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Saturday 19 September 2009

Choco Machins

A bit of light relief today. I was talking with a collector last week, the subject turned to gums on stamps before the advent of self adhesives and the flavour of PVAl gum, which I think is pretty tasteless.

The conversation continued and I brought up the subject of flavoured gums.

"What if Royal Mail came up with a chocolate flavoured Machin" came into the conversation, please don't go there I replied you may give them ( RM ) ideas. However flavoured stamps are nothing new.

Above: Here is a mock up of a 1st class stamp made entirely out of chocolate.

I remembered a few years ago that the Swiss produced stamps for a certain anniversary with a chocolate smell and flavour. I could not remember the whole story so I looked it up on the BBC website. Here it is dated 9th May 2001 if you are interested.

"The Swiss are not only one of the world's biggest producers and consumers of chocolate - they are even putting chocolate flavour on their postage stamps.

Letter boxes around the world will be smelling of Swiss chocolate as letters and packages are delivered bearing special chocolate commemorative stamps.

They are selling like hot cakes - or rather like Swiss chocolate - and post office counters across Switzerland are coping with a flood of demand for the new stamp.

Sold in blocks of four or 15, the stamp's design has them wrapped in a foil wrapper. It looks, smells and tastes like chocolate, and has been specially produced to mark 100 years of the Swiss chocolate makers federation.

Customers have only praise for the sweet smelling stamp, which they say gives them a true taste of Switzerland's famous national confection.

What next? Cadburys making and selling stamps!

Haagen-Dazs in Austria collaborated with the Austrian Postal Service to launch ice cream flavored stamps.

Instead of just looking cool on their envelopes, the stamps enable mailers get to sample flavors like Cookies & Cream, Macadamia Nut Brittle and Strawberry Cheesecake.

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of cacao beans at the port city of Bayonne, the French postal service (La Poste) is issued a set of stamps depicting scenes from the history and manufacture of chocolate.


Microcapsules in the ink provided a chocolate scent that will reportedly last up to two years. The stamps went on sale on May 25th 2009; Costing 5.60€ for a sheet of 10 stamps.

Left: La timbres-chocolat

Im logging off for something to eat, all this talk of food has made me realy hungry.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If they are greedy like Royal Mail Eight DIFFERENT (8) Prestige Blocks per year. LOL

Sébastien said...

The French ones actually smell good chocolate-powder-for-breakfast and were very appreciate by many foreign postcrossing.com penpals.

[reedited for orthographic purposes - shame on me]