Kinder Chocolate
There is something disconcerting about the Kinder boy. I can imagine him and the boy in the Oreo commercials (the one teasing the Golden Retriever with a cookie) having it out, resorting to nasty tactics to prove whose chocolate is the best. The Kinder boy's teeth are very white, and the front two are very square, they look like segments of chewing gum. I cannot tell if he is a real boy or a computer generated boy, or a mixture of both, and it bothers me.

The back of the Kinder packet features the ingredients in an array of Eastern European languages. I have compiled the word for sugar in all these languages: Cukr, Cukor, Cukor, Zahar, Caxap, Cukier, Cukrus, Cukurs, Suhkur. Caxap is Russian, and probably my favourite, though I also like the Romanian, Zahar. I would like a poster that listed the word for sugar in every known language, preferably with a small picture of the best selling chocolate bar in that country.

The most exotic thing about the Kinder chocolate was its multilingual packet. The chocolate was already familiar to me from Kinder Surprises, with which I had a brief fascination when they first appeared. I know well the layer of white chocolate that lies inside the milk chocolate outer coating, explained somewhat by the legend “+milk –cocoa” on the packet, and the graphic of a spotted milk jug. I have always been more for the cocoa and less for the milk, personally.

Kinder Surprises make me imagine the houses of people who never stopped being obsessed by them. They'd know all the rare ones, and have them in a cabinet. Their bins would be full of foil wrappers, and walking in bare feet you would risk being gouged by an escaped tiny piece of robot or camel or crustacean. The little slips of paper that explain how to assemble the toys would be most likely filed in a stamp album. Creepy .

This Kinder chocolate came in eight individually wrapped tiny bars. They'd be good for children and those with delicate eating habits, who could pick off each tiny square individually and savour it, unfortunately I could eat a bar in 2 – 3 bites. I had to hide the box in my drawer, the boy was disturbing me, and I couldn't enjoy the chocolate properly. Is he real?