Cadbury's Unity Bar Solves Everything

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By  Aimee Levitt

India is a large and diverse country with a wide range of climates, languages, religious practices, and food. So what better way to celebrate its 72nd year of independence from Great Britain than with a candy bar with four different varieties of chocolate to represent the people of India? That was, at least, the thinking behind Cadbury's new Unity Bar, which combines dark, blended, milk, and white chocolate and wraps them up together in packaging that shows a wide range of Indians holding hands and presumably enjoying a collective chocolate high.

The limited-edition bar is already sold out in India, but Ad Age broke the news to the rest of the world yesterday. The Twitter reaction was, like the bar itself, mixed. Some praised the company's noble intentions and mastery of multiple languages.

Others mocked the notion that a candy bar was intended to fix a major social problem.

Still others pointed out that the bar didn't quite represent unity.

And then they offered suggestions for improvement.

Yes, it's an obvious advertising ploy, and yes, it's ridiculous to expect people to believe that a chocolate bar is the solution to racism. But look at it this way: chocolate preference is also something that divides us deeply. It has been known to tear families apart. Well, okay, maybe not permanently, but really, what do you do when one person likes dark chocolate when everyone else likes milk, except for that one outlier who prefers white? Maybe a more obvious solution is to buy more chocolate, but hey, it's nice of Cadbury to create a bar that everyone can share.

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