Werther's Original
Encyclopedia
August Storck KG
August Storck KG is a German sweets producer with headquarters in Berlin. Its subsidiary in the UK is since 1988 the Bendicks company in Winchester...
, based in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
History
The sweet brand is named after the town of WertherWerther, North Rhine-Westphalia
Werther is a town in the district of Gütersloh in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the Teutoburg Forest, approximately 10 km west of Bielefeld. It is best known for the Werther's Original caramel sweets, which are, however, produced in the nearby city of Halle...
in Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
, where the company was founded in 1903. From 1969, the sweet was marketed under the brand name Werthers Echte. The brand name Werther's Original was adopted in the 1990s for the international market.
Texture
Originally available only in the hard form, sweets are now also available as 'chewy toffees', as well as a soft form that resembles wax, which melts easily inside the mouth called 'Caramelts'. A variant with chocolateChocolate
Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...
filling is also available. There are also three sugarfree variants including the original caramel
Caramel
Caramel is a beige to dark-brown confection made by heating any of a variety of sugars. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons, and as a topping for ice cream, custard and coffee....
flavour, a caramel coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
swirl, and a caramel mint swirl. There is much confusion regarding whether Werther's are caramels or butterscotch
Butterscotch
Butterscotch is a type of confectionery whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter, although other ingredients such as corn syrup, cream, vanilla, and salt are part of some recipes...
. They are properly described as butterscotch due to their hard consistency. Werther's Caramelts may be an exception in so far as they are chewy.
A recent release (at least in the UK) is Werther's Chocolate; dark and milk chocolate sold in the same packaging and wrappers as Werther's Originals but instead of hard sweets, there is chocolate with butterscotch running through it.
Commercials
TV advertisements in GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
from around 1997 featured an old man offering Werther's caramel to his grandson. The grandfather in the first UK ads had a bushy beard and spoke with an American accent, and was later localized to clean shaven with Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
. In the ads aired in the US, veteran TV actor Robert Rockwell
Robert Rockwell
Robert Rockwell was an American actor best known for playing the handsome, but awkward biology teacher Philip Boynton in the radio and television situation comedy Our Miss Brooks opposite Eve Arden....
played the kind-hearted grandfather.
One UK advert consisted of a montage of the grandfather and grandson bonding together (for example, pointing at animals out of train windows). The lyrics of the song which accompanied this ended: "When one who loves you says to you: You're someone very special too."
Although the sweet is popular in Europe and the US, Morinaga Milk Industry
Morinaga Milk Industry
is a milk products and sweets company in Tokyo, Japan, in operation since September 1, 1917. Their products include milk products, drinks, candy, confectioneries, and infant formula. Morinaga has distribution agreements with Kraft Foods. It is an affiliate company of Morinaga & Company...
has the rights to import and sell the sweet in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
External links
- Official website — Official Werther's Original website
- Official USA Website — Storck USA L.P.'s Werther's Original Caramels website