Toblerone No Longer Swiss Enough To Merit Alps Logo

Toblerone, the chocolate bar known for its distinctive triangular peaks, is losing the Matterhorn mountain from its logo after falling afoul of strict marketing rules on "Swissness," Rachel Pannett reported for The Washington Post.

Photo Insert: Future Toblerone wrappers will feature a generic mountain design instead, after the company’s US owner, Mondelez, decided to shift production to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava starting this year.

Future Toblerone wrappers will feature a generic mountain design instead, after the company’s US owner, Mondelez, decided to shift production to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava starting this year.

"The packaging redesign introduces a modernized and streamlined mountain logo that aligns with the geometric and triangular aesthetic," a Mondelez spokesperson told Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung. Toblerone's distinctively shaped boxes will also be changed to read: "Established in Switzerland," rather than "of Switzerland."

Under the "Swissness" legislation, which came into force in Switzerland in 2017, businesses have to show their products are sufficiently "Swiss" to claim that label - which has long been associated with prestige products such as Swiss watches. Swiss officials studies showing that a Swiss association can add as much as 20% to the price of a product, or even more for luxury items.

Now, food products must get at least 80 percent of their raw materials from Switzerland to qualify as Swiss-made - or 100 percent in the case of milk and dairy products. (Cocoa is an exception because it falls into the category of natural items that cannot be produced locally.)

Switzerland is not the only country concerned about safeguarding the authenticity of its products. French producers fought for years to protect the name Champagne from being used by foreign producers - a spat that reared up again in 2021 in Russia.

A US appeals court last week ruled that the name "Gruyere" is a term for cheese made in America and can be used for producers outside of the Gruyère region of Switzerland and France.

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