The Twix is a tasty candy bar topped with butter and a thick layer of caramel while the whole bar is covered with dairy milk chocolate. The size of Twix candy bar is about four inches long and two are packed together in one wrapped. The brand is owned by Mars Inc. which is one of the famous and largest worldwide confectionery manufacturers.
Mars Limited created it first in UK in 1967. This is also where the current Mars chocolate bar was created by Forrest Mars Sr. in the 1930s. In addition, the Slough factory is also home factory of other popular brands such as Snickers, Skittles, Topic and Starburst. Succeeding the years after the creation of Twix bar, it was launched throughout the West Europe bearing the name Raider.
The Twix candy was finally available in the US in 1979. It was wrapped in a gold colored cover having orange text and was branded as Twix Cookie Bar. Twix always did it advertising tastefully in the form of a photo with one of the bars snapped in two and the caramel curling out slightly from one piece showing its softness.
A period of continuing sales through the beginning of 1980s suggested that Mars Inc. were happy with the Twix brand. The candy brand was in fact not performing fairly well at the retail and the quest was started for replacing or improving which came with the peanut butter Twix in 1983. There was an addition of soft peanut butter blend and the caramel was removed. This had a positive reaction in the market.
Mars rebranded the Raider chocolate bar to Twix during 1991, this was in line with their global branding but it resulted in public disdain. An advertising campaign was with the slogan translated as Raider is now Twix and there was no other change. Public perceived the change as a mocking attempt to revive sales of an old product by rebranding it. It was so much that the Twix brand became synonymous with cynical rebranding in Germany in term of both politics and the corporate world.
The name change from Raider to Twix became bungles marketing. The criticism of Twix marketing campaign continued during most of the 1900s entering into the new millennium. There were perceptions that the brand was marketed for attracting young teenage boys with greedy sexual appetites for women. Many women movements described the advertisement of brand as similar to beer ads in which unlucky young men would be able to attract beautiful women by simply eating a Twix candy bar.
Twix was chosen during the early 1990s as a part of strengthening the brand and Mars Inc’s overall product development. The plan was to rework the brand to compete in the ice cream space with frozen Twix bars for attracting mall ice cream vendors. The individual wrapped bars turned out are popular and boosted sales of Mars confectionery brands outside their traditional markets.
The recent controversy related to Twix brand was in 2007 when Mars Inc. in Europe replaced whey in their candy bars with animal rennet resulting in large public protests and negative press publicity. In late 2007, Mars Inc. stopped using animal rennet in their candy and reverted to their old recipe. However in 2008, a whistle blower pointed out that animal rennet was still being used despite assurances to the contrary made by the company.