Praising the Bar

It was a boyhood fantasy to disrobe the glittering 5 Star and devour it. I dreamt, I salivated, I even stole money to get my fix.

I’m in Hastinapur along with the other four Kauravas. With the help of the shrewd, unplayable Shakuni, we humiliate the Pandavas and disrobe their beloved 5 Star chocolate. This is my fantasy.

I was first drawn to 5 Star by a television commercial in the early 1980s. An elderly woman leaves a bar beside her sleeping grandson. When she leaves, the boy jumps up and does a vastraharan on the chocolate.

Those days, middle-class kids like me rarely ate entire chocolate bars. Chocolates, those days, would be cut into pieces and shared among family members. But after watching that ad, I was obsessed with eating an entire 5 Star all by myself.

The wish came true that summer. My father took me on a tour of South Bombay. I saw the places that I had learnt about in the geography textbook, like the Prince of Wales Museum and the Hanging Gardens. I saw the sports shops of Dhobitalao with their Bjorn Borg posters and cricket balls in flesh and blood. And I ate a whole bar of 5 Star.

Another time, I stole Rs 10 from the house because I had not had a fix in a while. With some support from my own piggy bank, the amount fetched three bars. Once I found a corner where I could take the stash out, I realised it was too much. The 5 Star sits heavy in the belly. You immediately feel it up to your throat. I gave two bars away to kids I barely knew and ate the third. It did not taste as good as the one my father had bought me. That one was refrigerated.

Cadbury, which makes 5 Star, has categories of chocolates. The mighty Dairy Milk, which might grow udders anytime, is ‘Moulded’. Perk is a ‘Wafer Chocolate’ and Gems, possibly a favourite of Sheetal Mafatlal’s, are ‘Sugar Panned’. The 5 Star, which Cadbury says is a ‘distant No 2 but a power brand nevertheless’, commands the stately title of ‘Count’. It was launched in 1969 because the company did not have a Count line product.

I have one complaint, though, about 5 Star. The taste, texture and shape have changed. The 5 Star I remember was not so chewy and its nougatine centre was lighter in colour. Now, it is so chewy that a dentist warned a fan against having it (she still did). The centre is darker and the shape is squarer instead of flat. Such fickleness does not befit a top product. Great products try their best not to change. Toblerone came in 1908, Snickers in 1930 and Kit Kat in 1935. They have been around much longer than 5 Star. Yes, they have new flavours. Kit Kat even has a lemon cheesecake version (not surprisingly, it is a hit among giggly Japanese school girls). But the original remains sacrosanct.

“A market study around five years ago showed that non-users and even some users found 5 Star too chewy,” admits Abhijit Awasthi, executive creative director, Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that does the advertising for Cadbury. “It was made softer, and since then, has found a balance.”

Cadbury calls the changes ‘improvements’.

“5 Star has been re-launched with product improvement twice—in 1985 and in 2003. On both occasions, it was made softer, smoother and creamier,” says Sanjay Purohit, executive director, marketing, Cadbury India. Weren’t they alienating those who wanted the original taste? “The new product is launched only if consumers rate it significantly better than the old one or the competitor offering,” says Purohit. “The basic product construct with caramel, nougat, and chocolate continues to be attractive. The key properties that 5 Star has always been associated with are the classic gold colour (wrapping) and a multi-layered taste.”

Awasthi has known this taste for years. His father was in the Air Force. On high-altitude flights, the 5 Star was a part of his rations in the cockpit. The remaining chocolates would be brought back home for his son to raid. Awasthi describes the layered taste as a “unique eat experience”, where one loses himself in the act of chomping on a 5 Star. Which is why the theme of the chocolate’s campaign is ‘Jo khaaye woh kho jaaye’.

The world’s best chocolates are now easily available in India, which was not the case earlier. It has to be conceded that 5 Star is up against legends. But it has two things going for it. It’s reasonably priced. More importantly, it’s vegetarian. Toblerone and Snickers have egg white, as do many international brands.

The days of 5 Star’s monopoly may be over but the foreigners will have to work a bit more to unseat it.

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