GB ice cream

GB Glace is the largest producer of ice cream in Sweden . The company was founded in 1942 and has been part of the Unilever Group since 1996 . In addition to own brands, GB Glace's range also includes many brands that are known from other Unilever companies. In Germany , Langnese is part of Unilever.

history

GB Glace was born when Mjölkcentralen , which later became Arla Foods , and Choklad-Thule , Stockholm's first ice cream maker, acquired Alaska Glace and started a new company called Glace Bolaget . In 1962 the companies Gille-Glass and Trollhätteglass were bought by Unilever. Glace Bolaget then bought six Swedish ice cream manufacturers, and in 1966 the decision was made to cooperate with two other companies, which means that GB was now represented throughout Sweden. In 1973 GB merged with Trollhätteglass , Unilever remained a partner. 88: an was the only Trollhätteglass brand that was still in production.

In 1991 the name was changed from Glace Bolaget to GB Glace . GB Glace has also been represented in Finland since 1994 . In 1996 GB Glace became a wholly owned subsidiary of Unilever. In 1985, Arla had sold GB shares to Unilever.

Brands

GB Glace's well-known brands in Austria and Germany include Magnum , Cornetto , Calippo , Solero , Nogger and Viennetta . The brand 88: an, which is popular in Sweden , is still part of the range.

Racism allegations

In 2005 GB Glace was criticized by the Centrum mot rasism (Center against Racism) for an advertising campaign for the new ice cream Nogger Black . The original nogger consists of vanilla ice cream , a nougat core and a chocolate coating . In Nogger Black, nougat has been replaced by toffee and chocolate by liquorice . Liquorice is very popular in Scandinavia. The original nogger has been marketed in Sweden since 1979, the name is derived from the nougat filling. The allegations were mainly directed against a commercial in which the slogan "Nogger + liquorice = sant" (for example: Nogger + liquorice = [it is] true) is written in chalk on asphalt . Center chairman Stig Wallin read the slogan as " nigger + liquorice" and said "it's impossible not to see this as a racist innuendo". The center then called for a boycott of GB Glace. Some Swedes parodied this by designing a (fictional) ice cream called Kokoskon (coconut cone), highlighting the Ks and painting in the cone eyes so that it looked like the hood of a Ku Klux Klan costume.

In addition, the name 88: an was criticized because 88 is used as the code for "Heil Hitler" in the neo-Nazi scene. The ice cream 88: an has been sold under this name since the 1960s , long before the use of 88 by neo-Nazis.