Has anyone ever pitched Greece and Finland against each other? Well, I’m about to! Are there any two countries in the same continent so very opposed? Finland is cold and the people are so very sisukas and reserved and Greece is hot and the people – so I’ve heard because I’ve never been there – are quite open and forwards. Finns would never smash plates (to be fair, this is probably only a Greek stereotype anyway) and Greek people would never leap from a sauna into a frozen lake. Ice and snow vs sea and sun. Your winter holiday vs your summer holiday. No, you’d never even think to compare the two.
These two chocolate brands feel like two of the underdogs in this particular contest. Greek Lacta has lost so far both to Swiss Lindt and Norwegian Freia and Finnish Karl Fazer has lost to Dairy Milk so it’s going to be interesting to put them both together and see what happens.
A reintroduction! In the red corner, we have Lacta, bought by Mondelez right back in 1991. I tend to like chocolate that Mondelez likes – I find it a good sign. Lacta comes in a shiny plastic wrapper in bright red and white – if you look closely, that’s quite a Scandi knitted pattern on it, something I might expect more from the Finnish chocolate (except Finland isn’t Scandinavian). Its chunks are quite small and slightly domed.
Over in the blue corner, we have Karl Fazer, which is proudly independent although it was owned by Kraft (now Mondelez) for a few years. It’s also in a plastic wrapped but the finish on it is more matt and in contrast with Lacta’s clean red and white, we have a nice classy navy blue and gold plus a picture of a couple of chunks of chocolate landing in a splash of milk. Its chunks are about twice the size of Lacta’s and with a bevel on top.
What do we think? I’m not really a huge fan of either of these so I think we’re fighting it out for bottom place. Lacta is… ok. Lacta is fine. I don’t think I dislike it. It’s just not particularly exceptional chocolate. What about Fazer? Would I buy this if there was nothing else in the Finnish supermarket? Yeah, I think I would. I don’t think I actually dislike it. I think I just like almost all the others more. To be brutal, I think Lacta tastes a little thin but otherwise reasonably satisfactorily chocolatey. I think Fazer is a bit powdery. Perhaps too milky and not chocolatey enough. I think this is a tough battle and if I was in Greece, Cyprus or Finland I’d go for Milka over either of them but at a push, I think Lacta wins this one.
Maybe I’ll start putting a league table together and we’ll see how our five regular competitors are doing.
Lindt: played 2, won 2
Lacta: played 3, won 1
Dairy Milk: played 2, won 1
Freia: played 1, won 1
Fazer: played 2, won 0
I reckon that puts Lindt at the top and Fazer at the bottom. Well, those two are due to come together in December, so we’ll see how that goes. Next month: Lindt (won both its games) vs Freia (won its game) and that should be very interesting.