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May 3, 2018 3:47 AM   Subscribe

 
The Ferrer Rocher ads for Portugal are a cultural touchstone, again playing on the upper crust (lovely lady with her uniformed driver/butler but with a devilishly piquant undertone (m'lady wants something, something special, and her man delivers it)).
posted by chavenet at 4:01 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


This was definitely a thing when I was growing up in India. Relatives and friends would bring boxes of Ferrero Rocher back with them in their suitcases and hand them out like, well, candy. Now of course even the local corner stores in India sell the stuff, so it doesn't hold the same appeal (though I still find them among the tastiest of the mass market chocolate options). Before Ferrero Rocher, it was Toblerone that was so prized.
posted by peacheater at 4:56 AM on May 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Ferrero Rocher ads in Spain are very much cultural-dependent, the most memorable (which recasted a previous "ambassador's dinner" ad) featured Isabel Preysler, a Filipina woman who became famous in the 80s for marrying Julio Iglesias, a marquis and a minister. Since then she's been only second to the Spanish royal family in the best kind of gossip mags. She even had later ads that referenced the dinner party one.

More recent Ferrero Rocher ads are more middle-class, though.
posted by sukeban at 4:57 AM on May 3, 2018


They always have pallets of Ferrero Rocher packaged up like the one in the picture at the local Costco.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:22 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's a fairly one dimensional analysis of the place it has in British culture. My boyfriend's working class Wulfrunian parents still seem to have exactly the same affinity (and sense of it as a taste/aspirational class maker) for Ferrero Rocher as the jet set Hong Kong parents of my classmates when I was a kid there.
posted by Dysk at 5:49 AM on May 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


(Also wow do I ever object to chocolate being described as "candy". Chocolates are not sweets. They're just chocolates. They're their own thing.)
posted by Dysk at 5:51 AM on May 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


"Ella" is not Italian for "sweet", no matter whether you mean sweet as in the flavor type or sweet as in a synonym for "candy". I'm not sure where the writer got that idea. It's just a diminutive suffix.
posted by inconstant at 6:14 AM on May 3, 2018 [8 favorites]


I didn’t know until recently that Ferrero Rochers are filled with Nutella. Blew my mind, it did.
posted by Jellybean_Slybun at 7:06 AM on May 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


More recent Ferrero Rocher ads are more middle-class, though.

... is that ... is that Matthew Goode heading up that middle-class Spanish family? Ad casting is SO INTERESTING.
posted by alleycat01 at 7:10 AM on May 3, 2018


"Earlier this year, the company bought Nestle for a cool $2.8 billion"

Ah, so, does this now make them one of the most evil companies in the world? It certainly seems like they've grown too large to ever again qualify as anything less than evil.

As for the candy itself, I'm familiar with it but have never had one myself. From pictures it looks like milk chocolate, so I'd probably be fine skipping them. Nutella is just chocolate frosting so I suppose it wouldn't make an awful chocolate filling.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:31 AM on May 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Nutella is just chocolate frosting

This is just hilariously flat out wrong. There's cocoa in it, yes, but as the name suggests, there's a large hazelnut component. Large enough that Ferrero consume something like a quarter of the world's hazelnut supply.
posted by Dysk at 9:38 AM on May 3, 2018


There's cocoa in it, yes, but as the name suggests, there's a large hazelnut component.

Let's be honest, Nutella is just sugar and palm oil. There's hazelnuts in it, but it's not a major component.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 9:43 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


A quarter of the world's hazelnut supply suggests that hazelnuts might be involved. About 13% by mass.

Palm oil isn't a characteristic of frosting anyway. Calling Nutella frosting is like claiming beer is just barley water.
posted by Dysk at 9:45 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


This is very interesting to me...I worked for a year in an adult day center populated almost entirely with immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Hong Kong and mainland China. I was gifted a LOT of Ferrero Roche in that time and always wondered why this very seemingly-diverse group all went for the same candy.
posted by assenav at 11:22 AM on May 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


...is like claiming beer is just barley water.

Never had a Coors Light I’m guessing.
posted by TedW at 11:39 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


I have, and while it's terrible and bland beer, it is still beer and tastes nothing like barley water.
posted by Dysk at 12:33 PM on May 3, 2018


India too.

Seconding Toblerone, peacheater. i remember those being handed out like..well...candy ;p
posted by infini at 1:11 PM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


Let's be honest, Nutella is just sugar and palm oil. There's hazelnuts in it, but it's not a major component.

In jurisdictions where ad-hyped ingredients must be labeled with their percentage of the total product (i.e. Australia and probably nowhere else), hazelnuts are listed as 13%, skim milk powder is 8.7%, and fat-reduced cocoa powder is 7.4%. Plus a sprinkling of soy lecithin.

But, yeah, the first two ingredients, before hazelnuts, are SUGAR and VEGETABLE OIL. That’s what, three quarters of the jar? Yum!
posted by Sys Rq at 2:19 PM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


Palm oil isn't a characteristic of frosting anyway.

Ummmm...
Sugar, Water, Palm Oil, Glucose Syrup, Canola Oil, Cornstarch, Salt, Colour, Natural and Artificial Flavours, Rum, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Mono- and Di-Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Sodium Stearoyl-Lactylate.
.

.

.

Rum!
posted by Sys Rq at 2:37 PM on May 3, 2018


Wow, that is some terrible, terrible frosting. I retract that particular objection, but not the others.
posted by Dysk at 2:50 PM on May 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Note to Americans: barley water is a delicious non-alcoholic drink in the UK.
posted by elsietheeel at 4:02 PM on May 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


assenav, yes, my mom always got a bunch of Ferrero Rocher as an end of the year teacher gift from students coming from a broad variety of backgrounds and found it baffling. She found out one of my friends really liked it and we always gave him a few dozen to his extreme delight.
posted by potrzebie at 5:17 PM on May 3, 2018


Sys Rq: Let's be honest, Nutella is just sugar and palm oil. There's hazelnuts in it, but it's not a major component.

That's right. If you like Nutella but wish it has more hazelnuts, you'd probably love Nudossi; it's a solid 36% hazelnuts. I bet you can find it on Amazon.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:39 AM on May 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


I had no idea there was such a thing as barley water as a beverage. We have a few British themed shops in town; I’ll have to see if they carry it.
posted by TedW at 2:23 PM on May 6, 2018


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