Dying for Chocolate

Chocolate skeleton on a chocolate electric chair at Jean-Philippe Patisserie at the Bellagio


The previous two posts were based on a daily theme, Friday Flowers and Silly Saturday. So, I began to wonder about about today's theme. Then, I remembered that Sunday already has a topic, Spooky Sunday!!! Yeah, it's been a while since I did one of those posts, but they've always been popular with the readers.

So, I figure that we can dust off the concept and put it back into use, especially for Halloween.

Moreover, I have some photos from my tip to Las Vegas that I would like to share with you all that fit the theme. At the Jean-Philippe Patisseries at the Bellagio and the Aria, there were plenty of Halloween-inspired chocolate sculptures to admire and desire. Yum!!!

This trapped ghoul hasn't realized that it can eat its way out of the chocolate coffin.


Although I normally focus on more "highbrow" forms of sculpture, these sweet constructs were wonderfully crafted. From candy Thriller zombies and Michael Jackson to chocolate Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, there were plenty of pop culture Halloween icons formed out of sugary materials. But I was more interested in the large scale works.

For instance, the Electric Chair Skeleton is made of 35 kg white chocolate, 30kg dark chocolate, 1.5kg rolling fondant, and took two people 70 hours to create!!! That's some impressive chocolatier work.

Chocolate Pumpkins and tombstones


Anyways, let's look at a few more photos and listen to a couple tunes. And let's welcome Spooky Sunday back into our weekly schedule. ;-)

Waterfalls of Caramel

Betty White stars in the first "You're not you when you're hungry" Snickers ad (2010).

Sometimes it may seem that I generally prefer older advertising campaigns and styles over contemporary ads. There's some truth to that accusation. However, there are some modern campaigns that I adore, which dramatically improve upon a brand's prior marketing while retaining a core product message. The current "You're not you when you're hungry" ads from Snickers is a prefect example.

Through out the '80s, Snickers distinguished their candy bar from the competition by emphasizing its capacities as a fulfilling snack food, which will provide a hunger fix and energy boost between meals. It was the proto-energy bar. Whereas other candy bars were mere sweets, Snickers were a helpful way to keep going through a hard day. This branding was summed up in the slogan "Snickers satisfies you."

Although somewhat boring, this branding concept continued into the early '90s with the "There's a hunger inside you" campaign which focused upon athletic excellence, especially in regards to the 1992 Olympic Games. By the mid-90s, Snickers started to lose brand focus, going for cheap laughs and gimmicky slogans that did nothing for creating a coherent product vision.

Snickers "Sings a song of satisfaction to the world."

Certainly, some of these ads are memorable, but is the product being promoted memorable? I don't think so. We remember the Kansas City "Chefs", not the candy bar.

One of the Lonely People

Karl Lagerfeld in a hotel suite made of chocolate (Photo: Jacky Naegelen. Reuters)

Sometimes you come across an image that steals your ability to make coherent commentary. This is one such image. That's fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld standing next to a chocolate sculpture of Baptiste Giabiconi, attired only in white briefs. Moreover, the entire suite is decked out in chocolate, like some demented fantasy from Willy Wonka.

Apparently, this is some sort of promotion for Magnum Ice Cream. Hmm. . . I can't say that this makes me desire to try it out. Kind of the opposite. Although this Rachel Bilson ad is a little better:

Anyways, it's hard to imagine that the Choco-suite was designed without consideration of all the off-color comments that it would generate. Just read the comments over at Boing Boing.

Here at Paideia, we'll steer clear of such blue humor and instead offer you some Hot Chocolate:

Here's an article at Curbed, Karl Lagerfeld Apparently Designs All-Chocolate Hotel Rooms, which also contains links to other related articles.

Here's a link to Karl Lagerfeld's Wikipedia page.

And here's the Wikipedia pages for Rachel Bilson and Baptiste Giabiconi.

And since I'm in a shillin' type of mood, here's Magnum Ice Cream's website.

Enjoy!!!