Every year I like to recruit what I call the Bunny Army. Each Easter, before Good Friday, I select 12 “soldiers” from the huge Lindt displays brimming with golden bunnies in the supermarkets. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, salted caramel, hazelnut: all are gathered into service, a “delicious dozen” set to be deployed among friends and family.
I don’t name the bunnies – that would be a bridge too far, kind of like a chocolate version of Watership Down – but I do like to imagine their relative army specialities. One, I imagine, is a wisecracking medic in the manner of Alan “Hawkeye” Alda from M*A*S*H. One of them, a sweet optimist, is sure that this will be a short deployment, followed by a swift, delicious victory, although he wonders why last year’s recruits never kept in touch.
One is a joker who ironically reads Catch-22, one is gung-ho and watches Platoon on repeat, and another is a conscientious objector, always found curiously absent when it comes time to deploy the Bunny Army (which is why I have a Bunny Army Reserve as well). I assemble them in formation on the table, ring their little bells, salute them and then send them into duty.
I’m not alone in splurging on chocolate come Easter. Australians spend about $62 a head on chocolate at Easter, accounting for some 75 per cent of all chocolate sold annually. We are indeed a nation of chocoholics. We ate three times the steel weight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in chocolate in 2023-24.
Yet this year brings a new challenge: “chock shock”.
Lindt bunny prices have jumped from $6 a few years ago to last year’s $10. With the jump to $12 this year for a 100g Lindt bunny, will this be the first year – gasp! – that the Bunny Army is not deployed? Will my moreish recruits be forced to hop it?
You, too, may have gasped at the supermarket.
“Shrinkflation” – high prices and smaller servings (did you notice your favourite 200-gram block is now 180g?) – is the new norm. Eggs, bars, blocks, cups, 70 per cent cocoa artisanal samplers: they’re all making our hip pockets wince.
You can partly blame the increasing price of cocoa, the critical raw ingredient. It is tricky to grow and harvest at the best of times, subject to obstacles such as crop disease and climate change. A Lindt & Sprungli spokesperson said cocoa prices remain “considerably higher than the long-term average” and “it will take some time before we feel the effect of lower cocoa prices”. And other raw materials, “such as nuts and packaging”, remain expensive.
Yet for me, at least – as my household’s designated chocolate sommelier – I’m not about to give up chocolate. It’s essential, a staple. It is nostalgic: the indulgence our parents allowed us as children. Which is perhaps why we react so strongly when the makers change their formulas. Why, Cadbury, did you change your Dairy Milk recipe? Even Reese’s milk chocolate has been replaced with a chocolate-flavoured “compound coating”.
But many of us refuse to skimp on our smaller mercies. TikTok calls this phenomenon the “little treat culture”. The big things may be out of reach – home ownership, a new car, an around-the-world holiday – but we’ll queue for a world-class pastry at Lune Croissanterie in Rosebery. We’ll stretch to an $8 latte, or as much as $25 for a 220g Dubai chocolate bar.
And come Easter, we will celebrate with a bunny or two. I haven’t yet decided how to handle my Bunny Army recruitment crisis. What would etiquette queen Emily Post say if I substituted my Lindt bunnies for something less decadent? (No, not carob; things haven’t gotten that bad.)
What if I swapped bunnies for chocolate bilbies? Bought a big sampler for everyone to share, Forrest Gump-style? Held a giant Easter egg hunt instead? Perhaps I will play it by bunny ear. One thing is for sure: there will be chocolate.
Charles Purcell is a freelance writer.
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