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A selection box is a boxed gift consisting of a variety of edible items, usually chocolate based. They are generally associated with Christmas, particularly in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
A selection box is a boxed gift consisting of a variety of edible items, usually chocolate based. They are generally associated with Christmas, particularly in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
History
Selection boxes became common around the early 20th century in Britain. Chocolatiers,Rowntree's
Rowntree's is a British confectionery brand and former business based in York, England. Rowntree developed the Kit Kat (introduced in 1935), Aero (introduced in 1935), Fruit Pastilles (introduced in 1881), Smarties (introduced in 1937) brands, ...
and Cadbury
Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational confectionery company fully owned by Mondelez International (originally Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Mar ...
pioneered the early selection boxes which were saved for by way of a Christmas club
A Christmas club is a special-purpose savings account, first offered by various banks and credit unions in the United States beginning in early 20th century, including the Great Depression, under which bank customers deposit a set amount of money ...
over many months, to be collected around Christmas time. Choice and variation of contents were the consumer's choice, and often the value of the selection box would exceed a week's wages. In more modern times the selection box as we know it has become a staple Christmas gift of chocolate. Each chocolate company produces these at Christmas time and they are often filling the spaces near supermarket checkouts. In the 1960s and 1970s the selection box took on a more commercialized approach with games printed on the reverse of the boxes such as snakes and ladders, adding to the desirability of each brand's selection box offering. Children expectantly received a selection box each year and regarded them as a main Christmas gift. More recently the commercial arms of the chocolate companies insist on filling their festive selection boxes with predefined chocolate bar selections, and many a child will receive in excess of six selection boxes each Christmas.
Production
Chocolate selection boxes are sometimes packaged by hand and sometimes by robot. Hand picking is expensive, but early automated systems lacked flexibility; the layout or contents of a box could not be changed without making alterations to the machinery. Modern, computer-controlled robot systems can be easily reprogrammed as required. The foil wrapping of many selection box chocolates is a problem for the conventional metal detectors used in food factories to ensure that no loose machinery parts have accidentally found their way into the product. British chocolatierThorntons
Thorntons Limited is a British chocolate manufacturer owned by the Italian confectionery company, Ferrero. It was established in 1911 by Joseph William Thornton and his father in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England.
When Cadbury became part of the M ...
overcame this issue by using an X-ray
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
system."Thorntons", ''Quality Today'', p. cxix, 2001 {{ISSN, 0264-2344.
References