Toblerone chocolate no longer ‘Swiss’ enough to use Matterhorn logo

Future wrappers will feature generic mountain design.

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.”

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

The packaging redesign “introduces a modernized and streamlined mountain logo that aligns with the geometric and triangular aesthetic,” a Mondelez spokesperson said in a statement. 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 and to use national symbols of Switzerland. Swissness has long been associated with prestige products such as Swiss watches.

Swiss officials at the time cited studies showing that a Swiss association can add as much as 20% to the price tag of a product, or even more for luxury items. The label had been “much coveted and misused,” officials said, at home and abroad, in a way that was damaging to its credibility.

Now, food products must get at least 80% of their raw materials from Switzerland to qualify as Swiss-made — or 100% 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.)

The exact fate of a bear pictured climbing the iconic mountain in the current logo remains unknown. (The bear is partially concealed within the logo, and some customers have apparently been surprised to learn of its existence.) Bern, the Swiss city where the Toblers first opened a candy shop in 1868, is known as the “City of Bears.” According to the company’s statement, “the famous hidden bear” will be retained.