quality of its chocolate. What will the new logo look like, you may ask? Apparently, it's as close to the old one as possible, just without all the Swiss stuff. No classic peak of the Alps, and alas, no camouflaged bear; just a generic mountain and perhaps the signature of the company founder.