Children's surprise

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Wrapped and unpacked surprise egg with content. No longer on sale in this form

Kinder Surprise is a product from the Italian company Ferrero . Further names are in Germany the general name surprise egg (short: Ü-Ei ) and abroad Kinder Surprise , Kinder Sorpresa (colloquially also Kinder Egg or Sorpresa ).

The egg consists of 20 grams of chocolate in the form of a two-layer shell, brown on the outside and white on the inside. Inside the egg there is a gimmick figure or a small kit in mostly yellow plastic packaging . Some of the figures from the surprise eggs are popular with collectors.

The Kinder Surprise Maxi version contains 100 grams of chocolate, the Kinder Surprise Giant Egg version contains 220 grams.

history

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Kinder Surprise has existed in Germany since 1974. At the very beginning, it contained content similar to that from the well-known chewing gum machines. Product management soon found its own product lines with the support of the four external designers from the very beginning, Bermes, Koch, Havranek & Roth. From the designer Peter Bermes, who designed more than 250 plug-in toys for Ferrero in 20 years, z. B. the dragon 'Drachobert', which is one of the most expensive collector's items today. The trademark of the surprise ice cream , the red and white egg man "Üi" , was created in 1981 and is not only known in Germany. It looks like the original and still had white teeth in the mid-1980s, which were intended to persuade customers to buy the product. Since the barcode on the eggs was difficult to read at first, the "Ü-Ei-Mann" stood at every checkout with the corresponding code on the sole of the foot. Even before 1981 there was an advertising mascot for the surprise ice cream that advertised the surprises. The mascot represented a playing boy with blue work trousers and a green and white T-shirt. This figure came into the surprise egg around 1986 as a plug-in figure (set consisting of four figures). The sales generated with Kinder Surprise rose from the 1993/94 financial year to the 1997/98 financial year from 115 million DM to over 370 million DM.

Since 2006 the surprise eggs have been “represented” in the summer by the Kinder Joy product . Nevertheless, in some sales outlets there are still some surplus eggs to buy in summer. There were also the larger Ferrero maxi eggs , which were similar to the Kinder Surprise.

Special packs with four and six surprise eggs are available in Germany for Easter and Christmas. There are also three packs and two advent calendars that also contain special figures. In 2012, a pink surprise egg was launched especially for girls.

On December 29, 2016, William Salice , the creator of the surprise ice cream , died at the age of 83 in Pavia. He worked for Ferrero from 1960 to 2007 and was a close associate of Michele Ferrero , the founder of the confectionery manufacturer Ferrero, and as a product developer also responsible for other products such as Mon Chéri , Ferrero Rocher and Nutella .

Figures and other toys

A figure from the "Happy Hippo" series (derived from the English hippopotamus for hippopotamus). Later, the Kinder Happy Hippo confectionery was named after the series of figures

Ferrero launches around 20 new series of figures and around 150 assemblable toys worldwide every year. The first hand-painted continuous figure series between 1981 and 1983 was the Schlumpf series "Do you recognize your Smurf". Before that, there were other hard plastic figures that were also hand-painted in the egg, such as figures from Robin Hood , Alice in Wonderland and other Walt Disney series . In later years various series followed, the names of which were always formed from an English alliteration , such as "Teenie Tapsi Törtels", "Happy Hippos", "Crazy Crocos", "Dapsy Dinos" or "Funny Fanten", all of which were designed by André Roche from Munich. A distinction is made between licensed series (mainly licensed by Disney, but also Pumuckl and Maya the Bee ) and series of figures specially developed for Ferrero, which are increasingly promoting their own Ferrero products.

In recent years Ferrero has brought out character series for Christmas that were related to current movies, such as the three-part character series for the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings or the characters from the Simpsons comics .

Contents as a collection area

By shaking, weighing and listening, and in the case of foreign surprise eggs by comparing the numbers on the sides, collectors try to determine the contents of the egg before buying it.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Because of the sometimes high price increases, especially for the older figures (for example "Hüpfschlumpfinchen"), there have been counterfeits of accessories for figures and even entire figures for some years. Package inserts and puzzles are also counterfeited and sold. It is no longer just older figures that have been counterfeited; newer figures such as the special edition of the “Dark Laser” figure are also painted over. Similar to postage stamps, the surprise eggs have price catalogs that are updated annually to give collectors a rough guide as to how much their figure is actually worth. However, this value is only a rough guide. The realistic market price is around 30–60% of the catalog price, depending on the age of the figure, and is usually freely negotiated.

The world's largest stock exchange takes place four times a year in Dreieich . There are also many smaller stock exchanges, for example in Hamburg , Berlin , Hamm , Oberhausen , Klein-Gerau and Regensburg .

The “O-EI-A Price Guide” appears annually, the only catalog of values ​​for surprise egg figures since 2012.

criticism

  • Although food and toys are rolled into one, the surprise egg is treated as pure food in Germany under sales tax law and is taxed at 7%. This taxation has already been called into question several times.
  • In Germany, the Children's Commission of the German Bundestag pointed out in July 2008 the particular risk potential of the combination of toys and food, as this made it difficult for children to distinguish between edible and inedible parts.
  • In the United States, confectionery products that contain an "inedible object" have been banned since 1938. Importing into the USA is fined up to US $ 2,500 for private individuals  . The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expressly supports the ban because of the alleged danger to young children.
  • In Chile, the sale of surprise eggs has been banned since mid-2016, when a law to protect children from unhealthy food was passed, which prohibits children from being seduced by toys to eat unhealthy food in order to avoid obesity.
  • Ferrero does not sell all objects in a series in the same proportions in collective editions, but rather seldom places individual objects in order to increase the sale of surprise eggs.

