all week i've been hearing of sightings of the new returned Wispa bar, and yesterday i found a newsagents who was selling them. he was charging 50pence each so i haggled and got a discount by buying 10. here they are in a carrier bag.

matt, the weblandlord, emailed me a picture of him with a wispa earlier this week. i asked him for a review and he said he was slightly disappointed as they were lacking their original girth.

i've put all mine in the fridge for tasting this evening. i'll let you know how we get on.

meanwhile you can enjoy them virtually here

funkypancake got a mention in up-market posh british paper, the Telegraph, this week. i was the first place to blog about the end of the wispa. you can read it online here

you can follow the wispa story on funkypancake here

i couldn't believe it when i saw this chocolate machine in the shop opposite my office. it claimed to contain Wispas !

i love wispas (see here), but sadly it wasn't to be as the machine is long since broken. but i wonder if there's still a few wispas left in there ?

so, i was delighted and saddened all at the same time. you never forget your first love.

it's official. no more wispas.

i phoned Cadbury's today to find out where the Wispas have gone. It turns out THEY HAVE STOPPED MAKING THEM ! the last ones were produced at the end of August 2003.

I was informed that they had been replaced by Dairy Milk Bubbly, which is nearly the same thing. Dairy Milk is Cadbury's flag ship product and they have decided that the Wispa should be rolled in to that family.

So no more 'velvety textured milk chocolate'. instead it's now just 'bubbly'.

I went in search of the last remaining Wispas which are working their way through the newsagent shelves. i was prepared for a long search through the backstreets of london, but found my favourite local newsagents on charlotte street had a few in stock:

The bubbly dairy milk hasn't the same crunch as the old wispa. this is mostly due to its lack of girth (bubbly left, velvety right):

i remember queuing up to get my wispas as a teenager from my old school tuckshop which intriguingly operated out of the science block windows

and so another part of history dies ...

i warned you about blooming over the summer. it's not just a summer effect though. here is a winter blooming kitkat:

click for big version (yuck)