As Easter weekend begins, anger around the perceived erasure of Christian elements of the celebration has gained media traction.
This week, there was controversy after images emerged of Easter eggs branded ‘gesture eggs’. Former mayoral candidate and right-wing social media influencer Laurence Fox commented on the image on his X account.
“@CadburyUK. Can you explain what a ‘gesture egg’ is please? Also, given that there are lots of chocolate brands to choose from, I wonder why you would align yourself with a noisy minority who are most likely lactose intolerant vegans anyway. First Iftar Kit Kats. Now this.”
Laurence Fox
Ferret Fact Service looked at this claim and found it False.
Evidence
The image, widely shared online this week, showed a store in Springfields Outlet shopping centre in Spalding, Lincolnshire, that sells Cadbury products at a discounted rate.
It shows a poster advertising Cadbury easter eggs, but describing them as “gesture eggs”, with Cadbury branding.
The picture was reportedly taken by Telegraph journalist Connor James Ibbetson, and was first written about in The Telegraph on March 26.
This caused significant controversy online, with multiple accounts tweeting about the wording of the poster, including journalist Andrew Pierce and Reclaim Party leader, Laurence Fox. Both questioned why Cadbury were advertising their products as ‘gesture eggs’ instead of ‘Easter eggs’, with Fox suggesting that the move had aligned the company with “a noisy minority”.
However, Cadbury later released a statement saying it had not put together the advertising poster, and that it was not “Cadbury led and we had no involvement in any way”.
The statement added that all Cadbury Easter eggs sold in the UK use the term on packaging, and “Cadbury has used the word Easter in our marketing and communications for over 100 years and continue to do so with our new Easter product range”.
Easter-themed branding was later returned to the store.
This is backed up by photographs of Easter eggs being sold by Cadbury this year, which feature the word Easter as part of the branding.
Laurence Fox also mentions Iftar KitKats in his post. This refers to a similar controversy promoted online about a special KitKat gift set for sale in Australia that was aimed at Muslims breaking their Ramadan fast. This meal is known as Iftar, and Nestle sells a variety of chocolate products aimed at those who are fasting. An image of one of these boxes was shared online, falsely linking it to Easter.
Ferret Fact Service verdict: False
While the image that was shared by Laurence Fox and others on social media was real, it was not a Cadbury promotion, and the company was not involved in its production. The poster was in an English Cadbury outlet store, and Cadbury has not removed Easter from either its packaging or promotion of chocolate eggs around the holiday.
Ferret Fact Service (FFS) is a non-partisan fact checker, and signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers’ code of principles.
All the sources used in our checks are publicly available and the FFS fact-checking methodology can be viewed here.
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Photo credit: iStock/DronG