United States

The company Candy Treasure, LLC from Lebanon, New Jersey brought out the very similar product Choco Treasure in its white and purple design and structure at Easter 2013 . After opening the envelope made of printed aluminum foil, a chocolate egg appears, which is visibly and palpably divided into two half-shells by a meridional circumferential, approximately 1–2 mm wide joint filled with yellow plastic. This clearly indicates the inedible plastic content. These chocolate shells, which are attached to the plastic egg without any space, can be pulled off sideways with your fingers - sometimes without breaking. The joint filling turns out to be a protruding web of the plastic egg, which can be opened equatorially at a snap-in overlap connection, exposing the toy content as the innermost, fourth part. To make it easier to open, the capsule (the plastic egg) has a button labeled “Press to Open”.

Choco Treasure is also available in spherical form, for example with a football pattern or as a Christmas tree ball on a thread. In this design, the yellow plastic capsule is divided along the yellow bar. Whether egg or ball, the shell is made of 0.8 oz. = 23 g brown milk chocolate throughout.

All of the surprises in Choco Treasure are approved by the US consumer protection agency for children of all ages, with Candy Treasures recommending the eggs only for children aged three and over. Candy Treasure officially states that the product was inspired by Ferrero's Kinder Surprise. Nestle had tried unsuccessfully to obtain approval from 1990 onwards, and Candy Treasure took 3 years to develop in collaboration with the FDA.

accident

In January 2016, a three-and-a-half-year-old girl in Toulouse suffocated on a wheel that came off a toy after playing with it for a month without any problems. The grandfather was able to remove the part from the child's throat, but the child was already unconscious and later died. According to the prosecutor, the manufacturer Ferrero is not threatened with any legal action, especially since it was noted in the package insert that children under three years of age are not allowed to use the toy and older children are only allowed to use the toy under adult supervision.

literature

  • Michael Graf, Michael Steiner: The egg times one - all kinds of things on the subject of egg , Fantasia, Dreieich 2007, ISBN 3-935976-48-8 .
  • Michael Graf: Das Fälschungsbuch - catalog for the detection of forgeries around the Ü-Ei , Fantasia, 2010, ISBN 978-3-935976-63-3 .
  • Holger Jenrich: The yellow of the egg - A surprise book , Ehrenwirth, Bergisch Gladbach 2007, ISBN 3-431-03714-3 .
  • Andre Feiler: O-EI-A Price Guide 2012, Feiler Verlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3981358247 - annually since 2012.
  • Monika / Stefan Jagusch, Dieter Ehlers: Differences from the egg. XinXii Verlag, Berlin 2012 - E-Book.

Web links

Commons : Kinder Surprise  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chocolate - Ferrero: Kinder surprise egg - calories and nutritional values , wikifit.de, January 15, 2013, accessed February 2, 2016.
  2. ↑ Ferrero Kinder Surprise Maxi 100 g , EAN code 4008400241524, das-ist-drin.de, January 7, 2011, accessed February 2, 2016.
  3. ^ LG Cologne, judgment of March 1, 2000, AZ: 84 O 77/99, - Haribo is not allowed to advertise with "Kinder Kram". Erection.de, March 1, 2000, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Katharina Sorg: Girls, we need eggs! Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 23, 2012, accessed on September 5, 2015 .
  5. ↑ “Father” of the surprise eggs died orf.at, December 30, 2016, accessed December 30, 2016
  6. ↑ William Salice dies at the age of 82. In: welt.de. WeltN24 GmbH, December 30, 2016, accessed December 30, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Finance Committee advises tax on “surprise eggs”. Die Welt , January 12, 2003, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Miriam Greetings, Member of the Bundestag: Statement by the Children's Commission of the German Bundestag on the subject of “Children and Everyday Life”. German Bundestag , July 28, 2008, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  9. ↑ a b Surprise eggs for the US market: "Safe for all ages". In: ORF . March 30, 2013, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Surprise eggs finally also legal in the USA. 20 Minuten , March 16, 2013, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  11. ↑ CBCnews.ca: Woman's candy egg seized at border. In: Yahoo News . January 10, 2011, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Westfälische Nachrichten : Have you heard? , Front page, June 29, 2016
  13. ↑ The Ü-Egg shows how we are cheated every day - WELT. Retrieved May 15, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Is ChocoTreasure affiliated with Kinder Surprise®? (No longer available online.) Candy Treasures, archived from the original on September 26, 2015 ; Retrieved September 5, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chocotreasure.com
  15. ↑ Surprise eggs finally also legal in the USA. 20 Minuten , March 16, 2013, accessed September 5, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Choco Treasure: The Legal Kinder Egg , collegeolive, youtube.com, February 21, 2013, accessed February 2, 2016. - Video
  17. ↑ Kim Bhasin: Someone Figured Out A Legal Way To Get Around A 75-Year-Old Ban On 'Surprise Eggs' , businessinsider.com, March 15, 2013, accessed February 2, 2016.
  18. ↑ Surprise egg accident: No legal action against Ferrero , nachrichten.at/apa, February 2, 2016, accessed February 2, 2016.