Nestlé is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the world’s number one selling boxed chocolate assortment - Quality Street. Created by the Mackintosh business in Halifax, northern England, in 1936, Quality Street is now exported to over 70 countries including Malta.

To mark the Quality Street anniversary, Nestlé has created a new chocolate bar. Called ‘My Purple Bar’, the chocolate bar is based on the ‘Purple One’; the most popular sweet in the Quality Street assortment. Each sweet contains a whole hazelnut, which is surrounded by caramel and coated with milk chocolate. The new bar is also available in Malta.

Using ground-breaking technology such as the world’s first twist-wrapping machine, Quality Street changed the way confectionery was manufactured and sold. In so doing the chocolate became more affordable, as boxed chocolates in the early 1930s were very expensive as they contained exotic ingredients from around the world and were sold in elaborate packaging that cost just as much as the contents.

Heritage assistant for Nestlé UK, Alex Hutchinson, said that “The brand’s name itself was created as a pun on ‘quality sweet’”. Miss Hutchinson goes on to explain that “By branding two characters wearing old fashioned dress, known affectionately as Miss Sweetly and Major Quality, Mackintosh wanted to play on the nostalgia of a bygone era especially in a time of economic hardships when Britain was still feeling the effects of the economic crash at the beginning of the decade.”

Quality Street may have been designed with nostalgia in mind, but it was promoted with what were then very modern marketing techniques. “Mackintosh would frequently buy up the entire front page of national newspapers for its advertisements, which it had commissioned famous artists to illustrate. In those days this was really unusual for a confectionery business.”, added Miss Hutchinson.

Today, Quality Street is still produced in Halifax, where it continues to combine tradition with innovation.  The sweets are free from artificial colours, flavorings and preservatives, and since 2009, the packaging has been completely recyclable.  The coloured wrappers are biodegradable and can be composted with garden waste, while the foil wrappers and the tin container can be recycled in the same way as cans.