The creator of the Freddo chocolate bar would be rolling in his grave if he could see the prices being charged for a treat that cost 10p back in its 1990s heyday, his daughter has said.
Leonie Wadin said she once waited impatiently for her father, Harry Melbourne, to come home with boxes of Freddos, but has now vowed never to buy another one.
“Dad was disgusted with how small it is now and how much they charge for it,” Leonie Wadin, 74, told Sky News from her home in Melbourne. “He’d roll over in his grave if he could see it now; he’d be disgusted. It was a penny chocolate. Since Dad died, I haven’t bought a Freddo.”
Melbourne created the chocolate at the age of 14, Wadin said. In 1930, he changed the mind of a boss who wanted a chocolate mouse. “He said children are scared of mice, so why not a frog? Because kids go down to the lake and catch tadpoles,” Wadin said.
The chocolate, named after his “best mate”, Fred, was launched in Australia about a year later, selling for a penny. By 1973, it had a brief stint on British shelves, before gaining widespread popularity in the UK after relaunching in the 1990s.
A Cadbury’s Freddo now commonly sells for about 30p or 35p – though there have been examples of the bars selling for up to £1 each. Some have claimed this inflation is emblematic of a country in which even simple pleasures have become unsustainably expensive.
However, Sky’s analysis suggested that, by some measures, a Freddo has become less expensive than it was in the 1990s. For example, it said it now represents a smaller proportion of an hour’s work at minimum wage.
Wadin told the broadcaster she wanted her children and grandchildren to remember her father’s achievement. “They’re very proud of their great-grandad, they still buy them, they love them.
“Carry on through every heritage, that’s what I want. The Freddo has to be passed on, Freddo is never going to die. It will always be there … I just want it all passed down, so that the frog is always in our lives.”
Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury, said: “Whilst it’s important to stress that as a manufacturer we do not set the retail prices for products sold in shops, our manufacturing and supply chain costs have increased significantly over the past 50 years, and Freddo has become more expensive to make.
“We have absorbed these increased costs wherever possible, however on occasion we have made changes to our list prices or multipack sizes to ensure that we can continue to provide consumers with the Freddo that they love, without compromising on the great taste and quality they expect.”