 | |
| Owner | McVitie's |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Introduced | 1932 |
| Tagline | P...P...P...Pick up a penguin! |
| Website | Official website |
Penguins are milk chocolate bars filled with biscuit and chocolate cream. They are produced by Pladis's manufacturing division McVitie's at their Stockport factory.
William Macdonald founded Macdonald Biscuits in Glasgow in 1928. After seeing some biscuits from Antwerp he was inspired to create a chocolate covered biscuit with a chocolate cream sandwich in the centre. [1] They were first produced in 1932, and became a McVitie's product a few years after MacDonald was taken over by United Biscuits in 1965. Each wrapper has a joke or "funny fact" printed on it and imaginative, often humorous designs featuring penguins that often pastiche famous works of art.
The Tim Tam, produced by Arnott's in Australia and first sold in 1964, was based on the Penguin. [2] Occasional media references include tongue-in-cheek debates over which is the superior biscuit. [3] [4]
During the 1980s, the Penguin brand became known for their television advertising slogan "When you're p-p-p-peckish, p-p-p-pick up a Penguin!” [5]
In October 1996, Penguins were the subject of a court case between Asda and United Biscuits, who accused Asda of passing off their own brand "Puffin" biscuits as part of the Penguin brand. In March 1997, the court found in favour of United Biscuits regarding passing off, but found that Asda had not infringed the Penguin trademark. [6]
United Biscuits had been criticised for continuing to use trans fatty acids in the cream filling of Penguins. [7] By December 2007, United Biscuits began to advertise the absence of trans fats from Penguins, having removed the ingredient from this product line. [8]
The back of the wrapper typically has a joke. [9]
There are three variations of the biscuit: [10]
In June 2003, McVitie's produced several "sub brands" or variations of the Penguin biscuit: Penguin Chukkas, Wing Dings, Flipper Dipper, Splatz and Mini Splatz. These variations were accompanied by a £5 million promotional campaign. [12] In January 2008, McVitie's also produced Penguin triple chocolate wafers. [13]
A cookie or biscuit is a baked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat, and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, or nuts.
A biscuit, in most English speaking countries, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, biscotti, and speculaas.
A digestive biscuit, sometimes described as a sweet-meal biscuit, is a semi-sweet biscuit that originated in Scotland. The digestive was first developed in 1839 by two Scottish doctors to aid digestion. The term digestive is derived from the belief that they had antacid properties around the time the biscuit was first introduced due to the use of sodium bicarbonate as an ingredient. Historically, some producers used diastatic malt extract to "digest" some of the starch that existed in flour prior to baking.
A wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, light biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream, and also used as a garnish on some sweet dishes. They frequently have a waffle surface pattern but may also be patterned with insignia of the food's manufacturer or may be patternless. Some chocolate bars, such as Kit Kat and Coffee Crisp, are wafers with chocolate in and around them.
An ice cream sandwich is a frozen dessert consisting of ice cream between two biscuits, wafers, cookies, or baked goods. The ingredients are different around the world, with Ireland using wafers and the United States commonly using cookies.
Cadbury Dairy Milk is a British brand of milk chocolate manufactured by Cadbury. It was introduced in the United Kingdom in June 1905 and now consists of a number of products. Every product in the Dairy Milk line is made with exclusively milk chocolate. In 1928, Cadbury's introduced the "glass and a half" slogan to accompany the Dairy Milk chocolate bar, to advertise the bar's higher milk content.
Jaffa Cakes are a cake introduced by McVitie and Price in the UK in 1927 and named after Jaffa oranges. The most common form of Jaffa cakes are circular, 2+1⁄8 inches (54 mm) in diameter and have three layers: a Genoise sponge base, a layer of orange flavoured jam and a coating of chocolate. Each cake is 46 calories. Jaffa Cakes are also available as bars or in small packs, and in larger and smaller sizes. The original Jaffa Cakes now come in packs of 10, 20, 30, or 40, having been downsized in 2017 from 12 or 24 per pack.
United Biscuits (UB) is a British multinational food manufacturer, makers of McVitie's biscuits, Jacob's Cream Crackers, and Twiglets. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In November 2014, the company was acquired by Yıldız Holding and is now part of Pladis.
McVitie's is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie & Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Park Royal, London. There are seven McVitie's factories in the UK, with each producing a different types of biscuit; the Harlesden site in north-west London manufactures the chocolate digestives.
Tim Tam is a brand of chocolate biscuit introduced by the Australian biscuit company Arnott's in 1964. It consists of two malted biscuits separated by a light hard chocolate cream filling and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate.
Arnott's Group is an Australian producer of biscuits and snack food. Founded in 1865 by William Arnott, they are the largest producer of biscuits in Australia and a subsidiary of KKR.
Taxi was the name of a chocolate biscuit sold under the McVitie's biscuit brand. It was produced by the European food manufacturer United Biscuits. The bar consisted of layers of wafer, caramel, and chocolate creme, and was covered in chocolate, and was suitable for a vegetarian diet. Taxi used to be available in multi-packs using a yellow and blue wrapper, in a New York taxi cab style design.
Club is a range of chocolate covered biscuits, sold in Ireland under the Jacob's brand name and in the United Kingdom under McVitie's.
A sandwich cookie, also known as a sandwich biscuit, is a type of cookie made from two thin cookies or medium cookies with a filling between them. Many types of fillings are used, such as cream, ganache, buttercream, chocolate, cream cheese, jam, peanut butter, lemon curd, or ice cream.
Trio is a chocolate bar sold in the United Kingdom consisting of a biscuit base topped with soft toffee cream, covered in thick milk chocolate. The Trio brand is owned by United Biscuits and sold under the McVitie's brand. Trio was previously manufactured by Jacob's who discontinued production in 2003, along with the Choc Trio variant which had a soft chocolate cream in place of the toffee cream, that was introduced in 1988. There had also been a strawberry variant, which had a soft strawberry cream in place of the standard toffee cream. The original toffee flavoured bar returned in March 2016 following a campaign on Facebook.
Pladis Global is a British confectionery and snack foods company encompassing United Biscuits, Ülker, Godiva Chocolatier and DeMet’s Candy Company. It was formed in January 2016 as a subsidiary of Yıldız Holding with its headquarters in London, England. The company operates 24 bakeries in 11 countries and its products reach approximately 4 billion people worldwide in 120 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Jaffa Crvenka is a Serbian food company specialized in confectionery products and headquartered in Crvenka, Serbia. Its best-known product is Jaffa Cakes, based on the original McVitie's cakes and sharing the same name.
Negresco is a Brazilian sandwich cookie brand created by Nestlé, originally being sold by its now defunct subsidiary Biscoitos São Luiz in 1987. The product was created as a competitor to the Oreo brand, consisting of two chocolate biscuits with a filling usually in vanilla flavor. After the end of São Luiz in 2002, the cookies began to be sold under the Nestlé label. It came onto the Brazilian market and is still only sold there as Biscoitos Recheados and Biscoitos Wafer.