Sweet Spotlight: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Award

While scouring the internet for vintage confectionery tins and ephemera, I came across (and purchased) a small tin badge not really knowing what it was for…until now!

This small, safety pin clasped badge is adorned with a miniature bar of Cadbury’s famous Dairy Milk Chocolate (created in 1905) and features the ‘glass and a half‘ logo of flowing milk (first marketed in 1928). The iconic Cadbury purple, now known as Pantone 2865c, is also pictured.

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Award pin badge

But what does it all mean?

In 1965 Cadbury ran a campaign called the ‘Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Award’, or C.D.M Award for short. It encouraged the British public to nominate a friend, a family member, a local hero (or themselves) for ‘a simple everyday act of kindness, cheerfulness or courtesy’.

Winners of the C.D.M Award were gifted one of these tin badges, along with a presentation letter and a half pound bar of Dairy Milk chocolate.

Images showing the promotion and prizes for the Cadbury Dairy Milk Award

The promotion ran for several years and helped to temporarily boost sales while the company operated through a difficult period, instigated by a series of miss-matched marketing decisions and fluctuating costs of raw ingredients.

Cadbury in recent years have adopted the themes of kindness and thoughtfulness, as promoted in the C.D.M Awards, in a series of TV adverts. These adverts often feature children offering their bars of Dairy Milk to those they see as deserving or in need of a pick-me-up; a crying teenager, a tolerant neighbour and a hard-working mother.

(British) Advert for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk

I personally will be wearing my claimed C.D.M Award on the lapel of my jacket whenever I introduce myself as the ‘British Candy Connoisseur‘!

Who would you nominate to win one?

You can see a 1960’s C.D.M Award television advert here: https://www.hatads.org.uk/catalogue/record/20ed40eb-4566-4fbb-bf1d-e580de0e783e

Fact Friday: [Cadbury] Mars Bar

Did you know that Mars bars were originally coated in Cadbury chocolate?

In 1932 the original whipped nougat and caramel-based chocolate ‘Mars’ bar was created in Slough, England, after Forrest Mars established his own confectionery company.

Ten years prior, on the other side of the Atlantic, Forrest’s father Frank Mars had invented the similarly composed ‘Milky Way’ chocolate bar at their MAR-O-BAR candy company. Following a series of disagreements between father and son, Forrest left to pursue his own career in confectionery and reinvented the ‘Milky Way‘ into a thicker, chunkier bar he called the ‘Mars‘ bar for his new English audience.

Marvellous Mars bars from Slough!

However, in the early days of production Forrest lacked the machinery needed to create his own chocolate blend to coat his anglicised bar. Until his fledgling company was able to produce its own chocolate, the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk was used to coat the candy.

This was known as ‘couverture‘ – where chocolate producers (such as Cadbury) sold their chocolate for other firms to use.

The original price of an English Mars bar was threepence. There was also a short-lived pineapple flavoured Mars bar following the end of the Second World War!

So, in the US, the closest thing to a British ‘Mars‘ bar is an American ‘Milky Way‘. And a British ‘Milky Way‘ is closer to an American ‘3 Musketeers‘ (also invented and produced by Mars). There has been an American ‘Mars‘ bar in the past, but instead of caramel it contained almonds…did you get all that!

Helpful hints!