Bunny Eggs & Gooicides: The McFlurry Conspiracy

Days after the Shamrock Shake gets unceremoniously escorted from the Golden Arches, the Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurry appears in all its soft serve majesty. Some look to chirpy robins decimating a worm family reunion on their front lawn as the first sign of Spring. Myself, it’s sensuous tango of chocolate and nougat whirled together into a big ol’ tub of ice cream .  Although the Easter Creme Egg itself is readily available in the United States, this particular frozen seasonal delicacy is only available at McDonald’s in Canada and the UK.

Not many people realize it, but there’s a dark underbelly to the Cadbury Creme Egg history. Besides the shrinking egg theory exposed by “The Office”‘s BJ Novak on a Conan episode.

For those who have been living under a junk food rock for the last few decades, the Cadbury Creme Egg mascot is a rabbit. Not an ordinary rabbit however, as this commercial will attest. Please, prepare yourself accordingly.

So yes, at one point in its historic run, a major confectionery conglomerate wanted the masses to embrace a chocolate egg, born from a rabbit who thinks it’s a chicken. Lapin mental illness aside, the thought of a bunny producing large quantities of foil wrapped bon-bons should not have sat well with the general public.

Fine, it may not be in the same league as the sinister Soylent Green scenario. So we embraced this bizarre candy marketing strategy and moved on. So much so that annually, Cadbury enjoys sales of over two hundred million eggs during the harvesting, er, selling season. I hope that bunny gets Workers Comp.

The Bunny campaign proved extremely successful, to the point you  still see variations on the original ad over the last few years, keeping our long eared, sore reared friend very busy.

Alas, as times change, Marketing departments needed to keep the Creme Egg relevant in the current. ever changing mind of the youthful consumer. So to bolster the Chickenfied rabbit, they needed something more edgy. Thus the following ad campaign launched just a few years back.

Was Cadbury taking the Easter Creme Egg off its meds? What type of Jim Jones meets Willy Wonka cult like work environment had suddenly flipped a switch on the easy going candies to turn them into foil wrapped time bombs, sacrificing themselves in the name of “Releasing the Goo!”. Grade 8 school boy snickering aside on this double entendre, the fact Creme Eggs were now self Final Destinationing themselves in the name of marketing is a pretty disturbing, yet delicious fact to accept.

Perhaps they had a “Luke, I am your Father” revelation and after realizing they were the fruit of a confused rabbit’s loins, couldn’t deal with it.

Did McDonald’s see an opportunity in all these creme egg carcasses lying around? It’s not as if Cadbury was trying to cover it up.  Does the annual mixing of Creme Eggs into McFlurries during their limited time run conveniently coincide?

Nobody wants to talk about it. Calls to both corporations resulted in “No Comment” responses. Shortly after, I was visited by a burly purple fellow and some dude in a mask who just kept uttering “Robble, Robble”, as his mauvey cohort worked me over as he instructed me to “Forget about the Easter Creme McFlurry investigation”.

I call “Shenanigans” on the Cadbury  Creme Egg McFlurry in what I consider the most disturbing event in Easter themed candy history since they started selling those nasty white chocolate bunnies. Or Peeps.

But that’s another article.

By the way, please enjoy some Cadbury corporate brainwash propaganda on how the Eggs are really “made”.  I for one will not drink their Kool-aid.